chunkyazian wrote:
“almost no one hammers on a brand new car during a test drive.”
I must be in the minority. If a salesman doesn’t let me open it up during a test drive, I don’t buy the car!
In the OP’s case, I suspect this has to do with most of the factors listed above - the Liberty is probably light in the back, maybe the tires aren’t that good, but it’s probably mostly got to do with the lousy throttle design - in my experience, Chrysler products are very bad for this. I rented a Neon once. In traffic, from a red light, I would squeeze the gas a bit, it wouldn’t go. Squeeze a bit more, it wouldn’t go. Squeeze a bit more, suddenly I was off like a rocket and almost into the back of the car in front. My Compass is almost as bad, but at least I’m used to it now. Granted, both examples are 4-bangers.
TAardvark…remind me not to buy a used car from you. Sounds like my neighbor’s 18 year old. Next time it ices up, go down hill skiing and don’t put other cars at risk letting off steam. And you started this discussion with comments about your sane non agressive driving…sounds like a little BS to me. ;=)
“It’s much easier to spin the tires on a RWD car. On a FWD car, you have all the weight of the engine and transaxle over the driven wheels”
Disagree entirely, when you accelerate whilst going forward the weight of the vehicle shifts backwards, placing more weight on the rear (non driving) wheels. Makes it much easies to spin the tires in a FWD car. Dragsters are rear wheel drive for a reason you know.
I’m going to repeat my earlier recommendation: jack up the corners and check to see if you have a brake dragging.
The way conventional differentials are designed, if one wheel has too much resistance, and the other less-than-good traction, the one with low traction will spin. This is not an uncommon symptom of a dragging brake on a rear wheel drive vehicle with a conventional (not limited-slip) differential. Seen it before. Fixed it before.
