Hi All!
Just purchased a 2012 Liberty last week. I previously owned a 92 Wrangler for like 16 years and then traded that for 98 Grand with 4" of lift. Kids still give me a hard thing me for getting rid of the YJ and honestly I wish I still had it too!! The Grand looked good but was a total headache from the get go! Sold it over a year ago.
So happy to be back in the Jeep family though! It's a 2012 Latitude package and will be my wife's daily driver. It's a Jeep though, so I gotta do something to set it apart from all the other soccer mom SUV's.....we play football in this house!
First of all, it's black, but has the chrome rims. I want black rims and some all terrains, preferably general at2's as I've had good luck with them in the past. I have stock 18" rims, and I'm not at the point where I want to lift or make all kinds of other mods to fit different rims and tires. So what size rim can I safely reduce to in order to have a better tire selection without having to add spacers, etc, etc. ??
Also, do they offer leveling kits for these just to lift the front some to match the height of the rear??
Thanks for any info!

Welcome!

16x7 with 4.5" back space is a good choice.

There isn't really any leveling spacer kits out there for the front. What you can do though, is get 1/4" top plate shims from jbaoffroad.com and also do a clevis lift to get the front end up about 1.25" or so. Google around and you'll find the clevis lift trick.

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2010 KK 4WD BRILLIANT BLACK
Fox/King/Bilstein ATH BUMPERS ATH RACK GY DURATRACS

ATHFAB.com

Welcome to Lost. Lots of reading to do here. I recommend starting with this:
viewtopic.php?f=88&t=79401

Anyways, I'll give a quick run down on our KKs for ya. I know you're not ready to lift yet, but.... Max lift is going to be about 4", anything after 3.5" is going to need aftermarket upper control arms. General consensus is to avoid spacer lifts, they tend to kill the front ends on our Jeeps. Some lifts will level you out, others keep a rake (we can address this when the time comes). Most will run 31s, so 245/75-16 or 265/70-16 with 2.5-3.5" of lift. At 3.5-4" you'll start seeing 32s (235/85-16 or 265/75-16), but then you start needing to regear to either 4.10s or 4.56s depending on where you live and if you tow, etc. Otherwise you lose a ton of power and gas mileage and start hurting the drivetrain from additional stress.

Wheel wise, 16s are the safe limit. Stock height needs to basically stay close to stock specs. Some people run 15" rims, but you need a stupid amount of backspacing for them to fit right, and at that point you push the tires out too far and cause quite a bit of rubbing. Largest tire size at stock height is going to be 245/70-16, some have rubbed with these, but it's an easy fix.

As AtTheHelm said you can level it out with 1/4" spacer plates and maybe a clevis. You could sneak a little lift out of her without the wife knowing and for pretty cheap if you want Figure the clevis and plates will get you about 1" maybe a tad more in front. Should level you out, if you're nose high we can add a spring isolator to the rear for 1/2" of lift in back.

Btw, post some pics of the KK....the YJ and maybe WJ too.

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2011 Deep Cherry Red KK - Skyslider - JBA/Bilstein Adjust-A-Strut set at 3.5" - OME 731 Rear Springs - Bilstein Rear Shocks - Al's A-arms - 245/75-16 Duratracs - Rock Liazard Super Sliders

Thanks for the replies and advice guys!
I'll work on pics but have always been horrible at getting them on these sites!

welcome my man! I too am coming from quite a headache (03 mercury mountaineer to be precise! LOL poured more money into ball joints, break pads and tire rods then I care to remember!) Got me a 2012 KK as well, but slightly less luxurious (i got the sport package, but its barely broken in). Would love to see what the YJ looked like..

Good luck with all your mods! Gonna post some before/after pics of mine soon too!

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Black 2012 Liberty KK
235/70/16 Kumho A/Ts
Black Rock 952s

HAHAHA!! Too funny....my wife's car before the Liberty was also a 2003 Mountaineer!! So I know all too well about ball joints, wheel bearings and brake pads!! I also had to have a new transmission put in it and the right after it actually passed inspection last September the shift solenoid went in it and it wasn't recognizing 2nd gear. So she was manually shifting it since then!! She loved that!
Then over the winter the front drive shaft blew out so I just ripped it off and drove it as a rear wheel drive. The last straw the rear wheel bearing!! Had enough and parked it! We did get 199,000 out of it though!

LMAAAAO! TOO funny! I had to replace the transmission too last summer around late August! I was driving to the doctors and all of sudden it starts slippin' in second! This is after about 5k worth of repairs over the years... It was my dads originally he got it as a salvage back in 06 gave it to me with about 90k miles on it, I through on another 50k myself, effin thing barely made it to the jeep dealership & 141,000! Things were built like tanks on the outside, can't tell you how many mailboxes and sheds (yes, sheds) I took out and still made it home in one piece! Lot of good memories in that truck though, was my first car through high school, thought I was a G cuz I through some vision wheels on it hahaha I was for about a week into my junior year then everyone else got wranglers etc! Dealer asked me how I got the car from my house to him.., apparently the front left rotor was grinding up against hard metal! Hahahaha, "didn't notice" is what I told him, got about 500 bucks for it in a trade in!

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Black 2012 Liberty KK
235/70/16 Kumho A/Ts
Black Rock 952s

Here's some pics of my previous Jeeps...if it works. This is my 92 YJ that I never should have gotten rid of, on the last day I owned her!

And here's the 98 ZJ that replaced her.

And here's the new ride!