Month: March 2024
Episode 1009 – Patrick Bawarrion.com
Patrick has been involved in Jeep world with his ORZ company for 28 years now. 11 years ago he launched his own brand Bawarrion to develop his own Jeep Parts, because in his opinion, stuff on the market just wasn´t good enough. Bawarrion is now one of the strongest players in Europe and is currently introducing its revolutionary 4,5″ suspension, super-strong alloy wheels and more to the American market.
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Hi, I’m Tony and welcome to the Jeep Talk Show. The talk show where we talk about all things Jeep from trail riding to overlanding and everything in between. Every Friday we have an interview with a new and exciting guest.
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You know, it was a lot of fun talking to this guest and I’m sure I’m not breaking any fourth wall here. You guys know that we record these things in advance. So it just makes it easier for the guest because we can schedule a time when it’s good for them to record this. But I was, and I’ve mentioned this on a few other episodes, I was really excited to hear that in Germany you can actually do a lot more than what I thought you could. I mean, it’s just me. I’m an American. I’m one of the typical Americans. If it’s not America, I don’t follow up on it. So, and I think I’ve stated this before. I think this is one of our first international guests. It’s in, if not first international guest, at least a international guest that has a company that’s not a American based company. Of course, they do have outlets here in America where you can buy directly from them. I know Dan, Dan, Greg, the road shows me. He’s definitely international, but I guess he’s got a business, doesn’t it? Yeah, I guess so. So maybe maybe Dan, Greg, if he’s if he listens to the show, he’s going, Hey, I got an accent. I’ve been on your show.
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Hi, boys and girls, it’s time for the Jeep Talk Show interview. And tonight we’re going to be talking with Patrick. Patrick, you’re going to have to pronounce the name of the business for me at least once.
Yeah, I’m Patrick from the company OZ in Germany, in Munich. And now we are also located in the States.
The company OZ and we have our own brand. – That’s what I couldn’t, that’s what I had. I have a guess, but I’m sure it was wrong. So Patrick has been involved in the Jeep world with the QRZ company for 28 years. Now you don’t look like you’re even 28 years old. 11 years ago, he launched his own brand, Borrowarian, I think I got it right, to develop his own Jeep parts. Because in his opinion, stuff on the market just wasn’t good enough. So many people that I’ve talked to here started companies exactly for that reason, is because the stuff that was available, they thought was better. And now they’re doing very well because of it. So I think you’re on the right track. Borrowarian is one of the strongest players in Europe and currently introducing its revolutionary 4.5 inch suspension, super strong alloy wheels. It’s going to be one of those days. And more to the American market. Patrick, thank you a lot for being here. Now, if you can’t tell from Patrick’s accent already, he’s in Munich. So this is a company in Europe. This goes to show you that the internet really is worldwide. Patrick, thanks for being here today.
– Yeah, we are located in Munich and the parts what we do, they’re developed not just from Germans, it’s also a combination with the Germans and with Americans. So our engineer is actually an American guy.
Well, our goal is for every product we build is our goal that we have the best what you can get. So the strongest or the best or however depends on what we build.
The first one we began was wheels. The problem with wheels is to get it to, you know what tooth is?
So it’s a company in Europe and they allow you to use the parts what you want to use on the street. So they make it bigger. So you’re allowed to change any part on your cheap without their allowance. So you get a document that allows you to use another kind of wheels or bigger tires or suspension here or bumper front or rear bumper tire carrier and so on. You have to get an allowance from the TOV.
And on the one side, it’s a bad thing because you cannot do what you want. On the other side, it’s pretty good because in this way, if you get allowance, then you have something what you’re really allowed to use. So if you compare it to most areas of in America, you can do something on your car. But if you use it and there’s an accident, then it’s pretty strange to come out. And yeah, that’s different what we have in Europe.
If you are allowed to use something, then you are officially allowed. But therefore, you have to get some tests. So for wheels, for example, you have to say what is the maximum tire and that makes them tire. They make the tests. And if everything is OK, then you get allowance. This isn’t on a case by case basis, right? I mean, if you if you develop a wheel and the TUV, I think you said, if they approve it, then the customer doesn’t have to go through that. It’s already TUV approved and they can put it on their vehicle. Is that correct?
Okay, good. So at least it doesn’t have to be done because I was mentioning before we started, I think it’s Australia where they they make you have an engineer go through the process for your specific vehicle. And that’s that’s a pain in the ass. Nobody’s got time for that. So at least this puts the onus back on the company that’s selling the product. And then once it’s approved, it’s kind of like DOT approved here in the States. So if it’s the Department of Transportation approved, then you’re OK. Now, we don’t always use DOT approved stuff on our jeeps on the road, but there you go.
Yeah, but you are, for example, you’re not allowed to use a beatlock wheels on the street. There’s an argument. There’s an argument about that. Oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t realize that. So the TUV actually approved beatlocks. That’s interesting.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, we tested it. So we what we did is we tested our wheels. We have standard wheels and we have all the beatlock wheels and we tested our beatlock wheels in combination with 39 inch tires.
And so we are officially allowed using 39 inch tires on a beatlock wheel on the street. That’s right. And it’s a big difference to.
Yeah. Well, here in Texas, I think that the limitation is your headlights can’t be over 54 inches high. And there’s a limit on how low you can go to. So you can run some pretty big vehicles here in Texas.
But no, that’s great. And this is this is brand new news to me. I had no idea. And I don’t know if it’s right or not, but I think at least my standpoint, as far as I think of Germany, I think of things being very strict. And it amazes me to hear that you guys can use beatlock tires and 30, I mean, beatlock wheels and 39 inch tires. That’s really cool. And you shouldn’t compare it to Texas because Texas is very special, but you can compare it to California. Oh, God. So would they allow to do in California? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, but I have to compare it to Texas. I’m a Texan.
So, but yeah, no, but I mean, it’s great. I mean, that’s great that you guys can do that because that’s the kind of freedom that we see here in Texas. So now you guys started out with wheels, right? And oh, I know I was going to ask you. So the beatlocks, one of the problems with the beatlocks is keeping all those bolts tight. Did the TV have you do something or did you guys design something so that you don’t have to always constantly check to make sure those bolts are tight?
Well, we have an installation instruction that says that you have to approve the bolts every year at one time.
But honestly, we don’t have any issues with our bolts.
It’s our own brand, what we have. So all the beatlocks, we don’t use any existing wheel. It’s our own wheel, what would be developed and a bit pretty good. Now, I can hear people screaming at me. They’re saying, “Oh, well, these are fake beatlocks. They’re faux beatlocks. These are actual honest to goodness beatlocks over the outside of the wheel, the locking ring holding the bead.
It’s one beatlock ring, so not on both sides, it’s just on the outside.
But we use 20 millimeters, so almost one inch thick beatlock ring and with 24 screws.
Or bolts.
That’s very nice. That’s really cool. So let me ask you something. The thing that’s always concerned me about being a wheel manufacturer, I mean, if I was going to do something like that, I’d be very nervous at how, because you see sometimes there’s not a lot of metal there. And I know there’s science and physics and stuff you got to figure out, but it’s got to be very interesting from a liability standpoint that you make a wheel that’s going to stay together and not break because that’s going to be a devastating, potentially devastating accident. Is this something that you guys were concerned about when you first started making wheels?
Yeah, of course, because we had to let the test from TUE. They make all the tests. They tested if it can break or not. And they also tested with the maximum tire size, what we say. So if we say we want to use a 39 inch tire, for example, then they make the test with a 39 inch tire. So they make a rolling test and make a test with a white, not the English word for that.
They simulate going over a big rock with zero air in the tire, and the wheel is not allowed to break.
For example, it can bend a little bit, but it’s not allowed to break. That’s good. I’m glad you could bid it some. So, but you guys have, do you guys do steel wheels as well as alloy? Because I don’t think the alloy bend very well.
Yeah, no, we also, we only use no wheels.
Very cool. And so now I was actually surprised. I’ve never, I didn’t know about your company until recently. And you guys have quite a collection of things. I mean, and quite a collection for Jeeps. I mean, you have stuff for the LJ, the JK, the JT. So, and you guys have been doing this for quite a while.
Like I said, it’s all new to me. I think it’s absolutely wonderful that there’s a European company that’s learning this Jeep sickness or not even learning it, but been involved in this Jeep sickness for so long.
So are you a Jeeper? Do you personally have a Jeep?
Of course, nothing else. So what Jeep do you have?
Or Jeeps? Well, yeah, that’s great. My first Jeep was a 95 YJ. And I still have it. And in the meantime, we built in a wrench at 502, a Chevy engine. And the car is now it’s in the States for offroading. And my daily driver is a Wrangler 392 with a new type of course. And also I built for myself, I built a Gladiator with a head engine.
Oh my goodness. Oh, that’s right. Now, I think I asked you earlier if you guys are going to be at EJS. Are you personally going to be at EJS this year?
I will one of these vehicles be there or is this going to be a company vehicle that you have there? No, we have a standard JL there. We have a little booth at EJS. And our display car is a JL with 39s and Gladiator with a… Very nice. Now, are you just going to be in the booth or are you going to be out on the trails?
The JL would be in the trail with me, I hope.
And the JL… Because you can’t go to Moab and not actually get out on the trails a little bit. How many times have you guys been there? You’ve been going there for a long time?
Eastern Jeep Safari or Moab? So the Eastern Jeep Safari is in Moab and Eastern Jeep Safari at the end of this month, the end of March.
And so we’re going to be out there. We’re actually the Jeep Talk Show team will be out there. Several team members and several listeners will be out there and I’m going as well.
So it’s my third time at the Eastern Jeep Safari and Moab, I think I’ve been there 20 times. Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I’m glad to hear you’re going to be on the trails. Hopefully we’ll get to meet up. I’m actually doing some scheduling up some interviews, at least scheduling from the standpoint we’re both going to be there. Let’s get together. I got some cameras set up in the Gladiator that I’m going to try to do some some brief interviews with. So maybe we can find each other out on the trails and do an interview there as well as this one.
All right, so now wheels are only part of the story. And of course, I’m blown away that you guys are doing beadlocks and they’re actually legal.
Where you guys are. The wheels are not just a part of the story. It’s the beginning of the story because wheels has been the first thing would be made with our brand name, Baborian.
And the reason was because it was not possible to get to approved wheels in Europe with the correct dimensions and the correct offset. So that was the reason why we thought about making our own wheels. And yeah, after that, one comes to the other. Then we the next step, I think I think is pretty close to that. The next step was a trailer hitch receiver.
It sounds very easy, but it wasn’t actually because since we since we had lifted a jeep in Europe, we also wanted to the guys who want the jeeps, they always wanted to have happy trailers. But with a three or four or five inch suspension kit on a JK, it was not so easy to to trailer a big trailer. And therefore we made our own development for getting a really good thing because the original trailer hitch, I don’t know if you if you know that the frame, the rear frame of the jeep is a two part frame and the original hitch only goes up to the wedding. And if you have a heavy trailer, then the frame cracks simply often. And that why we made a change and we made it bigger. And also, we went a little bit more down to to get a better engine.
And now it works. So we got it to approved, of course. And I think it’s a stronger hitch for cheese. So when you say the the frame breaks or cracks, is this where the mount is or along closer up to the front of the jeep? I mean, the front of where you sit.
Where does the crack happen? I guess is what I’m asking.
In the rear frame, between the two parts that the wedding and the area makes sense.
Because I’ve seen some stuff like with Toyotas were like especially Toyota trucks when they too heavy of a load that the the the frame actually will bend and break. And I was hoping that’s not what you were talking about. So this is just where the mount is. So now you were telling me something earlier about the gladiator,
the European gladiator compared to the U.S. gladiator, that there was some some different strengths involved between the two, which I find very interesting that there would be a difference.
Yeah, we have I told you that we have a trailer receiver and we made it in a standard. It also fits onto the gladiator, but the maximum towering weight is not possible with a European frame. So the frame of the U.S. gladiator when you did not order the maximum. Maxing. Towing.
Exactly. We tested it. We tested the frame.
They put it on the rig and it tested two millions of vibrations.
It’s correct.
And therefore we have to use the U.S. frame.
It’s the only one frame, but really strong enough to use that. Do you know what the difference is? Why a different frame was used in Europe? Is it a weight savings that they were trying to do?
I don’t exactly know what it is, but for sure it’s more heavy. The frame part, it’s about two or three kilograms more. And so it’s more thick. Yeah. Well, that makes a lot of difference. I find that really, really unusual. The little things like this that we probably wouldn’t know in America otherwise. I’m glad you, glad you mentioned that.
So out of so you guys, like I was saying before, you have products for the JK, the JL, JLU and the JT Gladiator.
Was there any, I mean, you’ve got a YJ.
There’s lots, still lots of TJs around. Was there any thought in having coming out with something for the YJs and the TJs? I mean, I know from a marketing standpoint, there’s not as many as those and you want to sell to the largest market, but yeah, was there, was there any thought? Did you guys have anything for those vehicles when you first started? Um, maybe some weirds if you, if you do a, uh, an excellent spread, but nothing else. Like I said, you go in with the biggest part of the market.
So the market, the market is too small in the meantime. So, uh, but, uh, and, uh, are you still guys, uh, guys still happy with the JK market or is it getting smaller as well?
No, it’s pretty, pretty good. But, uh, JN, JT is, uh, how many is the biggest market?
So, uh, how, how popular are Jeeps, uh, in your area? I mean, obviously you’re, you’re not just selling in Germany and in the United States. I’m sure you, uh, other places that you can sell your products in Europe. I’m sure you’re doing that as well. But how popular are Jeeps there in Germany?
It’s pretty popular. So, um, it is, uh, it’s actually a program to, to get them any, uh, cause what, uh, what people want to have. The only one problem is, uh, from now, because, uh, they now offer only the four by E wranglers. Oh yeah. And, uh, the most expensive one and also, uh, nobody want to want to have a three in a kilogram battery and, and, uh, so, um, how did you go about getting the, the vehicles you have and how did you go about, well, how’d you get a three 92 that had to be, and you must have had to jump through some hoops to get a three 92 over there.
Yeah. The reason the really reason why I have it is because we had to, uh, to develop an exhaust system for it, um, because, uh, the original system was too loud. Yeah.
And then when we got one to make an exhaust system, uh, what’s actually louder, but, uh, then the original one, but, um, it’s with the, with the clap and where it has to be, uh, not so loud. There is not so loud. So it’s like, uh, like open headers or not. You have the little things that you can flip open. Yeah, that’s great. Uh, we have, uh, one of our team members, uh, Bill has a three 92 and I was saying, Bill, you’re going to get those little things, press a button in your, your, your own cap and you can just run it loud. Uh, he’s like, these smiles are big says no, no, no, but, uh, we’ll see. What do you, what do you think about the, the Jeep no longer making the three 92, uh, this, I think this is the final year for the three 92, uh, JLU that’s sad.
It is, is absolutely sad. Uh, not, not just for, not just for the brain, or for all the other v8s. So, um, have a look on, on the, on the Ram or on the charge changer. I mean, I hear that that, uh, that straight six that, uh, the hurricane engine, I hear that it’s very good. Actually we were talking about Greg Henderson earlier. Uh, and I think I can talk about this. Greg actually test drove a couple of vehicles, uh, that had the hurricane engine before they actually released it. And they, they had really tuned the hell of that thing. He said it was bad ass. So, you know, I guess if you get the torque and you get the horsepower, uh, it’s fine, but there’s something about a v8 sound that you, you can’t, you can’t do. It’s just no matter how hard you try. Uh, I mentioned earlier, I’ve got a 98 Cherokee and it’s not certainly not a v8, but it has a sound to it. That 4.0 has a sound to it. And I miss that the gladiator, the gladiator is great, but I miss that sound. It has a GP sound to me.
Yeah. That’s it. That’s it. All right. So now, uh, we’ve, we’ve talked about wheels. Uh, you do alloy wheels, you got beat locks, you got non beat locks. Uh, anything else, uh, anything else special dimension about the, the wheels?
Did it tell you something about our suspension? No, no, no. But we were talking about wheels. We got, uh, we’re going to talk about that other stuff, uh, next, but if you want to get into suspension, that’s fine. I find it interesting that you don’t have a two inch lift. You just go straight to four and a half.
We, we wanted to, I told you we tested our wheel for 39 inch tires.
Uh, but for using the 39 inch tires, you need the height of the car. So, uh, and it now becomes close, uh, to the next. Uh, therefore we had to use a four and a half inch suspension and that would be developed. Oh, we like to say no modification goes unpunished here. And sometimes the punishment is getting more stuff so that you can use the stuff so that you can use the stuff you put on there or you want to fit the stuff on there. So four and a half inch lift, uh, on a, uh, for example, I got the Mopar, uh, two inch lift. And I did that so I could maintain my warranty. I mean, four and a half inch lift sounds wonderful to me. I love that idea of it. My, my five foot two inch wife who would still be able to get in the gladiator because she would figure it out, but that she would be very challenged to get up in that. She’s got a TJ with the four and a half inch lift, uh, on it and she can get in there. But, uh, four and a half. How did you guys come up with a four and a half? Was it the 39 inch tires you were trying to make sure fit?
Well, um, I said, so if you have the time, it’s a cheap surprise to come over to our booth and then we can, uh, we can drive around and then you know what I mean because, um, we developed a four and a half inch suspension, which runs a way better, uh, on the street off-road of course, but also on the street, a way better than your, uh, two inch suspension or almost, uh, with a, with a stock suspension. It’s, uh, it drives like a sports car and, uh, I don’t tell you lies. It’s a, it’s fact to have to come over. No changes to the steering, uh, that we’re just talking about suspension here, uh, uh, with coil springs, uh, and, uh, what, what all, what all, let’s just ask that. What is, what is your suspicion, suspension hit include? Well, um, we’re getting a steering. We also use, uh, uh, new knuckles at the front. And so we have a high steer suspension and, and, uh, all the, uh, the springs, uh, they are a frequency to you and then, uh, progressive, but, uh, that’s all, everything is not the point. The real point that the suspension is the geometry. And we have, uh, many people now know the geometric bracket for, uh, for the, for the, uh, it’s, it’s an all-on kid in the front and we have a geometric bracket in the front and in the rear also. And, uh, this makes it, you can’t believe it how, uh, uh, so why didn’t they do something like this at the factory? Was it expense? Is this an expensive thing to do? It sounds like, I mean, geometry doesn’t sound like it’s, it’s, it’s more like a, it’s more like math and making sure things are the right size.
Yeah. It’s not so easy to develop a system like that, uh, because you also need the, uh, the clearance under the car and, uh, it was a lot of work and it’s also many, many parts, uh, what makes it really expensive. So, um, the whole kid is, uh, in the States, I think it’s around about $4,000. Oh, okay. The whole kit. It’s a whole kit included everything. There’s no option and, uh, and it works great. You know, that’s a good idea. Yeah. It’s going to cost you more, but if you, if you sell the whole thing, nobody’s trying to piecemeal it because they’re going to piecemeal it and it’s not going to work right. And that’s just going to be a look bad for you guys. Like you didn’t do it right. And really what it was was somebody messing up the design. Yeah. And, um, there’s every little part is, uh, is, is made so great. So, um, uh, also the, uh, the balls would use. So every little part there, the ball would use the sink plate. So like, uh, like from the factory, uh, I think there is no other manufacturer, uh, manufacturer of, uh, pension kits who uses only sink plate that a bolt, uh, with his pension kit. And, uh, the shocks would be used. They are not, uh, bought from a pharma shock company. We made it by our own. We, we tested it on a dynamic rig. Uh, so we absolutely for 100% sure that it works fantastic. Uh, on and so the shocks that you sell that you guys develop, this is part of the kit. You don’t sell the shock separately. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. Um,
we, we think that, uh, a shock has to come with a kid. So, uh, it’s nonsense to buy a kid and then to buy a shop from another manufacturer. Um, it has to get developed. That’s nice. I like the way that’s up. Like you say, it’s, it’s expensive, but you know what you’re getting and you should be getting a good product if it, cause it, all these, all these things were designed to work together. Now, um, because of this, is this something that is user installable? Or do you guys recommend or require a shop installation, uh, to make sure everything’s done properly, installed properly? If you, uh, if you know something about the mechanic of your car, then you can do your own. So you don’t need to go to a shop. Okay, good. Yeah. So, uh, I’m sure that’s going to run through people’s minds like, Oh my God, it’s expensive. They want to make sure it’s done right. And, uh, yeah. So sometimes that’s a bit of a turn off. I don’t know about you, but I find it, I find it very hard to find anybody that can work on my vehicle that cares as much about my vehicle as I do. Um, you know, it’s, I mean, and I don’t blame them. It’s just, it’s just a job for them. But whatever I work on my vehicle, uh, I’m doing it because I need it. I want it done. And I want to make sure it’s done the way I want it done. Uh, there’s been a number of times I’ve found people doing things that they didn’t read the instructions. They didn’t do it right. And damn it, I might as well do it myself. And I’m not going to do it right. I’m not going to do it right.
Yeah. You have to know there’s, uh, there’s nothing to weld. There’s nothing to cut. It’s just a bolt on kit. And, uh, even if there’s a really a whole suspension system, um, but it’s only maybe to drill something, but it’s, it’s a bolt on kit. So, uh, nothing too well. So I know, uh, this happens a lot with lift kits. They’ll say that it’s a four and a half inch lift or a two inch lift, and it’s not a two inch lift. It may be three and a half, four inches, uh, when you put it on there. And it really depends on the weight and everything that you have on, on the vehicle that you’re putting it on. But what kind of lift, actual lift are you guys seeing from this four and a half inch lift? Like on a JLU? Uh, our kit is a four and a half inch, uh, suspension note, no more. And, uh, and it works really with a 39 because, uh, why do you want to lift the car? You only want to lift the cheap because you want to drive bigger tires. And, uh, but, um, I don’t know if you know, but, uh, honestly to say the most of one and a half inches pension, they cannot handle 39s. So, um, all ones does, but it’s not higher than four and a half inch. So it’s strange. Now, one of the things that I think could be argued, a 39 inch tire, especially like on a Rubicon or any rig with lockers, uh, on a Dana 44, uh, is that getting close to exceeding the limits of the Danny 44? Because I’m thinking 39 inch tires and a four and a half inch suspension. It might be time to go with different axles. In my opinion, you can use 39s with a standard axles. Um, you should use your brain. Oh, come on. But I think it’s never a mistake. Well, good. I mean, I’m glad because you guys, you know, especially more, you know, the people who want to go up on a rock and there and the tire is turning and it starts bouncing. Yeah. You shouldn’t do it with a, with a nine, but also not with a 37 or 35. So yeah. But, but I mean, from the research and the design that you guys did, you should be fine with the standard Dana 44 axles that come like on the Rubicon or even the gladiator. Cause the gladiator only comes with 44 is front and rear. So, uh, yeah, you have to think about the jail has a white axle. So it’s a very, very long, uh, extra shaft. Uh, and, uh, it’s, uh, it’s a lot of more flexibility and, uh, the extra shaft and with a short exit. So, uh, there’s more, uh, my way more comfortable. Okay. So I want to make sure everybody’s clear. You guys are in America as well, selling these, the, all your products and we haven’t even touched on all the products yet. You’re selling these products in America, so you don’t have to ship it from Germany. You don’t have to get on a boat and go over there and get it and bring it home with you. You can buy it here. How do you guys handle sales in the United States?
What we have our workshop here, it’s the boring.com and, uh, we have our sales guys here. We have two people here who manage all the business in the States and do a great job and want to get tested. So you can order it here and get it delivered. Uh, the suspension kit or the wheels. And, uh, so that’s great. And we’ll get, uh, we’ll do more about that here in a second, uh, when we wrap up, but, uh, uh, you guys don’t just sell wheels and suspension lift. You mentioned clear, insing tires. You guys actually sell fender flares as well. Don’t you?
Right? Yeah, we do. Um, we have, uh, three different styles of fender flares, uh, very popular, uh, family is, um, our, uh, extenders, uh, that look like the Ruby confenders, um, the high fenders
they’re from Faber glass and they are 38 millimeters or one and a half inch, uh, inches wider.
And, uh, it’s, it’s good for the necessary tire coverage. Not, not very important for you guys in Texas, but also it’s very important for, uh, some places require the tires to be fully covered. Right. I mean, I think even in Moab where we’re getting ready to go, uh, they require a mud flaps, which I’m not going to have mud flaps on my G, but yeah. So yeah, this really depends on the, uh, the local governing authorities. Yep. You’re right. So, um, you guys do something with, uh, recovery and as much as a D ring, what, tell me what’s special about this D ring that you guys sell?
Well, um, yeah, the beginning was because, uh, we have been the first, uh, exclusivity dealer in Europe for AEV or American Expedition Vehicles. And, um, we still sell a lot of, uh, apart from that brand. And, uh, we met the whole program. We, uh, we made a TOB certified and it was a long time ago. Uh, it wasn’t a check with the front bumper and, uh, they have, um, uh, the possibility to, uh, to Mount D rings under the, uh, under the bumper. And therefore we decided to, to make special D rings. Um, what we, what we can use and, uh, they’re extra strong and, uh, they’re isolated. So you don’t have a clack, clack noise when you drive through your car. And yeah, it was, uh, so tell me what is this thing. It doesn’t have like the standard, uh, thing that you, uh, take the pin out or you twist it with your fingers. Uh, it looks like it has some hex or Allen head, uh, bolts that hold things in place. Exactly. So, I mean, if you wanted to, to put something through here, do you have to have it where it goes through the ring, uh, threaded through, but you can’t take the ring off. The idea is the ring stays on the bumper.
Okay. Exactly. And I was going to challenge you here because I didn’t, I saw them in black, but I went a little further and I see you got it red and gun metal. So as long as the red’s there, I’m happy. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a minor thing, but I do want to cover what you guys have. We mentioned, the various things that you have in the fender flares. And I could tell those things give a lot of upper tire clearance. And that’s another thing you want to make sure that you do, although with the four and a half inch lift, you probably don’t have to worry about it. Uh, Oh yeah. Fender floor extensions, an inch and a half. Uh, yeah, I see that. Uh, and, uh, uh, oh, tell me, what is the, I see the camera relocation kit. Where are you relocating the camera to? Oh, again, what’s this? Uh, you have a camera relocation kit. Where are you moving it? Yeah. I would assume you’re, this is the Rubicon camera that’s on the front. Uh, and, uh, so yeah, if you, if you use a, uh, another kind of bumper in the front, um, then sometimes you have the problem that, uh, you cannot see anything in the screen of your car because the camera isn’t, yeah, you can see the winch. You can see the back of the winch. Yeah. Very nice. Sometimes you want to do something more and, and therefore we made a relocation kit. That’s correct. Yeah. So you can, uh, you can mount it in another direction and, uh, in the front, so the middle, the middle section of the front, um, from the vehicle, what is not equipped with a front camera comes with the kit and then you can put it on. So there’s a lot of places that you can move it to and get the best view possible is what I’m taking from that. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I can, and I can well imagine somebody spit the money on getting the Rubicon with that. They may have the modifications and they go, well, this is useless. So that’s a, that’s the way they can get around it. Um, all right. So now, uh, let’s, let’s move over to the, uh, I was going to say the body. I saw something here earlier for the gladiator and I think I’ve seen it on your screen for you, you guys that don’t know. We also have this on YouTube. So, uh, they have a nice, uh, a TV in the back showing various products, but you guys have like a rack system, uh, for the gladiator, correct?
No, uh, I’m sorry. I just saw it. So I thought we had it. The, no, the rec system would be offer is, uh, it only for made for the Ram.
Okay. It was, it was released two years ago and the time was too short to make it all for the gladiator because, uh, the gladiator, the gladiator will leave us in the market, you know, and that’s the reason why you didn’t. Yep. I see it here. So this is for the DTX rack, uh, for the Ram 1500, uh, 5.7 inch bed. So let’s talk about the Ram. Uh, we already mentioned that since this is a Jeep talk show, but people do have Ram trucks out there. They do have more than Jeeps. I don’t understand it personally, but, uh, people do. So, uh, what all do you guys have for the Ram truck? And is it just the Ram 1500? Well, for the 1500, we also offer wheels, of course. And, uh, what we also have is, uh, the DTX rack and also, uh, uh, the hot top on that, uh, the hot was a pretty nice thing because it’s, um, what you know, so it’s, uh, the different parts. It’s, uh, the left window, the right window, the, uh, um, rear window and the top. And, uh, you can use one of these parts or everything. Uh, then you have a completed hot top and, uh, Andy, uh, you, you, you bolt it onto, uh, onto the rack. So, um, then you have a rack and a hot top at the same time. And that’s the biggest difference to all the other manufacturer. Very cool. Now, uh, I did notice earlier that you guys have a winch mount and, uh, I thought it was interesting. I was like, Oh yeah, winch mount. That’s fine. You get the, the, the, the OEM steel bumper and it’ll fit that, but you guys, this thing fits more than just the, the Jeep steel bumper, right? Yeah. Well, uh, the reason for the winch mount was, um, where we sell the mopar front bumper, the original one, but you’re about to get in the U S market, the Rubicon, but, uh, it’s normally, it is not allowed in the European market. So the Rubicon and a Euro also have a plastic bumper. Um, but we got it to approved. So, uh, we have, uh, pedestrian safe cover, uh, developed for the mopar front bumper. And so we now we, uh, we are able to sell it as an option for, uh, for the jails. And, um, although we, uh, we offer the AV front bumper and, uh, yeah, now we want to, we want to do it. We didn’t want to have a winch, winch mount for, uh, mopar and for AV and stock. So, uh, we developed our own ones, what fits now for mopar and for AV. So, uh, it makes it possible for our, uh, dealers that they, uh, have, uh, the mopar and the AV bumper and stock and only one kind of, uh, Yeah, that’s very handy. Also nice for you guys too, because you don’t have to come up with something different, different parts and all the rest of that crap. Um, so make sure I understand this correctly. You guys cannot have steel bumpers, uh, in, in Germany, you can only have the plastic one. So does that also mean you can’t put a winch on the front?
Um, yeah, you’re not allowed to, uh, to use that. That would be, that would be pedestrian friendly when you smack them. They shouldn’t be on the road. Damn it. That’s it. Yeah. No, what we did is we developed a cover. It’s a two, two inch thick foam and, uh, we tested it with a crash test, uh, actually. And, uh, no, all the pedestrians are safe.
Even the fake ones you’ve seen the dash cams, right? Where they, they run up to the stop vehicle and they throw themselves on the hood. Yeah. The thing is, if you have a, uh, a cheap, I don’t have a four and a half inches pension and bigger tires in it and, uh, and bumpers, front bumper is in the optimal height and, uh, you hit the pedestrian. Um, okay. We have a cover in the, uh, in the moment when the cover bumper hits, uh, pedestrian, nothing happens. Nothing is maybe a little bit too much serious. But then, but then, uh, the test, um, he will, he would go on the, underneath the car and, uh, the bad thing with the exit, it doesn’t have a pedestrian safe car. So yeah. So what you guys need is a combination air horn and, uh, the, uh, what do you call those things? The, the, the bags, the airbags, you need airbag on the front. So right before it hits, it honks the horn and the airbag deploys and it pushes the pedestrian out of the way. Of course, it’d probably be at such force. It would sling them into the oncoming traffic. Uh, I understand what they’re trying to do there, but come on. Uh, I’m sure, I’m sure you’ve seen on, yeah, I’m sure you’ve seen on social media and stuff where a Jeep gets involved in an accident, whether they rear end up like a Honda civic or somebody hits them and they hit the rear or front bumper and they’re the customized bumpers and the Jeep just drives away.
That’s not happening. I think it can still happen, but I think it’s less likely to happen with the Jeep plastic bumpers. So, uh, I hate that aspect of it. I mean, I don’t like the idea of the other vehicle being totaled, but you know, I’m more concerned about me. I mean, I definitely don’t want to pass pedestrian to get hurt, but, uh, the chances of the pedestrian being in the wrong, I think are higher than the vehicle being in the wrong. You know what I’m saying? I don’t, I don’t think they should pay an all the price for that, but I just don’t like, I don’t like limited choices. Uh, I like being able to do what I want to do with my vehicle.
It is, uh, it is, it’s actually pretty difficult to meet a different laws. So the law in, uh, states is absolutely different to the law in, uh, in Europe, uh, not even in Europe, but in, in Japan, in, uh, in Australia, they all have the pedestrian, um, laws. And, uh, the funny thing is the American say the American law says, um, the most important is that the guys in the car, uh, are safe, but the other law says the persons out of the car to the others have to be safe. So, uh, and what we tried and what we got is, um, that we can keep everybody safe. So, um,
you have, you have the steel bumper and, uh, the, the guys in the car and the cheap, they are safe, but also you have, uh, the foam, uh, on the front bumper, uh, what, what keeps the pedestrian safe. So it’s, uh, it’s very, it’s, it’s not so easy. Like it sounds because the tests are very difficult.
And I would imagine too, and you don’t have to agree or, or, or, uh, go, go on with this, uh, this subject, but also too, I get the feeling that sometimes laws, uh, are kind of a feeling and, uh, whenever you’re going through testing, uh, you may have problems because that feeling of we want the pedestrians to be safe. They may not want to pass the test or they might want to be more picky about, uh, that test passing than they would normally be just because of the, the, the overall thought process that’s going on in the government. And, uh, I know that happens over here or I suspect it happens over here. And I would imagine it happens in any government anytime people are involved, we’re all the same ultimately. So, uh, but I can well imagine that’s a very difficult process and a very long process to go through. Yeah, it is very difficult to, uh, to be that, um, because the tests, uh, I don’t know what, uh, what, what, what kind of people can, can make a test like that because yeah, yeah, you have to imagine, um, uh, they, they say, okay, um, we, we make a lower leg or upper leg test. It depends on what the height of the bump is. And then we have to, uh, to throw it with, uh, with a speed of 40 kilometers per hour onto the car, onto the position. And, um, and you have to care for it that, uh, that test will pass. So it’s not really easy. So in the future, all vehicles will be made out of a Nerf material, that spongy material that they make toys and stuff out of. And the only problem is you can’t drive them in the rain because they just soak up all the water, get too heavy to drive around. All right. Well, you know how the kids love the social media. I’m sure you guys are on social media. It is because you’re in, uh, in Europe, you’re not immune to the social media thing or can people find you or the company information. I mean, uh, I’m sorry, we didn’t mention the website information. Uh, and, uh, so it’s B a W a R R I O N.com. And is it bear one, bear, bury one, say it for me. I’m not saying it right.
But okay. So again, B a W, uh, a R R I O N.com. And you’ll find this on the show notes for this episode. So you can just look for this interview episode and you can get that link right there. So, uh, where can, where can we find you online, social media, so to speak.
So you can also find us on Facebook and you can, you can also find us on Instagram, uh, wherever you want to find us, you can find us. And for, uh, to keep the name in your mind. Uh, so I explained what we think, what, what, uh, what the name says it’s the Baboran, so that makes sense to me. Yeah. I just see those, that makes a letters. I’m going to, I don’t know.
What is the, what is the, uh, is it O R Z? I say, I think I said Q R Z there’s an amateur radio, uh, website. Uh, and then that’s a Q R Z is one of the amateur radio, uh, Q codes, but that’s O R Z. Isn’t it? Oh, it’s, oh, yeah. I saw that. I went, Oh, Q R Z. I know what Q R Z is. I’m an amateur radio operator. So yeah. And that is a, uh, a partner or a parent company or what is O R Z?
Oh, the O R Z is the owner of the brand Baboran. So it’s a company, uh, what stands behind Baboran. Excellent. All right, man. Uh, Patrick, so, oh, oh, he’s doing business as the boring. Gotcha. So Patrick, thank you a lot for being here. And I’m, uh, it’s, it’s a lot of fun talking to, uh, jeepers outside of the country. It is so cool. Jeeps really are universal. And I like it that it’s not just an American thing. People get the Jeep thing and it’s all over. Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Yeah. You know, it’s a, uh, only, only achievement freedom. And, uh, until they take that away from us with sponge bumpers and, uh, uh, IFS instead of, uh, front axles and, uh, no more V eight. Oh God, I just, I don’t like the way this is going.
And I hope to absolutely we’ll have to get you in the gladiator and my puny two inch lift and you can say, Oh, well this is crap because of this, this, and this. Uh, I won’t say that.
All right, man. Thanks a lot. Really appreciate you being here and, uh, we’ll have to get you back on the show. Yeah. Thank you very much. Hey, thanks again to Patrick of Baguarian. I think I’ve got that pronunciation down correctly. I’m sorry. I’m supposed to say pronunciation. Uh, yeah, I’m sorry. I think I got that pronunciation down correctly. Uh, visit their website right now, Baguarian.com. That’s B A W A R R I O N.com. Hey, coming up next week, Allison, you know, Allison, we’ve had Allison on the show several times and I got to meet her at EJS last year. Uh, but she’s not there this year, uh, but, uh, Allison of duck duck Jeep. And, uh, you can actually go to official ducking Jeeps.com. It’s a brand new website. They just started. And, uh, yeah, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s exciting. And that’s a wrap for today’s episode of the Jeep talk show. I want to give a big thank you to our special guests for joining us today and sharing their knowledge and experience with the Jeep community. Thanks again to G tops for sponsoring this episode of the Jeep talk show, but up more by going to G tops.com support the companies that support the show. You love the Jeep talk show meet me. And well, you better hurry. Cause today’s the last day I’m going to be there, uh, literally leaving tomorrow, Saturday. Uh, but, uh, yeah, they’re all day Friday. So depending on when you’re listening to this now, if you’re listening to this in 2025, you’re out of luck. Uh, so meet me and the 2021 Jeep talk show gladiator at EJS 2024. And you can see the G tops in person. Oh, and I should add there, we, we have about like 13 listeners and guests and, uh, team members all at EJS this year. So, uh, yeah, you shouldn’t have to go very far to find one of us. We love hearing from you, our listener reach out to us via email phone, social media. We use your voicemails on the show. So until next time, keep on jeeping. And we’ll see you on the trails. Hey, Fridays are red. Remember everyone deployed
broadcasting since 2010. You’re my friend. You’re my new friend.
Episode 1008 – $12k 4×4 Jeep?
Is the 4×4 Future Smaller?
Rumors are flying about Jeep and Toyota developing compact 4×4. Think of the Jeep Renegade but more of a true 4-wheel drive. We’ve been talking about how difficult it is to put enough battery in an EV to make it a realistic alternative to an ICE vehicle. As a stopgap and pressure from governments around the world. A clown car small Jeep might fit the bill. We could be more European!
The compact 4×4 could be a fully EV like the new Jeep venger, hybrid or hybrid generator. The good news is that a simplified electric vehicle could be much cheaper.
You may be aware of Toyota’s NEW $12k pickup truck.
No anti-lock brakes. No airbags. Crank windows. No armrests. Lots of plastic and rubber.
So we see signs that automakers are looking for a way to make the cost of a new vehicle much less.
Jeep EcoDiesel V6 issues
Jeep’s EcoDiesel engine has such a bad reputation in his latest teardown video. Originally found in the last-gen Jeep Grand Cherokee and versions of the Ram 1500, they’re well-known for failing prematurely, with tough-to-find parts and lots of extremely tight packaging.
In a recent teardown Eric from “Do Cars” found damaged pistons, after it smacked into a valve. Bearings disintegrated, leading to the rod cap detaching from the rod.
The rod cap bounced around in the crankcase before wedging itself between the crankshaft and the block, seizing the motor.
Eric suspects a lack of maintenance and a lack of surface area for the bearings is what led to the failure. Seeing as how he takes engines like these apart for a living, we suspect he’s onto something. Eric has taken apart numerous EcoDiesels and says they’ve all had similar problems with the bottom end.
I’ve never had a vehicle with a diesel engine, but I have heard a lot of good things about them over the years. Certainly in the transportation industry, they are almost mandatory for maximum towing and longevity.
I guess this is like what we learn about gas engines. Just because they make one doesn’t mean it’s a good one.
Jeep Talk Show Gladiator Update
I’m currently at MOAB, EJS 2024. I’m having memories of last year’s trip. What fun. One of the things I experienced was low-power steering fluid.
There’s no excuse for not checking fluids, but I have to admit with 7,000ish miles on the Odo I just drove it to EJS. 700 miles(?) 19ish hours.
I heard the classic whine of the power steering pump out on the trail. When I was done I headed to Orileys and picked up a few things.
Yep, the power steering fluid was low. Did it just get hot and evaporate or spill over from the heat?
I haven’t had any issues since, so I’m not sure what happened.
Must-Have Stuff for Your Jeep!
T Slot Nuts for Toyota Tacoma Bed Rails Cleats Bed Rack Rail Accessories for Tundra Pickup Truck Deck Bike Mount W/Stainless Button Socket Cap Screw (4 Packs) $12.99
Episode 1007 – Routine Maintenance
Thanks to John Lee, JTS Team Member for helping out while Tony was in Moab, EJS! We’re working hard to make sure you have great and consistant contect from the show!
All right, welcome. This is another episode in the Jeep Talk Show saga that we call the Roundtable Week.
This is another episode that I’m helping host this week because Tony is out in Moab playing and hanging out. I think actually tonight they’re at the Motobill Party, which is awesome for them. We’re all still a little bit, but heard about it for those of us left behind.
But hopefully we’ll be able to soldier on.
This Roundtable episode, it’s brought to you by Trails Off Road. Trails Off Road, they make the best off-road trail guides. The Trails Off Road team maps trails and creates highly detailed guides so you can choose your type of adventure. From the beaches of the Atlantic and the Pacific or the great American deserts, all the way to the highest mountain passes. If you’re going to Moab, they have the best information for the trails you plan to drive. You can find over-learning, backcountry roads, rock crawling trails, anything that suits you. Just visit trailsoffroad.com right now for a seven-day free trial. And if you’re a Jeep Talk Show Patreon subscriber, you’ll get a big discount to sign up for their subscription service. The promo code, not gonna give it to you, that’s gonna be found on Patreon. So go ahead and jump on over there and subscribe and contribute to the show that you love watching. So watching and listening. And I say watching because we are on YouTube. You can watch the episodes. You can see the smiling faces with Tony’s arguably hidden behind a microphone the majority of the time. But you can still check it out and kind of see it as it’s being recorded there. So tonight, as usual, we are gonna have four questions that we’re gonna try to get through. We’re gonna do a little bit different tonight due to the amount of people we have. We’re gonna try to go back to the old school fireside chat model and kind of give each one a chance to answer here. So the questions are gonna be, what do you do for routine maintenance yourself on your rig? And what kind of schedule do you keep to for that?
What tire are you running right now specifically? And what is your opinion of it? Have you ever fabricated something for your rig? And are you happy with the way it turned out? Do you have onboard air? What did you install? What kind of system did you put in? So these are the questions we’re gonna ask tonight. And right now I want to bring in the rest of the Zoom people. So remember everybody, I think I hit mute also. Feel free to unmute. And what does Tony say? Hi Zoom people or whatever.
Hello. – Hey, hello. – Hey, how’s it going? – All righty, ho. – Rest of y’all sad as I am, we’re not able to hang out in EJS where we’re rough here at our day-to-day jobs. – We have an EJS are here with us now, Dan. – Do we? Who joined us? – Holy shit, there’s Bill. – Yeah. – Was he? – Oh, thanks for slumming, Bill.
– Hey, Bob. – Hey, Bob. – You too, Bob. – You too, Bob. – How’s EJS going so far? – It’s awesome, yeah. – Was that 41 degree down angle or whatever on Vincent things you’re talking about earlier, Bill? – Yeah, do you like the commentary on that video? – Yeah. – She liked the comment. – Yeah, something about shit in your pants.
Jesus Christ, there was quite a few expletives I think I heard on the video. – Yeah, that was fun. – Awesome, awesome. All right, well, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of stories from EJS and coming videos that everybody’s gonna wanna go through. So I mentioned a little bit ago, we’re gonna try to go through and see how many answers we can get to these questions from folks. I may try to call on a few. So I wanna start off with the first question. What do you do for routine maintenance yourself on your rig and what kind of schedule do you try to keep to? So Larry, you wanna start us off with your answer there? What do you normally like to try to do yourself from a routine maintenance point of view? – Yeah, so typically what I’ll do is I’ll change the oil every three to 5,000, even though it’s all synthetic.
And usually every other oil change, I’ll rotate the tires and everything.
And then typical about every 30,000 or so, or usually about every four or five oil changes, all the diff fluid and all that stuff gets changed out, which sometimes that’s six months, sometimes it’s…
– You judge by how much wheeling you do. Like if you’re doing a lot of water crossings, somebody may kind of bring that schedule a little bit. – Yeah, if I was doing a lot of water or something like that, I would bring it in, but I don’t really get into a lot of the water crossings, but yeah, definitely if I was doing a lot of that, then like the diff fluids and all that stuff would be changed a lot sooner because no one wants to milkshake in the axle. – Just ask Rick, right? – Yeah.
– Awesome. All right, Matt, besides replacing the drums on your trailer every 5,000 miles,
what’s the maintenance that you do doing that four by eight? Anything different than oil changes and normal?
– So surprisingly, not really.
Other than my batteries last about 18 months,
the 12-bolt ones, but yeah, similar to Larry, just probably 5,000 mile oil changes. I think the times that I don’t do it myself is gonna be when we’re on a trip that lasts over that time period, right? And then you’re peering in on the five-minute oil change guy to make sure he’s doing what you want him to do. But yeah, and I just, every couple of weeks, I’m under the hood anyways, check to make sure all the fluids are there,
topped off and then making sure nothing’s leaking. I think a lot of it is, once you get it cleaned up after a trail ride, getting under it and making sure there’s nothing still wet looking once it’s dry. – Oh yeah, let it sit overnight in the garage and see if a puddle forms underneath it, right?
Yeah, awesome. So Andrew, what about you? I know you got the LJ, that thing just leaks naturally. So do you have to actually change the oil or do you just keep adding to it? – You just kind of gauge by the puddle underneath it to see the radius losing versus how much you need to add. But the most part I do in my own main is keep it on a notebook, top off oil, I really gas change if it’s needed. – That’s a good point though, keeping the log. I do the, so when I got a little notebook in the garage, I jot it down, but I also use Google Docs and throw a record up there so I can access it if I’m away from all, when was the last time I did a service or whatever, help some troubleshooting and diagnosing. – Absolutely. – Awesome. All right, Chip, what about you?
– Wow, I mean, like what Larry was saying, just the common things of oil changes and tire rotations, I think my biggest thing, I don’t have a routine maintenance, but if I’m gonna go on a week long trip, I’m doing a lot more checking, right? I mean, pre-season, I’ll go through and make sure all the bolts are tight, make sure everything’s good, especially maybe a month in advance of a big event where I wanna make sure, ball joints, view joints, all those things are in good shape. But once I get into season, if I just go out on a Saturday and go wheeling for a day, I’m not too worried about that. As long as the Jeep’s performing well, I don’t come home and go through everything all over again. I’m probably even worse, I don’t even necessarily wash it down. I don’t mind having a little bit of dirt and it looks like I’ve been out.
But yeah, I’ve got a bigger trip coming up, I’m gonna go out to the Black Hills with a group of friends and where we gone wheeling it for five days straight, going through a pretty good checklist of stuff just to make sure everything’s ready to go before I hit the trail. – Absolutely.
I had tightening bolts, checking paint marks, making sure that nothing’s kind of backed off, things like that. – Right, right, and marking paint, a lot of people don’t even think about that, it’s mark the bolts, so you can watch to see if they moved at all.
I try to do that whenever we do a lift, is put mark them and then after you drive it, a few hundred miles, check those, make sure they didn’t back off. – Oh yeah, absolutely. All right, Chris, I know you’re up there in Michigan as routine maintenance, just getting the snow off the top of it and knocking some salt out from underneath it. – Yeah, going through the car wash to get the snow out of the bottom, but yeah, to answer your question, I do all my own maintenance,
5,000 miles, oil change, tire rotation, pretty religiously, and then follow the recommended
service intervals for everything else. Like Larry said, I mean, when you get into the water, check at least check your diff fluids
to make sure there’s no milkshake in there, but typically just 5,000 miles religiously with the tire rotations and oil changes and then everything else pretty standard. – So when you say all, that’s interesting. So fuel service, coolant flushes, things like that, do you even tackle that yourself? – Yes, yeah, I mean, I did it for many years myself. I mean, I’m not the brag of myself, but I’m very competent and capable. And I just like a lot of us don’t want anybody else touching my Jeep unless they have to. I wouldn’t do any body work. I’m not a paint guy. I’m not a bump and bondo guy at all, but I don’t want anybody touching my Jeep except me. – Chris, you’re my hero. I’m one of the lesser mechanics, so things like monoclonal flushes and fuel system clean outs. I typically take in, but I’d like to try to do it myself. It’s just a big job. – The only thing I won’t get into is an automatic transmission manual, maybe. It depends on the time, but now just do yourself YouTube, YouTube certified mechanics, just like Bob, right Bob? – I was about to say, speaking of YouTube certified mechanic, Bill, Bob, y’all are kind of answering together here. So what do y’all, what do you like to tackle yourself from a routine maintenance?
– Synthetic, I go with synthetic.
– Synthetic, is that a, that’s much better than steel.
Is that like an inflatable doll? What are we talking about? – No, April 1st flashback. – Yeah, that’s shit. That’s 20 bucks is 20 bucks, Chip, don’t judge. – No, I mean, pretty much like everybody else said, right? Doing kind of the normal intervals. And then certainly before trip,
I’ll do something a little bit ahead of schedule or as soon as I get back, if I’ve been going through water or like this week or whatever, I may dump the dead fluid and check those other things just to make sure after the trip, everything’s good to go. – Cabin air filter?
(laughing) I mean, it seems simple enough, right? But I mean, that cabin air filter. – So on some trips, like on overlanding trips, I’ll bring a cabin air filter and an air filter with me. And at the place I’m staying just before I’m gonna make the drive back home, I used to just replace both of those, like proactively, like especially if it was like seven days of just nothing but dust on there. But I’ve learned from this week about the recirculate feature from our favorite YouTube mechanic. And so I’ve been using that. And apparently that keeps a lot of the dust out of your cabin air filter. – It’s just a button you put on the deck. – It’s fancy, yeah.
– When you replace that cabin air filter, do you put a little leaf or two of potpourri in there for your– – Oh, hell yeah. Oh, hell yeah. – I think I bit in the Jeep. I think it’s lavender is what he uses. – Yeah, okay. – Lavender spray. – Yeah, sometimes I do that or I’ll put a little bit of like pine salt on there. So…
(laughing) – You want to see it in the forest? – Yeah, it’s like Carolina pine forest. Yeah, man has something to talk about. – All right, thanks. Garrett, besides the normal oil change, anything else like that? Or is there anything that you do differently on your routine maintenance?
– No, I mean, on my new Jeep, I’m about to do my second oil change, but I’m taking it to the dealer for that so I can keep my warranty as much as I can until that’s up. And when that’s up, I’m changing everything over the end. – Garrett, Garrett, it’s bullshit. You don’t need to take your Jeep to the dealer to do the oil change. It’s– – I call bullshit on that. I call bullshit on that. No, I call bullshit on that.
(laughing) It’s upon the manufacturer, in all seriousness, this came up in the early 90s. It’s upon the manufacturer to prove that the modification or neglect caused the failure of a warranty component. It just really pisses me off because I worked in, I shouldn’t say this, but I worked in dealer sales or dealer service
on the old East Side for a long time and it’s just not a great place to have your vehicle serviced. – And Garrett, you’ve been on here before. You know not to trigger a Chris like that.
(laughing) – Thanks, John.
– But yeah, I need to get a TPMS sensor so I’m just gonna have them do it when they do that. And it’s only my second oil change and I’m doing it at 5,000 miles, but they want me to do 10,000. I’m like, no way.
So I’m not waiting that long. So while it’s in there, I’m just gonna tell them to rotate the tires and change the oil and put that TPMS sensor in there because they don’t put one in the spares on the gladiators.
But other than that, I do pretty much all my own stuff, diffs, transmission fluid, transfer case fluid. I changed it all to AMSOIL and that’s what I did in my TJ when I had it. – How are you rotating your spare and your gladiator? Because I just got a gladiator, I’m just curious.
– You just do a five tire. So like I think I did the rear passenger is… – Yeah, but my spare is a steel wheel. I’ve got the aluminum wheels and my spare is a steel wheel. – We can have… – Okay. – I have to have to market wheels in 30 seconds. – Ah, okay. Okay, you’re better than me. Jesus Christ, you’re better than me. Okay, Garrett, that’s fine. – That’s why you can do the dealership and give them off. – I did the Mopar lift. So whatever, I don’t, I’m just leaving it at that for right now. – You might wanna check on that first oil change because a lot of times they’ll extend the first oil change a little bit longer to make sure the rings are seated properly.
– All right, yeah, I’ve already had my first oil change. I did that already. – Nevermind then. – Yeah, I did that one already.
So just a quick question on the spare on the Gladiator
with a 37, did that fit in the stock spare location or did you have to put a different kind of mount?
– It fits in there. You have to put it towards the heat shield. The heat shield is towards the front of the bed. So you put that side in first and then you just kind of crank it up there and it’ll go in there. – Awesome.
Awesome, all right. Let’s see, Blaine joined us here. Blaine, we’re all going through answering the question about what kind of routine maintenance do you tackle yourself and maybe you’re working on how. – Yeah, hi everybody. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been on.
I pretty much do everything I possibly can myself.
Anything from the simple oil change, tire rotation, belts.
I’ve rebuilt transfer cases, you name it. I’m not afraid to tackle it too much. Don’t care too much, tear into the engines too much. And luckily now I don’t have anything that I need to do that to. So.
– Awesome.
Yep, you’re just sitting there right there with Chris. Chris does everything. And Chris actually welded his frame together and then he did all his own riveting on the body. I mean, he’s a super mechanic. – Nice. – Right Chris?
– No, no, no, no, just mechanical. Just mechanical. No welding, no riveting. No, I’m gonna lean on Larry for the welding and the riveting. – There you go. – All right. – I’m gonna add something back to the gladiator and spare tire thing. So as some of you know, I just got rid of my gladiator I guess about two months ago now. And I’ve been building up my Wrangler now. And one thing I learned there is in my gladiator, I had a 37 in the spare. It was great just bolted right here. It got bolted, but just mounted right up. No modification needed. Then I get the Wrangler and get my 37s and like, oh crap, where am I gonna put the spare? And then you have to get the reinforcement plate and all that good fun stuff back there. So just got that mounted this weekend, but. – Which reinforcement, did you go with the terra-flax or which one? – No, I’m a cheap bastard. So I go as cheap as I can for as good as I can. But I went with the Tiger, T-T-Y-G-E-R.
I’ve seen some on some other rigs that seem to be quite beefy. And so far I really liked it, but it was relatively cheap, but it replaced all of everything from the stock engines, the whole plate across the tailgate, pretty beefy and unstout. And it retained, and this is probably where it gets a little cheap is it retains the stock wheel mount
and such, but it seems to work great, holds it stable as can be. So we’ll see how long it lasts, but so far, Mappy. – Awesome.
All right, let’s see, I think Travis is the only one that, no, sorry, you got mic too. So Travis, routine maintenance, do you do it yourself or do you take it into the dealership or how do you handle routine maintenance? – The YJ, when I’ve got it in my possession, 100% everything’s myself, might be watching a shop now. The Forex E, 100%, everything’s at a shop. – Just the complexity there? – It’s a computer and I’m not one of you guys, that’s a computer engineer. Nope, not doing it. You give me an old six owner 4.0, I’ll handle that.
My Jeep’s in the shop for transmission issue, not for oil or anything along that line. But yeah, when it comes to belt changes, when it comes to oil changes, when it comes to brakes, when it comes to anything on the YJ I’ve done and do and will do, the Forex E, it’s going to the shop. It’s also under warranty.
So with that warranty, 100% gonna just take it to the shop. Even though I understand Chris and what he said and I worked for dealership, I 100% know it’s true,
but I just go to the shop.
– Gotcha, gotcha. All right, I think Mike, did you wanna add anything? You got anything on maintenance that you wanna add in here?
– Basically about the same as everybody else, as long as I can do it in the driveway, with the Jack and Jack’s hands,
I’m open up, you know, to do it all.
– Awesome, so that Jeep can do attitude there, right? So I think it’s kind of universal there. Well, besides Travis and his Forex E, that everybody likes to get their hands dirty and knock out their own maintenance there. So we’re gonna move on to the next question here and see if we get some fun answers on this one. So I’m sorry, I just kinda got distracted there, looked up and saw the background picture that Bob has on his little thing there. I don’t even wanna know what he’s doing with that hilt that he’s taking a picture of. – That’s disturbing. – That is very disturbing.
– 20 bucks is 20 bucks, shut the hell up. (laughing) If anybody’s watching on YouTube, they’ll get to see what everybody’s disturbed about there. So, all right, here comes the fun question, the one that’s, I think it could be controversial or it could be, you know, boring, but not necessarily what you think is right for everybody because, you know, where we wheel at and how we wheel is gonna change the answer across the board. But you personally, what tire are you running right now on your rig and what’s your opinion of it? Do you like it? Are you running it because you spent the money and you gotta wait until you can spend money on something else?
What’s your overall opinion? So I wanna start back with Larry again. So Larry, what’s your opinion of, what are you running and what’s your opinion of it? – So I’m running the Rodian,
the Nexen Rodian’s MTs, but South of Italy, you know, I’ve seen how they ran a lot out in California and other areas and, you know, we did pursue a sponsorship with them. So you can take whatever I save with that grain of salt.
But, you know, we were running the Milestars for a long time
and I never really had any issues with those randos for almost 80,000 miles. – It’s amazing out of an inch. – And then the Nexens that I run now, I’ve not had any issues. They seem to do very well even at really low PSI. So, you know, we’ve, the only thing they don’t, you know, and you’ve seen this, they don’t like mud
when we were all at Hot Springs. I mean, it was that suit that we were all kind of stuck in, at least I was. And- – I was about to say, I think there was some Nino’s and B of cheese at the top of the hill that-
– Well, you took a different line. I took the harder line. – Didn’t take a different line. Didn’t take a different line. – But yeah, that’s what I’m running right now. – Awesome. All right. Let’s see, Matt, what are you running?
– So a lot of BFG K02s. Actually one of the, embarrassingly enough, one of the reasons is because I wanna raise white letters. But we’ve got eight of them that we run in the rotations of the trailer.
And I think it’s a great on-road tire, which I think is awesome for, you know, putting 25,000 miles a year, we don’t want the Jeep in the trailer, but definitely lacking in several areas and off-road. So it gave you things a bit of a compromise.
It probably works out better for us overall to have a tamer tire, but definitely off-road
leaves a lot to be desired. – Just in mud, the rocks, all of the above or? – Yeah, I mean, it’s not awful in the rocks or anything. Mud, the mud is the worst. So not having, you know, it’s just not a big enough void to clear, which I think is the big thing. The on-road is great, but, and really in the rocks, we haven’t had a lot of traction issues, air and down enough, there’s a lot there. But the mud and like anything wet
tends to be rough here like out in the East Coast.
– Oh, sure. All right, I think BFG K02s though, even with their faults, I mean, I see so many of them. And I think like you said, there’s some give and take and, you know, in specific situations, like you said, putting a lot of miles on them or community or whatever, they do make a lot of sense. I see a lot of them being sold, so. – And you can, I mean, one good thing is, unfortunately we’ve had to get them a couple of different places in the country, but they’re normally fairly readily available. So, you know, within a day, you know, most people with a decent network can get you a set of 37 inch K02s, which may not be, you know, you know, it’s getting better now, but a year ago, that wasn’t the case with a lot of tires, right? – Oh, absolutely. I had to wait quite a while for my, my middoes back when I ordered them a couple years ago. So, all right, Chip, what are you running? I know you got like 17 different Jeeps, but on your, let’s say on your two door JK there, what you’re running? – So my two door JK, when I bought it, it had Nito Ridge Grapplers on it.
And I took it to Moab and it did wonderful. I think that when you get to an all train tire, it’s a great tire for Moab and some of those type situations or a lot of trails.
But when I got back home, the all trains just don’t clear out enough, right? You were like everybody saying that they’re great on rain, they’re great on snow, they’re good. It’s an all around good tire. But when I go out into some of the muds on a lot of the trails I’m going, I really need a bigger lug. And so I’ve been running BFG KM3s or I had KM2s, but I’ve got BFGs KM2s or 3s on all but one of them, well, all but two of my Jeeps. So my wife’s daily still running the BFG K2Os and I love those tires and they do well in general. But again, if you’re going out and wheeling in much mud,
I like the bigger lug. The little LJ I got’s got Yokohama and I don’t even know what the tire is. They look like- – Geo-enders? – Geo-enders, yes, yes. They look like a road tire, they look like an all terrain but I tell you what, I’ve been impressed with them so far. I haven’t taken them in deep mud and I’m not gonna really off-road that LJ for a while. So I did a little off-roading in Arizona, it did fine. It didn’t clean out real well when I went through some mud out there. I guess there is some mud in Arizona but I’m a big BFG fan and a big KM3 fan but I see a lot of what, Cooper SST pros, I’ve seen, so Jeep Jamboree just took on a sponsor of General Tire now. So I’ve got one of my buddies just put Generals on his that are MTs, they look pretty aggressive. I’m curious to see how they do, so.
– Yeah, I think that General Grabber’s, it’s up there with the BFG KM3s as just kind of a good stalwart, it’s a lot of people use it, a lot of people run it. So awesome, all right.
I think Andrew is up next. So Andrew, what tire are you running? – I run that BFG K02, run it all, my vehicle’s granted. I did switch over to a KM3, BFG, good wrench
for the LJ 35, 12 and a half.
So I’m excited to see how it does, because granted all I know is the K02’s wheeling, so hopefully it does pretty well.
– Well, I think a lot of people use it, but I do got a question. So you said good wrench, so is that made by Dale Earnhardt Incorporated or? – Sorry, whatever, whatever getting tired is. – P.F. Goodrich, so. – P.F. Goodrich, whatever, my apologies. But the K02’s are really good, especially like in South Texas on the ranch, minus when it’s muddy.
Other than that, they’re really good for sidewall protection when you’re running through thorns and brush and everything else. That’s mainly why I run the K02’s on everything.
– Awesome, it looks like Chris has stepped away. I don’t see him in the camera there. So Garrett, what tire are you running?
– So I’m running the Patagonia MTO2’s just because I had the original ones on my TJ.
But honestly, I’m probably not gonna go back to them after these wear out, because they have a tendency to unevenly, the lugs, one’s high, one’s low, one’s high, one’s low. So it causes a vibration and the center seems to be a little higher than the rest of it. And it’s just not wearing very well. So I think I’m gonna go with the Nitto’s whenever I change to the Nitto 38’s, because I saw that they had 38’s. – Wow, that’s actually, what I just put on mine is the 38 Trail Grapper. So I’m loving them so far, but I had the 37 in Trail Grappers before. So good tire.
All right, let’s see, Blaine, what tire are you running on the Wrangler that you’re building up there? – So I’ve got the Milestar Patagonias on this. I had them on my Latiator before, got a set on another old ZJ, and they’ve done us well. We beat the living crap out of them and have yet to have one fail us.
Garrett mentioned the crown to the tire. They’re actually designed that way. I don’t know if you’re aware of that, but it’s one of the rare, a few true crown tires.
So it does tend to ride on the center logs, which I think is what helps with the mileage that you get out of them, because you’re riding on that more solid block, if you will, instead of the outer edges, but I always air down considerably when I go off road.
But they were fine for me. I’ve never had any abnormal wear, but I rotate about probably every two to 3000 miles at best.
And as long as you do that, they seem to wear very evenly in my case, but I’ve never had any issues in that. I absolutely love them. – So I know the rotation is critical. I know, like you generally let people vinegar speak, he got 80,000 plus miles out of his Patagonias, but I know he rotates them, I think, like every 10 miles, I think.
(laughing) – I run a lot of air pressure in those too. – Another thing I like with them is they tend to run fairly true to size. Like the ones I’ve literally brand new is right now, probably don’t even have a hundred miles on them yet.
And they’re lightweight on my wheels I have, and the 37s, the 37, four, fives, they weigh right at 102 pounds fully mounted and measured, they’re about like 36 point, roughly 36 and a half inches mounted.
So that’s, I think that’s pretty good. Now that’s not mounted on the Jeep, on the Jeep it’s pretty close to 36, but you know, just sitting off the vehicle, but full of air and mounted, a lot better than a lot of tires, I guess, when it comes to the actual size. – And I think that’s something that not a lot of people realize when they’re shopping, they’re new to that is that if you’re ordering a 38 or a 37, if you pull your tape measure out with that thing, mounted to your Jeep, it’s not likely going to measure 38, 37. – Yeah, I’ve got a friend of mine that he’s got a newer set of the BFG K02s and the 37s, and when we pull up next to each other, you would swear I’m on at least 38s next to his BFGs, and they’re supposedly the same size, right? – Yeah, BFGs run small. I know that, but for pulling up next to, I think Bill’s got 37s on his 392, and I can pull up next to mine, they just, they look taller.
And yeah, you could tell they run small.
– You know, there’s another interesting aspect that you didn’t ask in this question was what tire pressure do you run at when you’re just going on the road? – So, and in my Wrangler, I’m still playing with it now, but I’m at pretty much 35, 36.
I like to stay up on that crown a little bit, only Patagonia’s just to keep the, that’s kind of what they’re designed for, but it seems to be tracking fine, and I’m pretty happy with it. When I’m a gladiator, I ran a little bit different pressures just for the lighter weight on the bed versus the, you know, the front side of the Wrangler, it seems to be a little more evenly, I don’t know,
to it, but again, 35, 36 is where I’m about. – You know, because on my BFGs, depending on what I’m doing and where I’m going, but I mean, I’ve been playing around between 26 and 32 on the highway for comfort, and if I get 40,000, I don’t know, you know, they’re trail tires, and my short Jeep is mostly off-road, and so really, I’m chunking out log pieces on rocks and everything else, and I’m not gonna get, oh, if I get 20, 25,000 miles
with the majority of that being trail,
I think I’ve accomplished a lot. Now, on the road, and my wife’s Jeep, and when we take her JL and to get changed, they’re always pumping it up to 40, and it changes the ride, so I bring this woman era down to 36 or maybe 34, and you just get a better comfort. Right now in the LJ, I’m running 26 on the GeoLander, that was the way the guy had it when I bought it. I could probably go up a little bit, because I upgraded the lift kit, but I think it’s an interesting aspect of what tire pressure you run at to either one maximize mileage on the tire, or look at also the comfort, and I guess a lot of it comes on suspension and shocks. – The way your rig plays a lot of that, too, right? Because if, you know, like, I know my rig runs about 6,000 pounds, and when I was running the miles, I ran 40 PSI in them. – Wow, really? – And to keep up on that center crown of that tire.
And I got a lot of life out of them, but I ran a lot of PSI on the highway, right? If I was on, if I was, you know, it’s like the rest of us, so you get on a rougher road, you take some air out of it, but when you’re running, you know, concrete, you know. – The tire size can play in pressure. I don’t know, as I’ve been going up in tire size, I’ve been kind of going down in pressure, because I do the chalk test, although I do a little bit differently. I just spray the, spray some, with the water hose, I hit the tire, get it wet, and then kind of drive a dry patch of concrete or whatever. And you can see the pattern of your tire, and I just try to get it as flat as I can to look at that pressure and then stay with it. So for me, it’s about 27, 28 from my 38s, but yeah, it’s, there’s not gonna be a perfect pressure that we can say on here that everybody should be running, because there’s so many variables with your, – Which tire, what you drive in, what weight, all those things. Every time I hear about the chalk test, it makes me think back in high school, our high school back in the 70s actually had a rule that girls could come to school braless if they could pass the pencil test, which means they, if they could put a pencil under their breast and it would fall out, they didn’t have to wear a bra, but if it fell out, if it wouldn’t fall out, they had to wear a bra, if it did fall out, they didn’t have to wear a bra. – So when they rode their horses up to school, because I’m assuming it was that long ago. – It wasn’t that bad. But here’s the real question, right? So this was actually a policy at school. Who in the hell, – Not many of us, not many of us. – Had to administer the test. That’s what I wanted to mention.
Who came up with the test? (laughing) – Probably his name was Weinstein. – Part of the PE teacher.
– You old Harvey. Hey, Chris, you’re back. – What tire are you running? And what is your opinion of it? – I’m embarrassed to admit this. – Jeff wants to know the tire pressure. – I’m embarrassed to admit it’s a 245 75 17 that came on my gladiator sport. And I just haven’t had the fun tickets upgrade yet. So yeah, it’s a street pedestrian tire, probably 30 32 PSI. – What are they coming with now from the battery? Is it good years or? – I don’t even know. I think it’s hand cook. I don’t even know. It’s they’re new. I don’t know. It’s embarrassing. I just. – So our 23 JL came with the FG K2Os. – Well, I got a – Depends on the model you got. – It’s a 20. – If you’re buying a sport to a lube car. – I do how to get the sport.
So that’s what it is. But yeah, we’ll change it. We’ll change that sooner than later. – Yeah, but I guess to go back to a tire familiar because you just recently got the gladiator. So yeah, I remember correctly, you were running Toyos on the JK. – Yeah, I was on my second set of Toyo AT3s, AT2, AT2 slash three. It was in the second set. Really liked the Toyos. Give a shout out to them. My only negative to Toyos, they’re just heavy. They run a true, we were talking earlier about, what the tire size is. They run a very true tire size. If they say it’s a 33 or they say it’s a 35, it is very close to that. Unlike BF Goodrich, BF Goodrich, like you said, John always runs small, but they’re just damn heavy. But love the Toyos. And I’m thinking about getting a set of Toyos on the gladiator pretty soon. The Nittos are very, Nitto and Toyo are kind of like cousins. So my Nittos are pretty heavy as well. So, and they, they’re kind of- – I don’t know if y’all know this or not, both the Nitto and the Toyo, they’re 100% American-made tire. They’re all made in white Georgia. – Really? I thought they were, most tire. – Yep, I’ve got a really big plan over there. I go there quite frequently for work. – Wow. – So you’re saying, – So Blaine, you’re saying you get John and I discount? Is that what you’re saying? – I don’t know. (laughing) Which is why I’m not running those.
(laughing) – All right, well, I think I know their workers get, I think they get like two sets a year for no charge. But they’re pretty restricted on, you know, what they’re supposed to do with them and stuff. But it’s a pretty cool process to see it all being made. But yeah, they’re all down there in Georgia being made there. – Who the hell needs two- – So after the show comes out, everybody’s putting applications in. – Who the hell needs two sets of tires a year for three after not selling them on you?
(laughing)
– Chris, haven’t you ever heard of like red label stickies or whatever, man? If you can get a set of red label stickies for your crawler. – Yeah, absolutely. – And Christmas comes around, you get a set of tires, you get a set of tires, I mean, it’d be awesome. So Travis, what are you running?
– I’ve got KM3s on the 4XC, I’ve got Toyo MTs on the YJ. Huge fan of the Toyos like Chris.
I mean, my YJ’s a wheel and rig, those MTs are impressive in the mud, like a lot of you guys were knocking mud and what your tires were running. Those are impressive in the mud. Those impressive on the highway, I will give them that as well. And the years and the length I’ve had, it’s on a daily driver, but from when I put those tires on the Jeep in 17,
it’s stupid how much tread I’ve got. I don’t drive the Jeep often, but I’m highly, highly impressed with those Toyos. My KM3s currently, I’ve been impressed with last season. I’ve got a little bit of time left with them. I bought everything for the 4XC used. So they’re not gonna last forever. And so I was excited to hear this conversation. I’m gonna be upgrading tires and I mean, they’re gonna go back to what I know or someone’s gonna stupidly impress me on something else, which I was leading to the next and from everything said here on the show to now, I’m like, “Ah, let me go back to what I know,” which is Toyo and Nitto.
So we’ll see. – I think one of the other advantages that Toyos and the Nitto is just speaking, because I’ve actually run on both. I had the open country MTs on my JK first. That was my first tire upgrade.
One of the reasons they’re heavy is they do run a harder compound, which allows them to get their life out of the tread on there and they have stupid, thick sidewalls. And when you see them kind of pinch up and take rockets straight off the sidewall and running low air pressures and everything else, it’s impressive. There’s a reason why when you look out there at a Ultra Four cars running and King of the Hammers and everything else, you see a couple of the same brands over and over again. The funny thing is you’ve heard them here tonight as well. I mean, Nitto, Toyo, BF Goodrich. I mean, these are, I think, Nexon even runs and every man challenge really limited them to 37. So, you know, that’s where they’re torture tested. So, awesome. I think, Mike, you’re the only one left there. So, Mike, what kind of tires you running?
– Hi, I noticed BF Goodrich came out with his K02 or K03?
– With the K02s are the latest on the all-trains. Although I think they are coming out with the K03 at its own point of time. – Yeah, K02. That’s the all-train for now. So, I’ve only had them for a year. So, I haven’t tried them out for a hundred yet or anything like that, so.
– You like them so far? – Yeah, so far. They did okay in the snow and all that. – Awesome. All right, let’s move on to our next question here. It’ll probably be our last one. Looking at the time thing, we’re gonna get through this one and we’ll save the next one. Because I think the next one, the last question about onboard air would almost be a whole episode itself. So, question number three.
And we’re gonna go back and start with Larry again.
And it’s fitting that we’re starting with Larry on this one. Because question number three is, have you ever fabricated something for your rig? And if so, are you happy with how it turned out?
– Well, I’ve fabricated a few things on my rig.
And so far, it’s like everything else you do. You get done with it. You wanna redo a few things. So, I mean, I’m no different than everybody else. But there’s been quite a bit of stuff we’ve built for the Jeep.
And, you know, we always wanna do a better job after you see it. Everybody is pretty much the same way. But I think that’s part of being a Jeeper too. You have the natural, want to build or change or do something to your rig constantly no matter when you’re theoretically done. – Okay. What is this word done? I don’t know. – That’s why I said theoretically. – Could you spell it? Country of origin? I’m not sure I understand that word.
Awesome.
So, Larry, I know just, just to help us wheeling with you quite a bit.
Just off the top of my head, rear tire carrier, skid plates, rear trail vines. – The rear tire carrier and
the aluminum pullout drawer system I built for the JL
and the dash bar to mount all your stuff on. And yeah, I always like to keep the torch, keep the torch running. – Control arms. I remember seeing a video on that. – Control arms and… – Larry. – Yes, sir. – Did you say pull out?
– That’s his rear. – But I said rear first. (laughing) – Cushion, cushion. – That’s a, so I think you fabricated so much for your Jeep. You had to go get bigger springs for the rear, if I remember correctly. – Well, I did say earlier it was 6,000 pounds.
– She’s a hefty thief. – She’s not light. – When you do something, I don’t know, just randomly I’ll talk in my head, I’m gonna throw out something. But like, say if you have a trailer and you have a problem with the hub or whatever. You kind of want to see that really pulling up because it’s got all these tools in the back of it. – Well, we have an expert here with that. I’ll let him talk about that. (laughing) – Matt, you’re up next, it sounds like. Larry called you out there. So, what’s your fabrication experience there? – So surprisingly on the Jeep, I really normally end up identifying an aftermarket part that is gonna end up looking better.
I don’t wanna play, but that’s on the jail almost everything’s available, right?
And I think, especially about an older Jeep that I was running as a trail rig, it’d be a lot different. But yeah, so instead of fabricating, doing a drawer system and rooftop system and stuff, I fabricated the trailer last year. And that was a huge learning experience. And really that’s what it is to me. We talked earlier about doing maintenance, but it really is about like,
set a target on something and doing it and learning what you need to be able to do that. So like, Larry, everything Larry’s done is because he’s learned the pieces to get there and then you challenge yourself as you go. And I think that’s the fun part of being a Jeeper, right? And whether that means you’re actually fabricating a piece or replacing the piece that you broke, I guess it’s a fun part of it. – Don’t skip over what you said. You built the trailer, right? We’ve seen from ground up. So that wasn’t a white feet, just build that whole thing. It looked like it was store bought. So kudos to that build. – Oh yeah, he laid right here on the, how many times on the Zoom calls? I mean, he’d be sitting there, we welded, laid out welded together the frame of it and had to mold and form the outside walls and the roof and the curves. And we saw quite a bit of frustration. A lot of beer here.
(laughing)
There’s a lot of beer invested in that thing. It may rival the cost of the parts.
(laughing) – Awesome. All right, Chip, what about you? – I am more of a bolt on guy. I can’t weld.
I really, I don’t, I mean, outside of being creative, like how I wire stuff, like when I, where I’m out on the radio or where I’m running wires or where I’m doing those kinds of things, which might be a little bit more unique and customized to me, but I really, I don’t have the skillset to fabricate. So I’m gonna search out and one, start looking at my buddies Jeeps, right? And what they’ve had success with, just like listening to the show, I think that’s probably been one of the biggest things that I’ve gotten off the Jeep talk show is listening to what everybody’s doing and then hearing what parts have worked for them and weighing it in. Is it in my budget or is it not in my budget, right? So are you buying the high-end stuff? You buying the low-end stuff or you buy the most functional? I’m leaning towards the most functional. I look at price secondary to functionality and durability and performance, but yeah, I’m a bolt-on guy. So I’d strap on guy, whatever you wanna consider it. – Well, I mean, I think similar to that, you can be a bolt-on guy, but how many things have you had to modify after you buy it? So like just as an example, I bought brackets and stuff like that. And then, you know, I’m chopping them up. I’ve got ones where I’ve kind of had to add a piece of steel to the outside of them because I needed to extend it or whatever it is. Not really talking about getting them scratched, but modifying. – Right, so you’re still getting a cutting wheel out occasionally and shaving off part of a bumper to fit the winch in that I wanted.
You’re drilling an extra hole for something to mount correctly or maybe my track bar mount.
I didn’t upgrade the track bar mount when I upgraded my track bar. So we had to, you know, kind of play around there to get it to fit right. So yeah, you’re adapting.
I don’t, I guess, is that fabricating is when you’re adapting? I don’t know, maybe. – I think if you’re modifying, I mean, there’s, I mean, you can look at fabricating at the level of Larry, which I think not very many of us are at that level. – Right, no. – I mean, you kind of got to get started, right? And what I found is the more I’ve adapted parts to kind of start to work on it, the further I’m willing to adapt, you know, the more I’m willing to go in and I think that’s close enough. So now I find myself at Lowe’s looking at parts that are not related to anything at all, but saying, “Oh, I could use that if I cut this, I’ve got that,” and you kind of put it in there. – You know, it’s a big deal to me. I’ve got some inner fender flares that I have not mounted yet, but it requires nutserts, right? So now I’ve got to drill holes in my Jeep that I wasn’t gonna, you know, I really have a struggle of, you know, newer Jeep drilling holes in it to mount whatever, what, you know, if you’re mounting body armor, if you’re mounting the inner fender flares and you’re drilling and putting nutserts in, taking a drill to my Jeep is not, I mean, it made me hesitate when I put the,
what was it, I was mounting on the rear tailgate.
I guess it was just, it was a pack. It was, I think it’s Smittybilt, but it was a pack that’s got three pouches where I can hold my winch controller and a jump pack and some different things that are secured on the, but that meant I had to drill into the tailgate. And I was like, “Oh, this is permanent,” right? I’m making permanent holes in my Jeep, but it’s my Jeep, right? And hell, I just got the title today in the mail. So it’s paid for it, whatever I got, you know? So it’s a great thing. You know, just, I’m like, okay, so I’m gonna do what I wanna do because it’s my Jeep. – And not the banks anymore. That’s even better.
Congratulations there. So, hey, Andrew, what about you? You got the welder out every once in a while, maybe a grinder or two? – I like to classify as Southern engineering. (laughing)
You know, cut a little bit here, well, a little bit there, you know, measure twice, but still do damn short, you know? – Go back to Lowe’s. – Yeah, go back to Lowe’s, you know? That’s my kind of fabrication. I mean, yeah, I can absolutely do it, but you know, I also look for the parts that you can bolt on and modify as needed for your use. I mean– – There’s a lot of engineering that goes into that aftermarket. So, I mean– – Yeah, exactly. – If someone else can engineer it, and I can use half the part and cut it in half, and then, you know, if I would break the part, I got the other half still, so.
(laughing) – All right, what about you, Chris?
– No, I don’t fabricate anything. I’m like Chip said, I’m a bolt-on guy.
Or if anybody remembers back in the day, it might be a little dated, but Chip and Larry will appreciate this.
– Billie Jean King was the spokeswoman for Snap-on Tools.
(laughing) – Okay, this is, it must be inside. I mean, Chip and Larry are laughing heavy here. What’s the joke? – They get it. – That was Woke before Woke was popular. – Exactly.
(laughing) – That’s identifying who’s the man or woman, right?
– I think I’m starting to catch it. – It’s like somebody who may have won a Special Olympics or– – No, no, no, no, John. Look up Billie Jean King and Snap-on Tools. – I will do that for the app for the show. – Not at work.
(laughing) – Not safe for work, so. – But no, there’s a surgery now called adedictomy. – Yeah. – It can get done, but it’s different. – Yeah, but no, I’m a bolt-on guy, just like Billie Jean King. – Just like Chip.
(laughing) I wanted to bring up the Billie Jean King joke when Chip was talking, but I didn’t wanna be rude.
– Blaine, you gotta save his man. Bring his back.
– So I’m kind of a combination of kind of everybody here. So I’ll do some fabrication when needed, but you know, bolt-on, especially in the Jeep world, it just seems like there’s already something made,
probably 10 of them, that will do what you’re trying to fabricate. And you can usually buy it, get a chip to you, and install it for cheaper, and better than what I can make it for in a lot of cases. I will say that prior to my Jeeps, I was wheeling pretty hard, a Prukav F-150.
And for those, there’s not as much of an aftermarket world like there are for the Jeeps. So you can get a lift kit, you can get tires, and anything from there, you’re pretty much on your own. And so like for that, I had a stock bumper on the front, but I wanted to run a winch. So I’m like, okay, I bought a winch. How the hell am I gonna get it on there? Because there was very few bumpers you can get without getting some really huge like ranch type bumpers, but for off-road. So I just built my own inside the bumper. So the bumper was still stock, but I had a 12,000 pound winch sitting inside of it. And it worked great. But it would blow people’s minds when they’d see that thing sitting there with the roller fairlead sticking out, like how the hell did you do that?
So, you know, you just basically, you know, get some metal and figure out a way to make it work, right? And not be afraid to break shit. – Yeah, just experiment. That’s fabrication, right? Experimenting. – Yeah, I’ve had other stuff where like I had an old Smittybilt winch once, and then when everybody started coming out with all the wireless winch controllers, I’m like, well, I want a wireless controller. And so I didn’t want to pay the ridiculous money this Smittybilt wanted to convert that to wireless. So I went to Harvard Freight and bought their cheap ass little $25 wireless controller for their winch, took apart this Smittybilt electronics and figured it all out and made them if they work.
(laughs) – That’s awesome. – So yeah, there’s always something you can do to make it work. It’s just how much dedication and time you want to put into it. But that’s part of the fun part of Jeepin too, is you know, you can just sit there and I enjoy working on this stuff as much as I do enjoy wheeling it, so. – Yeah, I think that’s a common theme in most Jeepers that they love tinkering, but they love making it their own, so. – Although I don’t enjoy fixing stuff that’s broken. – No, it’s not as much fun. – Modify it. – You want to put the fun parts on, not the repair parts. Awesome, all right, Garrett, you got any fabrication stories, anything you’ve done to DJ linkage repair in a parking lot or not?
Or anything like that? – No, I haven’t really done any welding fabrication to my current Jeeps, but when I was in high school, I took a bunch of welding classes. So I worked on my dad’s Jeep, and then a guy that we were friends with had an off-road shop and he would sell like eight eights with a swap, truss swaps on him, and I weld on them for him and stuff like that. But I haven’t done anything to my current Jeeps that I’ve had. – All right, Travis, what about you? – Yeah, buddy.
– My part. I mean, lights and electrical, thousand times over. I’ve figured out ways to do and what to do. I mean, to YJ, I’ve done a lot of work because I’ll see new items for new Jeeps and I get jealous of it. Therefore, I figure out a way to build it, make it happen. Is it welding? No, it’s never welding, I can’t weld. But if it’s bolting, metal bending, if it’s things along that to make things fit, I’m gonna figure it out and make it happen.
That stoplight that I currently paid ungodly amounts for from Oracle for my third brake light behind the rear spare tire, I made one out of a pizza pan at one time. I’d seen it one time somewhere. I mean, talking on the talk show, just search and Jeep forums and everything else, I saw that brake light. I built one and the next thing I know, the world, everybody and their moms got it, including myself.
But it’s just, I put under dash cameras or under vehicle cameras based on
what was truck night in America. They were running over logs and they had to just mount and balance and make sure they didn’t fall off. I’m like, I wanna do this for the trail just in case I ever need it. Do I need it or need it? No, I don’t. But I’m gonna fabricate, make anything electrical.
Hearing him say, it took a Smittybilt or a Harbor Freight wireless wind setup. I’m like, I wanna do that to my Smittybilt when some of my watch ain’t out. It just, you hear things, you can do it. There’s nothing limiting anyone.
The ForexE, now hadn’t done a damn thing. I did, I bought limb risers. I was gonna buy them and I went to Home Depot, I actually went to Lowe’s and priced out everything to do it. And I was like, yeah, no, I don’t wanna do this. I can buy them on Amazon for 40 bucks. So I went and bought some, but again, it was tap sets. I didn’t wanna tap set. So I was like, what can I do? And I got some ground screws. That’s ground screws into aluminum, but they’re holding solid as shit. If they rip out, I’m gonna find that one hit a limb. But right now, I’m like, they are tight set. I’m gonna drill in, I’m gonna do whatever I gotta do to my Jeep.
It’s just, yeah, make it yours, do what you wanna do, have fun. – Absolutely. – Did you run limb risers on your YJ? – No, on the YJ, no, on the ForexE, yes. – So, a lot of people look at limb risers and they’re like, they equated to like a snorkel for discussion, right? You’re like, okay, so is this a wanna be off-roader? Is this a mall crawler with limb risers on it? Why? But if you’re– – I very much agree. – If you’re running through woods, that’s huge. And unless people are running through tight woods, you’re running Moab, you don’t need limb risers. But you’re running out through Uari, you’re running through the Badlands, you’re running out East in AOA or Ouch Creek, some of these areas. Limb risers actually save a lot of scratches, a lot of dings, potentially your windshield.
– I think that goes to, when we’ve talked in the past, we try to talk about specifically what we would recommend to someone else, but that’s almost an impossible thing to do on a national level, right? You really gotta talk about kind of what you did and the choices you made and kind of why, because wheeling is so different. Like you said, Southeast wheeling to West Coast wheeling, I mean, they’re so different. And what you need to do to wheel in both areas is gonna vary greatly. I mean, you can make an all-around rig for sure. That’s called a factory Jeep. I mean, a factory Jeep is pretty dang capable at an all-around scenario. So when you start modifying, you’re kind of modifying it for your specific type of weight. So, all right, Mike, you’re gonna round us out here. What you, you got anything that you’ve done any kind of fabrication work with?
– Not a whole lot.
I have a JK, so, wow, that stuff is mainly bolt-on. There’s like a lot of the newer ones are,
a lot more popular and have more options on bumpers and everything else. There too, one, the auto models where you don’t really have the selection and all that.
So a lot of it’s, for me, a lot of it’s not bolt-on. – Yeah, I think that a lot of the fabrication really comes down to the availability, the aftermarket support. And a lot of our newer rigs definitely have a quite a bit more aftermarket support than a lot of the older rigs. So you talk to someone with, I don’t know, a quad-gab F-150, they’re gonna have a lot more fabrication experience just because they’ve had to. It’s a necessity item, so, absolutely.
– And that’s the YJ. I mean, the YJ, anything I want that I want to adjust, build, or do, I had to, I’d buy a new product
and then I would have to adjust. And again, that’s why I like that brought up. You have to adjust it to fit an older model Jeep. Everything can be done on those old Jeeps. My YJ, I wanted CMM mirrors before he designed and built those for those. And I wanted upper raised mirrors because I saw it on a JK and I was like, I like that design, I like what it is. I fabricated and maked it.
I wanted a, what was one thing I love? My flagpole mount. And I wanted it built and designed like one I’d seen on a JK. And I was like, I’m gonna build this, I’m gonna make it. You know, it’s just, you see something, you like it, you can figure it a way out because the Jeeps have it, they’ve changed a lot over the years engine wise, but body dynamics haven’t that much to where something can’t be adjusted, can’t be fabricated slightly majority wise. I mean, it can be fabricated, it can be done to fit and work.
– Yep, absolutely. – I think everybody needs to look at doing a passenger side under dash cam like Travis’s idea.
– Just go post the video online.
– Only fans, baby, make some money. (laughing) – All right.
All right, so that’s the show today. Just to kind of add in a little bit there at the very end, I’ll do a little bit of translation for that Deep Southern speak you heard. So when Travis said I’ve maked it, he meant he made it. So just everybody was curious about that. So that was it for tonight’s episode. Hopefully you didn’t mind me substituting it here for Tony and the format change up just a little bit. Next week, Tony will be back. He’ll be back in charge. He’ll be back running the show. And I think all of us will be happy, right? Glad to have Tony back. So I wanna say thanks again to Trails Off Road for sponsoring this episode.
Support the sponsors that support the show. Make sure you get out there and visit trailsoffroad.com and take advantage of that big discount. And like I said before, Patreon will get you a good discount and always love the subscriptions. Thanks again, everybody. And we’ll catch you next time.
– You’re my friend. You’re my new friend. (laughs)
Episode 1006 – Elvis Has Left the Building!
Elvis, ahh 392, has left the building
Have you ever spent an unGodly amount of money for concert tickets simply because you had to be the performer? Well, think of this that way. The FINAL V8 Jeep Wrangler will cost $101,890.
The question is, if you knew Elvis was going to die soon, would you have spent ANY kind of money to see his last concert?
If your answer is yes, well you bastard you should have tried to save his life! You make me sick… but I digress.
Unlike Elvis, you don’t have to worry about losing an eye when that over-stressed body suit button loses the battle and rockets into the audience.
The Final Edition 392 Wrangler has bronze accents, Mopar accessories, and special commemorative plaques.
Only 3700 units will be produced in total and it starts at $101,890.
The treatment starts off with decals for the hood and front fender vents, and the 17-inch beadlock-capable wheels feature a bronze finish. A winch, a Mopar grille guard, and Mopar rock sliders come standard, and the Jeep includes a 0.5-inch suspension lift kit that brings ground clearance up to 11.5 inches. Inside, the interior features black Nappa leather and gold stitching, along with a special shifter medallion and plaque commemorating this as a Final Edition model. Jeep also throws in a fold-out table and an 83-piece toolkit
My 2 story house was $108k, but like I once heard on Blue Bloods. You can sleep in your Jeep, but you can’t drive your house to work.
So many Antennas
We’ve spoken about this in the past, but it’s time for a refresher. In a recent prior Round Table recording, I was asked some questions that led to an antenna discussion.
Antennas on Jeep all work the same way and are governed by the same physics principles whether it is CB, GMRS, classic AM or FM news and entertainment.
How long antennas are, or aren’t directly related to the frequency they are used on to transmit or receive.
GMRS General Mobile Radio Service radio antenna length is .5258 feet (or 6.31 inches)
CB Citizen band radio antenna length is 9.072 feet (or about 109 inches)
FM news and entertainment antenna length is 2.36 feet
AM news and entertainment antenna radio length is 311 feet.
Now I know you’ve seen antennas for CB, GMRS, and especially for AM/FM good time radio that were longer or shorter. Usually shorter.
Antennas can be shorter but things are done to them so that your radio THINKS it’s the right sized antenna. That doesn’t mean it works better, it actually works worse.
This is why I’ve said before, when you put that stubby, or 50 caliber bullet antenna on your Jeep, you are making radio reception worse (much worse) than the factory antenna.
If you haven’t noticed, the factory Jeep antenna is much shorter than the 311-foot antenna you need for AM New/Entertainment radio.
Most of us don’t use AM radio any longer, but if there is an emergency and you’re fleeing to safety you might need that factory antenna to hear the lies the government tells us anyway. Oh wait, yeah keep that short antenna.
Find a place to store your factory antenna in, or on your Jeep so you can swap it if necessary.
Finally to wrap it up, the antenna “wire” coax length. An old wives tale, or in this case, CB’rs tale is that the coax should be in multiple of the lengths of the antenna, 20 feet, etc… WRONG! The coax is designed to be invisible to the antenna system. And if your antenna is installed properly the length of the coax should have no effect on how well the antenna performs. The shorter the coax the less signal loss and the better overall performance of the radio and antenna.
You’ll have to cut your coax to length and then replace the connector on the end, usually on the radio side, but either is fine. No twisting wire splices, there has to be a connector soldered to the coax end.
Newbie Nuggets with Wendy
Holding up fingers as you pass other Jeepers
Have you passed other Jeepers on trails and wondered how many were in their group? It’s helpful to know because if their group has more jeeps than yours and you pulled over, it would be helpful info to know when the last jeep passed.
How do you let the other group know how many are in your group? We hold up the number of fingers for the number of jeeps.
In a nutshell, you are telling the other on-coming group how many are in your group so they 1) stay put and let us pass and 2) they can count the jeeps as we pass and once all are through, then they can continue on their ride. Sometimes the trail is very narrow and there isn’t room for both groups to pass each other. Someone has to stop, pull over, and let the other group through. If you are alone (I don’t always recommend that) and you come across a group, you may be the one backing up to make room for the other group.
I can’t tell you how many other drivers have no idea why we were putting our fingers up. The look and the responses are priceless. Some think we are doing the Jeep wave, others hold up the same # of fingers, and others just ignore us.
We have started to roll down our window and tell them how many are in our group but there are still so many people that don’t understand the hand signals. One time a group shook their heads in agreement like they understood, but then proceeded to continue on. We knew there was no way we all could pass, so Bill had to shout at them to STOP and say wait till we pass.
For anyone new to jeeping off-roading, there is an unwritten code in the off-road world to let others know how many are in your group. I get it, if you have never been told what this all means, how would you know? Well, I’m sharing this info for you so that YOU will know and YOU can help educate others that you wheel with.
Basically, the lead jeep holds up the # of fingers to represent the # of jeeps behind the leader. Then each person behind that should hold up the number they have behind them, etc., etc. The last Jeep 4 holds up a closed fist to represent there are no more jeeps behind them. Now in today’s sensitive culture, I understand holding up a fist may seem strange, but a closed fist in the off-road world means there isn’t anyone behind us. So don’t worry about the snowflakes out there!
I do think it’s our responsibility to mentor others, but when you deal with 4×4 drivers who are not in a Jeep it’s a whole different world. If that driver happens to have off-road experience from riding motorcycles or quads chances are good they probably know what it all means. Today’s new drivers of side-by-sides and Jeeps have to learn as they go. If you are experienced, teach the new drivers the code and let them in on the secret of the fingers. It’s good manners on the trail and you can set an example for others to follow.
(https://www.youtube.com/user/backcountrydriver)
Trails 411: https://www.jeep4x4school.com
Fabrication Freezy, with Larry – JeepingMo
My favorite EJS vendors
With EJS starting this week and the vendor show being on the Friday after this show airs, I thought I would share some of my favorite vendors and products that I use and can endorse, and are going to be at the show. And I’ll have a link for the vendors at the show.
And I just want to say that there are a lot of good vendors and products at the show, but I can’t cover them all.
For airing backup, there are two products that I have and use on the trail.
We all know the Power Tank, is a great way to air up without needing a compressor.
If you want to run a compressor, I very much like my MoreFlate model.
Both have worked great and are high-quality products.
Now one that I have covered many times to organize your tools is Adventure Tool Company.
They make high-quality tool rolls and tool storage solutions, they have something new in every EJS that I have seen, so check them out.
If you’re looking for Trail welders, there are a couple of units there also.
Premier power welder is a unit that is installed in your rig and lets you stick weld on the trail.
As an attachment to it is the bun trail spool flux core welder.
Now if you want a portable solution that you don’t need your rig there for, or carry batteries for. Check out the Karnage mig welder that is enclosed with the batteries in the case.
If you need lights, there is Tyri off-road lighting. I have seen their lights on the trail.
They look like high-quality products, I don’t have any Tyri lights. But I know Tony does, and I know he loves them.
Then there is Rockslide Engineering with their products, I love the step sliders we have from Rockslide. We have beaten them and they have done great. If you want a step that you can slide a heavy rig on, rockslide has them.
Now there are many quality products at the show, and you couldn’t go wrong with any of them, so if I didn’t reference them don’t send in the hate mail. But you can call in and tell us about your favorite vendor there.
Now one product that I am installing after the recording of this show is Racing Optics. They make a windshield protectant film for your Jeep windshield.
You can also see videos on most of these products at https://www.youtube.com/@JeepingMo.
So reach out and tell us what your thoughts on the show are.
Must-Have Stuff for Your Jeep!
Laird Technologies – 450-470 Unity Antenna, Black $22.00
6” long, great for 450-470 MHz which is perfect for GMRS or 70cm HAM band.
You’ll need to purchase an NMO mount and coax unless you already have an antenna mount. This will work better than a “Ghost” antenna.
https://www.amazon.com/Laird-Technologies-450-470-Quarterwave-Antenna/dp/B0079555WM
Episode 1005 – Paul Radio Chatter Game
Paul is the co-founder of Radio Chatter, a conversation starter game for off-roaders and overlanders. Founded in 2023 with his wife Bethany (yes it was her idea), the couple aims to create more adventures for people by using conversations to expand the networks of fellow adventurers.
Episode 1004 – Fail Of The Century!
Fail of the century
I was reading an article from TopGear, called Fail of the Century. Specifically about the 2001 Jeep Cherokee. I was ready to fight someone until I read further. The failure was what Jeep replaced the XJ with, the Liberty.
Jeep’s ‘XJ’ Cherokee, built between 1984 and 2001, was one of America’s great automotive designs: Seen in many shows and movies. Tom Hanks had a blue one in Castaway. Liam Neeson drove a white one in “Taken”, and Donnie Wahlberg drove a green one.
Did anyone who loves the XJ expect Jeep to come out with a complete dud as a replacement, no I didn’t either. All Chrysler had to do was to keep the iconic shape of the XJ and update it while overhauling the Cherokee’s underpinnings.
Only this was Chrysler, and this was the early 2000s, obviously, it didn’t do the sensible thing. For the ‘KJ’ generation, Liberty, did the exact opposite, changing everything beloved about the XJ and ushering in a new shape that was, to use a technical automotive design term, revolting. A body that was reminiscent of a VW bug, Round headlights, instead of square, and the truly horrible change, IFS.
Us Cherokee owners had renewed hope that Jeep had learned their lesson when they announced the return of the Jeep Cherokee, but sadly this was just a move even further away from the Cherokee XJ design, but that’s another story.
Jeep TJ Future Classic?
We were just talking about square headlights and now a round headlight vehicle is destined to become a classic? We’ll we’re Jeepers and we’re funny like that.
The original Wrangler was the YJ and it had square headlights. My interest in Jeeps started with the CJs around the late 70’s. I couldn’t get one due to the high price for liability insurance for a kid until 25.
I wouldn’t return to considering a Jeep until I was in my 30s. By then it was a TJ. I can’t say that I even knew what Jeeps were available at the time. All I knew was I wanted a Wrangler. Everyone knows the story by now, last minute change and we purchased an XJ.
A long-time rumor says that “TJ” stands for True Jeep. Legendary 4.0l engine, solid front and rear axles.
Despite being produced during one of Chrysler’s more underwhelming quality control regimes, the TJ soldiers on in the hearts of Jeep enthusiasts on the strength of its solid platform and indefatigable inline-six. Moreover, the model that replaced it, dubbed JK, landed with a bit of a “thud,” leading some to wonder whether the Internet-generation humor implied by its chassis code was perhaps deliberate. So while modernized and better-suited to everyday life than the YJ it replaced, it retains many of the key components that made its predecessor so sought-after.
1997 was the first; by 2000 or 2001, most of the kinks in the early models had been ironed out. Those who want an out-of-the-box rock crawler should start their search with 2003 when the Rubicon model was first introduced to the Wrangler lineup. It’s now old enough to drink.
There are alternatives to the TJ, if you don’t mind losing the comfort of the TJ coil springs, the YJ is a very good off-road performer. Of course, the JK, and JL are natural replacements and the ride and updated electronics make it a great day to day driver.
Jeep Talk Show Gladiator Update
Just in time for Easter Jeep Safari the Motobilt skid system is installed. Thanks to Zack, owner of Houston’s Unlimited Off-road, the final skid plate was installed. My Sport S gladiator didn’t have several threaded connection points for the skid plate braces. Motobilt sends weld-in bungs, but I don’t have a welding machine, nor have I ever welded.
This is where Zack came in. Frankly, I’m happy to have the help, especially from someone that does Jeep build daily, but also it pisses me off that I can’t do it myself. I need to get a welding machine and learn.
You guys are probably getting sick of hearing me gush about the Motobilt stuff. It’s very nerve-racking when you don’t have a vendor that you know will produce good stuff. It was hard finding a company that I could trust with my hundreds of dollars on a front bumper. I loved the designs of GenRight and considered their aluminum stubby bumper. Eventually, I went with Motobilt Crusher’s front bumper. I was very impressed with the quality and welds on it. Next was the rear bumper, and I knew for a gladiator i needed “rocker” protection between the rear tires and the bumper. Motobilt had a solution for that in the Crusher rear bumper.
Wendy had a JTS event in California that required a skid system if you didn’t have 37” tires. This got me looking again, and I found the Motobilt skid system. Knowing the quality of the bumpers made it easy to trust Motobilt for even more protection. Going to EJS last year and hearing that scraping sound (I hear it at Hidden Falls also) encouraged me to get the skid system before EJS this year.
I have been in love with this skid system since I saw it online. Smooth, boat sides, and with 4 total skids it protects a lot! Laying on the ground looking under the gladiator is fun.
Sanding, priming, and painting the skids was a pain in the ass. Still, I think painting skids is far better than powder coating them, and a hell of a lot cheaper. 4 cans of primer and 6 cans of flat black paint.
Of course, while I was under the gladiator I saw more areas that need protection than what the skid system will protect.
The rear lower control arms frame side took a pretty good smack. Lower control arm skids are in my future.
Must-Have Stuff for your Jeep!
Rock Hard 4×4 Bolt-On Front and Rear Lower Control Arm Skid Plates for Jeep Gladiator JT 2020 – Current [RH-80515] $279.95
1/4″ Thick Steel
100% Bolt on Install
Fits All Control Arm Joints
Black Powder Coat Finish
100% Made in USA
Lifetime Warranty
Episode 1003 – Round Table
In this episode of the Round Table John Lee hosts the Round Table. Get a new and interesting take on the Round Table. You can join the Round Table recording on Tuesdays 7:30pm CT by going to https://jeeptalkshow.com/roundtable pass jeep #jeeptalkshow #jeep #jeeplife #jtschicchat
Episode 1002 – Jeep and EJS
Jeep Concept Vehicles
We here at the Jeep Talk Show have been wondering if Jeep was going to be at the Easter Jeep Safari this year! As you may remember Stelantis had pulled out of several events last year, including SEMA. We thought, surely, they would be at EJS, and they are!
Jeep has concept vehicles, that either I’m looking at NOW, when you’re hearing this, or will see during this week as I and several team members and listeners are at EJS 2024.
I’m hoping that this will be a yearly event that Jeep Talk Show each year.
Jeep describes its vehicles as “an entirely new collection of attention-grabbing, mission-capable concept vehicles.” Featuring a wide range of Jeep Performance Parts by Mopar. Can you say Jim Morrison?
Jeep has published small teasers about these concept vehicles. Looks like five Wranglers based on one Gladiator, and a Grand Wagoneer. As I recall this is similar to what was revealed in EJS 2023.
Stay tuned to the show, and our social media for first-hand JTS reporting and images. No telling who we might be speaking to about the Jeep concept vehicles.
Towed Jeep Goes Up in Flames
A man who was driving a car and towing a Jeep on Monday afternoon, March 11, pulled to the side of I-55 in Festus, unhooked the Jeep that had caught fire and fled while authorities dealt with the fire, authorities said.
The Festus Fire Department got a call about the vehicle fire at approximately 2:20 p.m., Chief Jeff Broombaugh said.
“A car was towing another vehicle on southbound I-55 just north of Hwy. A when a (Missouri State Highway Patrol) trooper followed it after seeing smoke from the towed vehicle,” Broombaugh said. “(The driver) pulled over. The state trooper tried to put (the fire) out with an extinguisher but could not.
“Herculaneum was first on the scene; then I got there. It was already about 50 percent involved. The gas tank had ruptured and was leaking gas. We got it out and remained on scene for about an hour.”
Broombaugh estimated traffic on I-55 southbound was stopped for 20 to 30 minutes.
The Jeep was destroyed by the fire and nothing else is known about the vehicle, he said.
No firefighters were injured during the incident, he added.
Cpl. Dallas Thompson, spokesperson for the Highway Patrol, said the trooper was busy dealing with the fire while the male driver fled.
“The driver unhooked and pulled forward from the (Jeep),” Thompson said. “The trooper turned to talk to fire personnel and the driver took off.”
Thompson said the matter remains under investigation, but the condition of the Jeep after the fire left little evidence behind.
The Festus and Herculaneum fire departments extinguished the car fire.
Must-Have Stuff for Your Jeep!
Godora ECO-Friendly Poo Gel Powder with Spoon, Fast-Absorbing Camping Toilet Chemicals, Rapidly Biodegradable Eco Gel for Portable Toilet, for Outdoor Portable Bedpans & Emergencies $13.99
Episode 1000 – Yes! 1,000 Episodes!