I am toying with the idea in the next year of giving my wife's kj crd to our daughter and buying my wife a Commander with a bad engine and swapping the r428 into it from a parts rig... The commander is within 500lbs so with a gde turbo upgrade the engine won't care. I will have diablo help with the bastardized com system since the XK is full can and the KJ is only partial. I love the hemi, it's my favorite gas engine but it does everything but fuel mileage and the diesel has tons of power plus economy so I figure with the quadra drive II system she could have a go anywhere rig that seats 7 and gets in the high 20s on the freeway, the XK came with a diesel overseas but it was the same crappy MB 3.0 they put in the 07-08 grand Cherokee, and they have problems.

Thoughts?

What year is the commander?
What transmission does it have?

You will likely have to swap over every control module and wiring harness from the Liberty.
ECM, TCM, BCM, SKIM, ignition key, and darn near everything else all have to talk to each other.
And then there’s the possibility that ABS, SRS, and gauges may not work properly.

I’ve considered swapping the engine from my 05 CRD to a 05 Dakota.
Same model year so a lot of things should be similar.
But you never know, Chrysler does some screwy things.
(Like put a small Italian diesel in a Jeep)

Back in the days of carburetors and points distributors, engine swaps were fun and easy
Nowadays, not so much.
Unless you want to put a LS motor in. Seems that people are putting LS motors in everything now.

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U.S. Army Retired

I thought the MB 3.0 was an OM642 and was a solid motor? Way more solid than these pieces of crap that like to drop valves and eat head gaskets.

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2006 CRD - GTB2056 turbo by Dieselguy86, Eco Trans Tune, Lift Pump, Week's, HDS Tstat, Racor Filter, ARP's, OME 790's+Top Plate, JBA 2.5", JBA UCA, Moab's+265/75R16, ARB Bull Bar, 4.10's, TrueTracs

The Mercedes had their own problems, I have replaced a few that have grenaded for no reason at reasonably low mileage. The inline mercedes diesel was good but the v6 has many problems. As far as the head gasket issue we have, it is more like the ford 6.0 and 6.4 cause it's a design issue, that said the valve dropping issue we still haven't got to the bottom of, my pastor's daughter has a kj crd with 276k original and my wife has over 250k original so they last if you take care of them, get rid of the egr and remember its an Italian engine so use a REAL synthetic oil like liquimoly not the "synthetic" 5w40 us made oil, make sure it's an HTHS oil as this engine is a DOHC with roller rockers. My fav for these is lm2332, I buy it for my shop by the 60l drum