I didn't know where else to post this...

I'm thinking about buying one of these off of somebody very very soon. Does anyone have any experience with their reliability?

Here's a rather lengthy discussion on this particular vehicle - http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/direct/view/.f1416ef/0

I have a Grand Cherokee. Very handy, but guzzles gas like a madman.

I would probably avoid the Liberty and opt for a Patriot, Compass or Cherokee. The Liberty strikes me as being too small.

CK

If I am not mistaken, it uses the same 3 liter Mercedez/Freightliner motor that is used in some of the smaller Dodge/Mercedes/Freightliner vans. We saw one of those motors inexplicably go bad in a 2004 van and required a bunch of work. I saw the inside of the motor when it was apart (something in the head had gone bad) and it had huge carbon buildup for the age. We think maybe the previous owners had it sitting at idle for long periods of time so the miles on the odometer were not really the best indicator of vehicle wear and tear.

I don't have any personal experience with that particular model except that I worked at a Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep dealership a few years ago when those were being sold and they were pretty hard to get back then, sort of on what dealers call "allocation" meaning that they were limited on how many they could get in a model year.

Diesel sales went way down when the price of the fuel went above super unleaded in most places, which offsets the better fuel economy the Diesels get, but for survival purposes, you still have that issue of less cargo space being required to carry fuel to get you XYZ number of miles.

I say if you are not getting hosed on the price of the rig and it is in decent shape and you are not paying a major price premium for it, it is worth trying out.

Personally, I would go for it if I could afford it, but right now I am looking at doing a small fleet of mid to late 1980s Isuzu troopers. They are very cheap, not majorly difficult to work on (but not as easy as the Mitsubishi Montero/Dodge raider) and a decent 4X4, although I think the Montero/Raider of the same era is slightly better. I am looking at an absolute max of $2500 per vehicle including mods and OD green paint job. Think street legal enclosed ATV, but with more interior room than a Samurai.

Isuzu and Mitsubishi made Diesel versions of their small SUVs back then which now trade at a crazy premium due to a combination of being light enough to tow easily behind a motorhome and being tolerant of slightly off spec biodiesel. The problem at this point is just plain age, which makes vehicles like the Liberty attractive if you can get one at the right price.

$10,000 for this Jeep Liberty CRD with around 76,000 miles. It really isn't a bad price considering that all of the Jeep Liberty cars in gasoline around here are at around $11,000 at a dealership with MUCH more miles. I can't find one in diesel ANYWHERE but private seller. I'm going to get it and see how it does.

It is small, which sucks for bugging out, but it has other benefits. I can fit what I truly need in the trunk (my BOB and med kit I always keep in my car plus the rifle which is legal). If I need to bug out I can always put them back seats down and its plenty of room. The Ford Explorer was my idea of a bug out vehicle but I like this Jeep.

I would have went with the Explorer, but to each his own.

At $10K, I think I would go for it if the payments are reasonable and I were still working pretty regularly. Finance through a credit union so you are not holding liability on its value and you would be carrying full coverage insurance anyway, which puts your payments around maybe $300/month on a relatively short term loan.

My advice, have no more than $3500 value equity in a vehicle due to the fact that is the max that insurance companies are comfortable paying an individual if it gets totaled out, and given that car loans are lower interest than the profit that you can make with actively investing your money in something profitable elsewhere, it is smart to keep the equity value in a depreciating asset relatively low. Remember, SHTF, nobody is going to be giving a crap about reposessing vehicles.

On the other hand, carrying full insurance on low value vehicles eats you up, so if you have rigs that are worth $1500 to $2500, then you might as well go liability only unless maybe it is a work truck which you keep $10K worth of tools in.

The other thing about fully insuring a higher value bugout vehicle is that the contents get some level of insurance too. It sucks if the shit is not on the fan and your $3500 NVGs and $3000 weapons bag got ripped off along with your truck, and you know how that works even if the truck got recovered by the police with the stuff still in it. Your bags of stuff will not survive the stay in the tow yard.

I generally own more than one vehicle, with not all of them running at any given time. My personal opinion is that a smallish 4X4 SUV should be a component in every prepper/survivalist/militia guy's motor stable. Mine right now, not sure if I would trust it on a long trip (it is old and has some issues but I got it cheap and am putting more money into it than I will get back out of it, so I am getting use out of it). You solve that cargo capacity problem with a trailer hitch and beefed up roof rack.

The trailer hitch gives you three options (four if a larger rig).

1. Towing a trailer. Look through Youtube at "bugout trailers" but also just think through the general utility of having a utility trailer. My small cheap 4X4 SUV cannot tow the camper, but can tow the motorcycle trailer and the multipurpose trailer. A weekend project with one of those Harbor Freight trailer frame kits will net you a mobile cargo box which gives your rig equal hauling capacity to a full size pickup.

2. Hitch haulers AKA wheeless trailers. These are rack like devices that attack to a trailer hitch but don't have their own wheels. They range from a basic platform to a pretty complex and involved big rack system. Prices from $50 on up. The downside is they usually prevent you from opening the lift gate/tailgate when installed. Jeep guys use these a lot on trails and just access their stuff through the back window, and then put cargo boxes on the hitch hauler rack. Sometimes they get modified to carry another spare tire, bikes, motorcycles, even barbeque grills. Remember, the weight capacity is limited by the tongue weight capacity on your rig.

3. Bike rack (similar to the hitch hauler but less involved. Bikes take up a lot of interior space in a bugout vehicle, even if you went high end and have Montague folding paratrooper bikes which are the schnizzit of the tacticool crowd. Lacking Montague bikes then you want an external bike rack. Lots of these are made to attack to a trailer hitch.

4. (larger rigs or rigs with bigger motors) Towing another vehicle. Your bugout situation can involve getting someplace, then operating from there as economically as possible. That can mean the 8MPG 4x4 big rig machomobile which is the main point of your base camp may not be the best runabout for heading to town and around the national park for fetching firewood from a few miles away economically. A 30-40 MPG little hatchback econo-car on the other hand, like a Geo Metro with the rear seats folded down or removed, that's a good little hauler/utility car as long as you keep it on pavement and less challenging dirt roads. Not a stupid bugout idea to tow one of those along as a runabout.

If I am seriously bugging out, as in orderly evacuation style, then everything that is roadworthy rolls out in convoy, but not everything needs to be a 4X4 unless you are heading for the serious back hills and are using low quality roads as your filtering factor to keep the washed masses away from your main bugout location.

Breacher said: Anything stolen from a vehicle is covered under your home owner's insurance not your auto insurance. Don't ask how I know this!

I've been driving an '04 Jeep Liberty Sport, 3.7L V6, 4x4 4 speed Auto since February. I traded my '01 Ranger, plus paid the remaining with some cash I had saved for just that purpose. It had belonged to an older gentleman prior to me acquiring it, whom apparently had not driven it a lot, as it only had 63K. I haven't really driven it hard, just the work commute, and the occasional drive down to Columbus to visit my little brother at OSU. Originally, I didn't care for the silver/grey color, but appreciate it more and more because it blends in with traffic, even though I like the dark navy better lol. No bumper stickers, or anything political on her that would stand out - It's the 'grey truck'.

The grey truck indeed, just like it's predecessor, the Jeep Cherokee. Brilliant stuff.

We all need to be minutemen not gear-less and rifle-less unarmed slaves if our homes are burglarized, burned down, or raided. With an SUV you can't very well keep a rifle, 6 to 12 loaded magazines, a sidearm; a whole go to war combat load out hidden so it can't be stolen by a lowlife just breaking a window. I am going to stick with a car that has a trunk and a pickup with a tool box and keep another whole combat load out at home as well. The yuppies can keep the SUV's (LOL).

SUV makes sense for some people in some situations, just check the Youtube prepper channels. A lot of people rig a locking box in the back behind the seats for storing anything important. The big advantage also is that you can sleep in the back and make it to the driver seat without getting out of the vehicle. Same goes for a van, but vans are rarely available in 4WD.

I recently met a guy who has driven around the world a couple of times, basically running north and south on every major continent. He is currently on a north-south America run, started by having his rig shipped to Alaska, went to Prudhoe Bay and is heading down to Argentina.

The rig is a late 1980s or early 1990s Diesel Mitsubishi minivan that I don't think was sold in the US for very long but had been sold in other parts of the world. It is a slightly modified 4X4 and of course, he can get fuel almost anywhere in the world. It is non-Turbo and kind of slow with a cast iron snorkel exhaust and intake setup that was fabricated and installed in Africa. Most of the rest of the work done in South America.

I really like the Idea of the Diesel Liberty but understand they were not in production for very long and are now hard to get.

Pseudo-tactical SUVs are dirt cheap right now anyway, easy to aquire and hold their value since that value has bottomed out anyway.

Jeep Cherokees from the late 1980s to 2002ish (prior to the Jeep Liberty which replaced it.
Get the 4.0 inline six with the auto transmission. Do not touch the 4cyl or the 2.8V6. Expect to pay no more than $3500 for one that is pretty nice, $2000 and some careful shopping should get one that is entirely usable. $2500 for a well maintained rig with decent tires and a somewhat recent tuneup. Customization is easy, with lots of parts around the junkyards and custom shop parts prices are dropping since buyers for these things are thinning out.

Reliablity is decent, but nothing to majorly brag about. Mechanics are easy to find parts absurdly easy to find, color choices vary and experts can tell the year of a vehicle by some nuances in trim, but pretty much they can be made generic, especially when done in solid colors, but a good old spray can camo job looks pretty good on a Cherokee too.

Storage space is OK, the whole rig sits kind of low for a 4X4 so it is easy to get to stuff on the roof rack with no major strain. Bad news is taller people won't fit well in the Cherokee. Big boys prefer the two door model and can modify the seat rails a bit but the two door model was discontinued before the 4 door was, so those rigs tend to be older.

1980s-1990s Toyota 4runner and Nissan Pathfinder.

Although they look different, they have a lot of mechanical similarities. 4runners tend to cost more than Pathfinders although parts and maintenance cost about the same (parts are not compatible between the two). They fit taller people just fine, and the Pathfinder styling is classic modern up to the new body style they did in 1997. Check over one that has a price that looks too good to be true since both also came in 2WD which is sort of useless. People argue back and forth over which one does better off road, but the Toyotas are notoriously vulnerable to getting wet, with the sensitive electronics mounted dangerously low so a dunk in water ruins everything. The give back is that the Toyota can take more off road high speed punishment than the Pathfinder.

Mitsubishi Montero/Dodge Raider 1980s, early 1990s. A real sleeper, priced absurdly cheap in a lot of areas with parts either costing an arm and a leg, or practically nothing. Find the right mail order and online places and the parts are practically free plus shipping cost for small stuff that is just sitting in warehouses. These rigs can easily go 300K miles with regular maintenance and it is not entirely unheard of for them to top a half million miles in some places. The Mitsubishis are particularly easy to work on and popular in third world countries. That should tell you something right there. They tend to be small and light enough that they are easy to tow behind another vehicle. Most are 4cyl but don't get particularly great fuel economy.

Isuzu trooper 1980s-1990s. The "classic" Trooper II of the late 1980s to early 1990s vintage is particular popular in my area, but most have that shitty 2.8 GM motor. The mechanics on them are an odd combination of GM, Nissan, Mitsubishi and oddly enough, Ford stuff. They also had a diesel version which was not imported into the US for very long but is now considered a high value collectors item for what it is (typically going for $3,000 for a "rebuildable" basket case, $6500 for a good running rig which is as much money as the equivalent used Benz SUV goes for). These are particularly well suited to taller people, and light weight enough to be towed behind a motorhome. The transmission/transfer case arrangement is flat tow friendly, and came in 4WD only, but is shift on the fly to 2WD with automatic hubs (they never made a dedicated 2WD). Parts availability is spotty, but when it rains it pours, find the right parts source and the parts cost next to nothing. These rigs typically trade for $600 to $1500 and that is less than what most people expect to pay for a decent used Quad. The cat's meow for gas motors is supposedly the 1988-1991 fuel injected 4cyl.

The body style changed in late 1993 and was shared with some vehicles in the Honda/Acura product lines, as were a few other Isuzu SUV designs. They have a bit of a following in some circles but trade so cheap that you can leave one loaded with gear as your bugout vehicle as long as storage is relatively secure.

Suzuki Samurai / Geo Tracker.

Samurais have their own following and are well liked, just not suited for smaller people. Thing is they are as close to a street legal ATV as you can get. Towable even behind a smaller V6 motorhome or van, and pretty decent off road. The problem is they have such a following they trade for more than they are worth. Expect to pay $4,000 for a good running clean rig. The tracker model sold from 1990 onward has a poor reputation, but they trade relatively cheap and can be good if they were well maintained. I am told that people are better off avoiding the automatic transmission on these.

Nah, nah. We all need bright yellow '73 V8 Falcon XB's like in Mad Max. "The last of the V8 interceptors, mate!"

Yeah.