KK Suspension

[Oldmikedonald]

I have an '08 that was my daily until several years back when I bought a new car. The liberty went in the garage & has only been used sparingly the past 4-5 years. I recently had to drive it for the first time in about a year and a half while my other car was in the shop. After spending some time cleaning it up, changing the fluids and driving it for a week I remembered how much I love driving this thing. Unfortunately rust is starting to take its toll & most of the suspension is at the point of needing replaced. Over the years I've had 2 different shops make mention of how much of a pain the suspension on these are (once when having lower ball joints replaced & another time when when having unrelated work done) & just recently when getting tires & alignment on my other car the guy at that shop was working on aligning another KK. He was complaining about how hard it was to get them properly aligned and the customer came in furious that it took them 2 hours to do his alignment.

I considered doing upper and lower control arms, tie rods, struts etc. These offhand comments about how much of a pain they are have me a bit apprehensive, though. What specifically would make the suspension on these worse than anything else? I planned to just get the parts from rock auto & do the work myself. Any brands I should steer toward or away from? Anything else I should change while down there on a nearly 30 year-old vehicle with 160+K & mostly original parts?

 

[lfhoward]

As an 08 KK owner who has done their own suspension (twice), I personally think the Jeep isn’t harder to work on than any other IFS 4x4, but what is a bummer is rust. Seized bolts suck. You mentioned rust was taking its toll, so you should probably expect some seized bolts to rear their ugly heads and not come off. You should have a sawzall available with Milwaukee “torch” blades to cut through bolts that seized to the inside of control arm bushing sleeves. (Don’t use a cutting wheel for this as one slip and you have cut a deep groove in your control arm.) It would probably also be good to have a propane torch and/or an induction heater on hand to loosen up the stuck bolts that you can get to. And lots of penetrating oil. Start soaking every bolt and nut daily, at least a week ahead of time. Hope this helps!

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[Oldmikedonald]

As an 08 KK owner who has done their own suspension (twice), I personally think the Jeep isn’t harder to work on than any other IFS 4x4, but what is a bummer is rust. Seized bolts suck. You mentioned rust was taking its toll, so you should probably expect some seized bolts to rear their ugly heads and not come off. You should have a sawzall available with Milwaukee “torch” blades to cut through bolts that seized to the inside of control arm bushing sleeves. (Don’t use a cutting wheel for this as one slip and you have cut a deep groove in your control arm.) It would probably also be good to have a propane torch and/or an induction heater on hand to loosen up the stuck bolts that you can get to. And lots of penetrating oil. Start soaking every bolt and nut daily, at least a week ahead of time. Hope this helps!

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Thanks for the info. I'm used to the Ohio rust, so I always keep plenty of penetrating oil & torches on-hand when doing any kind of repair. I've watched several youtube videos & nothing stuck out on those as being particularly difficult compared to anything else, but hearing those comments independently from different mechanics over several years had me a bit concerned about what I would be getting myself into. Rear upper control arms & front drivers side upper seem to be the worst to get to from what I can tell.

 

[lfhoward]

The steering shaft makes the rear bolt on the drivers side UCA more challenging to get to, but long extensions on your ratchet can make the job easier. It is a bit of a pain to remove the battery, battery tray, and TIPM to get to the front suspension, I will give you that.

I am about to redo the rear upper control arms this weekend. The gas tank is in the way of the drivers side forward bolt, and it has to be lowered a bit to get the bolt out. Not the most fun job.

 

[tc1uscg]

I have an '08 that was my daily until several years back when I bought a new car. The liberty went in the garage & has only been used sparingly the past 4-5 years. I recently had to drive it for the first time in about a year and a half while my other car was in the shop. After spending some time cleaning it up, changing the fluids and driving it for a week I remembered how much I love driving this thing. Unfortunately rust is starting to take its toll & most of the suspension is at the point of needing replaced. Over the years I've had 2 different shops make mention of how much of a pain the suspension on these are (once when having lower ball joints replaced & another time when when having unrelated work done) & just recently when getting tires & alignment on my other car the guy at that shop was working on aligning another KK. He was complaining about how hard it was to get them properly aligned and the customer came in furious that it took them 2 hours to do his alignment.

I considered doing upper and lower control arms, tie rods, struts etc. These offhand comments about how much of a pain they are have me a bit apprehensive, though. What specifically would make the suspension on these worse than anything else? I planned to just get the parts from rock auto & do the work myself. Any brands I should steer toward or away from? Anything else I should change while down there on a nearly 30 year-old vehicle with 160+K & mostly original parts?

I own a 09. Bought it new in 09. I had a 1.5inch lift installed along with new "A" arms all from Jeeping by Al and it's a old man EMU setup, w/Sprints, shots both front and rear. But that was like back in 2015. I had it aligned during that period. Thats the ONE and ONLY time I've had it aligned. Now I don't smash into rocks, or curbs at the mall but it's never needed any adjustments for some reason. It's in the shop right now getting the rear control bars replaced. I was going to have a 2.5inch lift by rough contry installed (and new "A" arms too) but figured I'd wait to see how the rear-end was going to turn out. Car spent 14 years of it's life in SE Michigan and let me tell ya, rust is whats going to take it's life if anything. Body is fine, just the under carriage is in bad shap. Sorry thing is, the 01's to 07's were recalled for the rear control arms/rust but the Highway Safety people ignored this issue with the 08-14 model. My biggest issue with the repair is, the gas tank has to be dropped and the bolts are so rusted, there's some fabrication having to be done to get it all back together. I have a 2011 Chrysler T*C that the dealer wouldn't do a rear tailpipe guard repair because the bolts are made onto the unibody and were so rusted, they would have to take the rear apart to fix it and they were afraid it might require more then they could handle to fix it anyway.

 

[lfhoward]

I hear you on the rear control arms. I’m on my second replacement set on my 08. I went with Mevotech circular arms this time, hoping for a better result. It does suck to have to drop the tank.

Let me know if you have any problem with clunking sounds over bumps after doing the swap. I think I need to loosen mine, put the weight of the Jeep on them, then retighten.