I'm going down to the Outer Banks, NC next month and a friend told me a story about his cousin, who took his Jeep Liberty and drove him on the beach and it ended up costing his cousin over $1500 in repairs because of 13 lbs of sand found in the transfer case.

Now, I don't know if it was actually the transfer case, or what it was or could have been, but I DO know that my friend (and everyone else who was there) said that the cousin was driving like a bat out of *#ll, and doing donuts in the sand, and that he buggered up his transmission and they dumped 13 lbs of sand out of SOMETHING.

So the question is, why would he have gotten sand in his transfer case, and, when I'm driving on the beach next month, HOW DO I KEEP FROM DOING WHAT THIS DIGBAT DID??

Thanks,
Vedo

 

Maybe 13 lbs of sand from his trunks? Itchy-scratchy.

 

No sand in eather of these tranfer cases.

 

You need to get better facts. Talk to your friend's cousin directly. Better yet, find out who found the sand, and talk to him.

 

Sand in any drivetrain is going to result in a bad day!

 

Probably sand filled up his skid plate, only thing I can think of. May have tore the tranny up acting a fool.

 

My wife has a Liberty, and I can easily see how sand could get trapped up on top the skidplate and pack around the tranny and transfer case. That would certainly overheat an auto trans and bake or burn the fluid inside causing a transmission failure.

 

Hi vedo13,

I do extensive off roading the Empty Quarter with mates that drive the full deck of different 4x4s and have never seen or even heard of this happening.

Wet sand unlike my kind of desert sand might be able to pack in over a skid plate and over heat things like the guys above have said but inside the transfer case in normal dune bashing sounds like a stretch.

I would go with the wise poster above and get some good intel from the guy this actually happened to or from the mechanic that fixed it.

Anyway that said have a great time on your trip.

Warmest Regards, Liwa Oasis

 

OK. Apparently, what happened is that he did all sorts of stupid things in the sand, donuts, stops, etc, and he overheated his transmission. I guess the sand they were talking about was caked up under the body on the transmission and anywhere sand could possibly get caked and trapped when it's wet. The damage, I think, was due to his fried tranny. He was too embarrassed to talk much about it. Can you blame him, he's only 20 and tried to hot rod a Jeep Liberty.

 

The whole time I was reading this, I couldn't help but think....how do you get the figure, 13lbs? Who is weighing this sand? and why?