Levitating Liberty!

I spent my evening today doing the 25,000 mile maintenance on Sue’s Jeep Liberty CRD. Oil & Filter changes, some chassis lube, and a tire rotation. As I have noted before oil changes on this machine are really nice and easy, due to a design engineer’s forethought and courtesy to future owners of his product. Thank you Mr. Italian designer, wherever you are… I owe you a nice Chianti or similar.

Anyway, having the lift out in the barn made the rest of the tasks easy as well. Though the fuel filter/water separator is a pain to get to… however they made up for that with a little hand pump built into the housing for priming. Very Nice! The last step was the tire rotation. Once I had it completely shoeless I had to go inside and grab my camera to get a shot.

I bought this lift from Harbor Freight, for a bit over $800. It has repaid that over many times. I’ve been working on my own cars since college and have always dreamed of having one. Being under the ’99 Beetle, propped up on ramps and jackstands when we had a *slight* tremor (probably sub 5 on the Richter scale… but trust me, *I* was acutely aware of the fact that the earth was moving!) scared the bejeezus out of me. The idea of a few thousand pounds of car landing on my chest suddenly made spending nearly a thousand dollars seem REALLY inexpensive! I looked at those super-nice 2- & 4-post lifts and they were all well over $2000+. This one covers 80% of what I’d need a lift for (can’t do transmission, clutch, or exhaust work under it) but for oil changes, suspension & brake work, etc. It is wonderful. I even had the Jaguar up on it when we had a 5+ tremor, with no issues. I was 62 miles away at the time, but still. Safe and sound, both me & the car.

Back to the Liberty: I also poured 5 gallons of Diesel fuel I had in a can into it… and noted that the new ULSD fuel is BRIGHT green. Like “glowing nuke green”… Quite bizarre. I wonder if it is dyed? …much like the non-road taxed Diesel is bright red. Who knows?

I am not a big fan of DRIVING the Liberty. It seems to be designed for short people as I can not fit through the door without craning my neck over to clear the top of the door opening. I have a sort of long-torso for somebody my height, and the seats in the Liberty are very high. They don’t adjust up & down. If Sue has been driving it I can’t get in at all! I have to stick my upper body in, move the seat back, and then climb in. If I try to get in with the seat in “her” position, I get wedged into the door frame. Ouch. It is also and automatic transmission, which I loathe. I can understand why she wants one, and why people prefer them, but I really am a “stick guy” through and through. The CRD does get a very consistent 27 to 30 MPG. I wonder if it would always crack 30+ if it had a manual?

My other beef with the Liberty are the brakes. They seem weak, especially stopping the car on downhill grades, a common thing around these parts. Of course, I am also used to driving vehicles that are less than half the weight of this thing! Maybe that is the issue?

I noted the discs seemed fairly puny when I pulled all the wheels off: