Shifting Liberty transfer case out of neutral

[BDubya]

Has anyone had trouble getting their Jeep Liberty transfer case out of neutral?

I have a 2008 Liberty automatic. I had no trouble getting it into neutral, and got home with no incident.

But following the process closely to get it back into standard mode, it just doesn't want to do it. The red N light just keeps flashing & the normal sound it makes when it's resetting things doesn't happen.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks

[MSHappyCampers]

Hi ! Welcome to IRV2! We're sure glad you joined the gang!

I'm not a Jeep guy so can't help with that. Noticed that you are kinda new on the forum and wanted to say hello.

Good luck, happy trails, and God bless!

[RVThere]

I have a 2007 GC so I just looked up the procedure for the Liberty.

One hunch is to maybe let the Liberty roll a few inches as the gears in the transfer case may not be aligned exactly.

There is one confusing note in the Liberty instructions between steps 8 and 9:


NOTE: When shifting out of transfer case NEUTRAL (N), turning the engine OFF may be required to avoid gear clash.


Good luck!

[BDubya]

Thanks for the ideas.

In the end I found that the computer was confused. So I disconnected the battery again, waited a few minutes for it to clear itself, then reattached.

The transfer engagement process worked perfectly fine after doing that.

Lesson learned!

[johnfr80504]

I have towed our 2007 Liberty some 25K miles over the past 9 years. I have always found that I needed to shift the automatic transmission into Neutral (with engine OFF) to be able to get the transfer case to shift back to 2WD mode after it has been towed. If the automatic is left in Park it is often would refuse to allow me to shift out of Neutral on the transfer case. This is because the parking pawl is engaged when in Park preventing the output shaft of the transmission from turning.

[Rocky Larson]

In my 2012 Liberty the gear switching, engaging, tow settings are all managed electronically. If your battery is depleted from towing then the transmission switching functions will be compromised. If need be jump or run engine enough to bring battery up to capacity.

BTDT