Started with engine light on and misfire code for #3 cylinder at a little over 41,000 miles. Started troubleshooting by replacing plugs, then ignition coil, but still had issues. Compression test revealed 35% leakdown on #3 cylinder towards intake side and damage to the head was observed, probably due to a seal failure. Bottom line: engine no longer under warranty needs replacement. Let me repeat that in case you missed it: a well-maintained engine with ONLY 41,000 MILES NEEDS REPLACEMENT.

Chrysler produced the 3.7L V6 from approximately 2002-2009, putting it in Liberty's and one of the Dodge truck models. From what I've read on the Internet, this engine has had major "known issue" problems ever since it was first manufactured, yet Chrysler continued to throw it under the hood of new vehicles for maybe 7-8 years. My question: Why did we bail these jokers out?

Oh, did I forget to mention the tensioner pulley mount that BROKE at less than 2,000 miles? Almost forgot about that one!

I'm a patriotic American and a veteran, yet this is probably the last "American made" (sarcasm) vehicle I will ever own.

I spent the summer vacation depressed about the prospect of aging, like all people hitting their late 20's, and left James, my car, to deal with the same prospect, aging that is.

In August I reunited with James, for he was my pal, the car I've had for about 7 years now. As a friendly reminder of all the good times, I waited until the car was properly heated, and drove a few rounds around the block, all ready to make my big come back to the world.

James apparently wasn't ready.

On my way to a destination 10 minutes away from my house, I noticed that my AC was failing me, this in the scorching heat of Kuwait, smack in August, was not a pleasing discovery. I cranked up the air power to 3, and regained some cooling power. Either that, or it was my sweat cooling off my face that did it. But I digress, I continued on my way, and upon arrival to my destination, attempted to park. I was just turning the wheel when it suddenly went very heavy, but I managed to get into the parking spot, even though the car wouldn't budge when I tried to drive it further into the parking spot.

The loud AC, the bright colors on my dash, all were gone. I laughed, positive it was another age hallucination thing. Had I already turned off the car?

I pulled my keys out, did my shopping and went back to the car.

It started fine! I mumbled something about someone being a loon, to myself, drove out of the parking zone, and merged into traffic. And worked totally fine all the way home.

Cue 7am, I get into the car and drive to work, when the car went heavy in my hand, at a busy road, and stopped. I froze, my body flushed out of shock and fear because every nutcase on this busy street was honking their horns at me and shouting from behind their windows at me to get a move on.

I tried to turn the car on again, but the keys wouldn't budge. Then I remembered that I had to set the car on park first, turn the key back, turn them on, hit break and then put the car in drive. Something I couldn't do fast enough to get the hell out of the busy street.

Car worked smoothly on the way, with the AC still thinking it's Dec and trying to melt the skin off my face. Right at the busy entrance turn to my work space, the same one used by a school, it died again. I threw a fit inside the car, trying the turn off, turn on routine again and swearing to never get in again.

Something I did do, because, who was going to pick me up?

The car did this 4 more times in the course of a week, the wait between each new attempt on my life getting shorter. We checked the motor, the electricity wiring (I insisted the AC thing had to be a connection), battery, replaced battery and the wiring.

Car was given the A-OK.

I rode in the car, happy to have my James back, smiling all the way back home, when it made one more suicidal stop right in front of a traffic light, right before it went green.

That was in Oct, for now, the car is running without stopping, though it does give me the same AC crap, and now I just turn that off, not wanting to tempt it into stopping. For now, I'm assuming it was just a mid-life crisis and moving on as well. But I hear this isn't such a non-common problem with the Liberty.

I was driving in the fast lane to get around a semi truck and it went dead. the truck had to slam on breaks almost causing a huge wreck and i would have been crushed. I travel to different cities around birmingham and the jeep went dead on a dirt road up a hill with no where to pull off to the side unless I WANTED TO END UP CAREENING DOWN A MOUNTAIN. jeep went dead while in rush hour traffic and almost got hit from behind. Jeep went dead in the middle of an intersection with oncoming traffic and almost caused a wreck. jeep went dead in the north side of birmingham in the highest percent of murder and rape and a car full of guys kept coming up beside me and glaring at me. northside is where the gangs are.

We bought our black 2006 Jeep Liberty Limited brand new on the dealer's lot fully loaded with just about every conceivable option available including heated leather seats and a 6-disc CD player with the premium speaker system. We took delivery of our vehicle on 9/11/06. At the time, we were quite pleased and satisfied with our new Liberty.

Early in the spring of 2007, I was driving the Liberty home from work when out of nowhere the engine started to run rough. It was as if one or two cylinders decided to take a nap while the remaining cylinders tried to take up the slack. When I pulled up to a stoplight, I thought the engine was going to die. I tried to keep it running by feathering the gas pedal. I barely managed to nurse the chugging vehicle home where it had all to do just to make it up the apron of my driveway. I chugged it into the garage and gave it a little gas to try to clear the problem. I heard a brief metallic noise and then dead. When I tried to start the engine all I got was a "click" from the starter. The engine was totally seized up. This happened at 6400 MILES!

I called the dealer — since everything was under factory warantee — and made all the necessary arrangements to have the vehicle towed. They gave me a loaner Liberty. After they conducted their mechanical autopsy, they informed me that a valve retainer had failed and caused a valve(s) to fall into a cylinder(s) damaging the entire engine. At first I was taken back: "Engine failure at ONLY 6400?!!" This has NEVER happened to me. EVER! The dealer was so perplexed by this that they actually had some corporate bigwigs show an interest to determine what caused the failure and lay claim to the engine to take back to their "drawing board" to seek out what went wrong. After a week or so we got our Jeep back with a new engine. The dealer told us that the engine warantee was going to be extended and we would be given an additional 3YR/36000 starting at the date of pick up. For the next several years everything seemed status quo. Then another problem developed. Everytime I turned on the A/C I heard this metallic chattering noise coming from the engine compartment. At first I thought it was the A/C compressor starting to crap out, but after taking it to the dealer they determined it was a seized up idler pulley for the serpentine belt.

Earlier this Spring of 2013, we started to take small weekend road trips to Indiana just to get away and do some exploring. After several trips I decided it was time to get an oil change (I always use Lube Pros and Mobil1 synthetic). I'm pretty timely when it comes to getting the oil changed anywhere between 3-3500 miles. This time when they changed the oil, the technician showed me the dipstick with this horrible-looking brown sludge all formed around it. He told me it's recommended I do an engine flush. I proceeded to have that done. At first I was startled to see such sludge in my engine. How did that happen? The only times I ever see such a phenomenon is when anti-freeze or water contaminates the oil and gets mixed in with it. In the back of my mind I thought that maybe I have some internal fluid leak in the block, but I didn't want to dwell on it for too long. I just figured it must be "normal" for 3.7 V6 Chrysler motors to get "sludge" when the motor hits over 40K miles.

FAST FORWARD: May 4, 2013 on a Saturday evening, we went out to have dinner at a local restaurant. We drove our Liberty there and back home, as we are accustomed to doing. On May 5, 2013, Sunday morning, we were going to head out to Home Depot to get some spring flowers. I put the key in the ignition, turned it, and the engine just cranked and cranked without even a hint of a spark. I tried starting it several times, but to no avail. I left it sitting in my garage and came back later that Sunday to try again. Nothing; the same thing; crank, crank, crank. I figured it was either: 1) A bad ignition coil, or 2) a failed fuel pump. What else could it be since there was NO warning, NO lights, bells or whistles to go off to warn me of the imminent doom that was forthcoming. This time the odometer read 50144 MILES!

I had to take an emergency day off from work on May 6, 2013 to make the arrangement to have the vehicle towed to the dealer. The same day, after they did their diagnostic inspection, the service rep called me to inform me that — I NEEDED A NEW ENGINE!!! He told me that there was no compression in the cylinders, the timing gear was broken off and that caused some of the valves to become bent. The heads were basically shot. Since I purchased the longest extended warantee I could buy at the time of new purchase — a 7YR warantee — I was fortunate enough to have time on the warantee to cover what would have been a $5K investment! I had to get a rental car at my expense (the warantee company did agree to compensate $280 for the rental fee). This whole process took about 11 days to sort out. First I had to provide EVERY MAINTAINENCE RECORD I had since the vehicle was new because the warantee company demanded it. Then the service rep had to haggle with the warantee company to pay for the repairs. At first, the warantee company wanted to use a USED ENGINE as a replacement. SAY WHAT?!! The dealer was successful in convincing them that a new long block was the only way to go. Friday, May 17, 2013 I went to pick up my Jeep Liberty from the dealer with its THIRD NEW ENGINE!!! Sure it starts and drives like "new" again, but for how long? My confidence is totally shot over this as everytime I drive this vehicle I'll always be wondering: "Is it gonna blow again? How long do I have? Will I get lucky and have it crap out in my garage like the last time, or will I be stranded on some rural road out in BFE 1000 miles from home?"

NOTE TO EVERYONE: If you are a Jeep Liberty owner and you have an oil change done that results in detecting SLUDGE IN THE OIL, BEWARE!!! This is the kiss of death for this engine! It's only a matter of time before she's gonna BLOW. After perusing the complaints of Chrysler Intrepid owners and their travails with the crappy 2.7 blowing up after engine sludge was detected, the 3.7 apparently is NO DIFFERENT — at least in my case!

The moral of the story is, "My gut told me to buy the FJ Cruiser first; I didn't listen to it and now look what happened".

Needless to say, I will NEVER, EVER, purchase anything that says "MoPar" or "Jeep". EVER!!!

I think this is total bull that Jeep didn't offer a 100,000 mile warranty like most manufacturers, or at least my company (it's a company car) didn't buy it if they did. I change the oil regularly every 3 to 5 thousand like clockwork. I don't care if they bought 16 of them. One major engine failure and it was mine so it looked really bad and with me being a field tech put my company out in a really bad position. I was told by the mechanic (and he was nice enough to tell my fleet manager) that there was nothing I could have done to prevent the damage. I heard a ticking noise. Before I could pull over it turned into a squealing, knocking/ticking noise and I managed to pull into a parking lot and turn off the engine. A tow truck was called and the result was to replace the engine. I feel that Jeep hold some responsibility in this as all the proper maintenance was performed on a regular basis and 65k is nothing for most engines these days. See if I ever buy a Jeep for personal use.