In the latest Jeep Talk Show Round Table episode, Tony joins the Zoom audience for a lively discussion. Recorded every Tuesday at 7:30pm CT, you can be part of the fun by visiting jeeptalkshow.com/contact to join. Tony asks up to four questions to random Jeepers, starting with: “A Jeep crawler is going on a multi-day overlanding expedition—what should they take?” Tune in for engaging conversations and tips from fellow Jeep enthusiasts!
rely on a cooler to keep your stuff that like cold or cool for like food and drinks and stuff like that ice is I mean you’re constantly on the move sometimes if you’re off on the trail you’re going to be there for a day or two like that and got waterlogged food so you got to wrap it up and like it’s just it’s a pain so if you can get even one of the smaller and they’re making a lot of a lot of them more cost effective now you don’t just have the big boys like arb and the other ones there’s bodega there’s several of them out there but just getting a fridge that can run off of like one of the jacory or blue yeti or whatever battery packs man that’s that you will absolutely love that because you don’t have to constantly fight for ice that’s I mean I’m sure everybody’s got a bunch of recommendations but that would definitely be mine and when you get off camber all your ice water spills out of your cooler hey well you’re driving down the trail when it’s bound so you don’t hear it sloshing inside so does uh do you would you recommend like a separate battery uh for the for the uh for the the cooler or yeah there’s um uh gills got a great system and and it’s it’s definitely the one that I would recommend but he’s got like a there’s different brands all over the place right but there’s a gold zero there’s the blue yeti there’s the jacory there’s a bunch of different these battery packs that can have inverters but they also have dc power so you can actually connect them up to the cigarette lighter in your jeep and charge them while you’re driving and then once there’s no power to them depending on the size you can get you can go a couple of days powering that refrigerator uh without charging the battery so um they’re not that expensive and I would remind everybody that prime day is coming up on amazon and that’s when I bought my blue yeti that I have uh from prime day it was like 55 to 60 off and so I know jacory’s already injured they’re gonna have some big sales and and who yeti always has seen some pretty good sales going on on amazon so um they’re not that expensive and you can go completely off grids I always go when I go out but bring mine when we go long trips because I can put in the passenger seat charge phones I got my ipad up on on the uh mountain of the dash so I can plug that in my uh garment in reach is plugged into it um so I’ve always got a way to charge even without you know using the jeep do uh john do you do anything uh for uh jump starting the the main battery or batteries depending if you have a jk or a jl I know you have a jk but uh whatever you’re over landing like that and you maybe don’t do battery management properly um do you have any concerns about uh getting the jeep started again no I mean I got the one of those lithium ion you know jump starter packs there also fairly cheap again on about October 8th 9th is prime day and that’s when all these deals come it’s amazing what you can get on this kind of stuff I think I bought mine on on prime day I’ve actually bought one for each vehicle that I have for my daughter’s vehicles wife’s vehicle or whatever and they were normally like 160 a piece of thing I got them for 70 bucks pop so they were they were really discounted through prime day I think so I like prime yeah if I can interject a little there uh roger I see you have your hands raised go right ahead so with the blue eddy the one thing I would suggest to anybody that’s going to get one of those battery packs is make sure you get one that’s passive so like some of them um you can charge it or you can use it whereas like the blue eddy like john was talking about it’s a passive one so you can actually plug it in and charge it while you’re driving and plug your cooler into it well so it’ll run the cooler and charge the yeti at the same time so it doesn’t take away from the yeti as long plugged into the vehicle and as far as like jump starting a vehicle I have to I use the genesis I have the dual battery setup by genesis so once my voltage gets down to a certain point it disconnects the two batteries then if in the morning my battery was dead I just gotta hit the button and it jump starts itself very nice does that make your jeep run better backwards yep it worked great forward the other day all right let’s get over to tony mitten that also has his hand up tony what uh what can you uh tell this uh uh new new person the new
Hey, let’s set a base camp, unload here, then go do the crazy trail. And otherwise if you’re, you know, you’re, you’re not doing the crawling stuff anymore, right? Like, so if you’re going 20 miles to your next destination, you don’t have to be prepared to do a full, you know, you’re not doing pritch it, you know, for 20 miles, right? So you’ll, you’ll be okay. You know, you’ll fill up with what you need to do to do it.
So Chris, I don’t think you do a, do overlanding much or, well, he took his headset off, so he may not be able to hear me. How about you, Bob? If you Bob, what overlanding advice would you give a crawler?
So for crawler, minimalist, you don’t need a lot. So I go out of my TJ and I’ve started camping out of that again. I started pulling back out some of my old stuff I used to use for backpacking. Um, earlier this year, I just bought two, I got great deals on a couple of really nice backpacking tents. They’re five pounds and seven pounds. They’re the big one is probably seven, eight inches around by 14 inches long.
Uh, I got a, my old mummy bag I pulled out. Actually I’ve got a compact camping blanket, super warm.
Uh, but I started looking at supplementing, getting rid of my bigger tent, my, uh, gazelle, uh, I still have it, but for going with the TJ, that doesn’t work. So I got a backpacking tent. I got backpacking cookware, all this stuff and it’s small. It fits in with the recovery gear. So the only bulky item I still have is I have a really nice sleeping pad. Oh yeah. I think that’s really important. Something that makes it comfortable. If you’re laying on the ground or like, like me and the bed of the gladiator, you really need something that’s, uh, uh, doesn’t feel like the bed of the vehicle. At least I do. Some of you guys, it doesn’t bother, but I can sleep through pretty much anything. All right, Jacob, I see how to raise my hand on this damn thing. So I’ve just, you don’t get to, you don’t get to talk to, you figure it out. Chip, I want to, I want to talk to Jacob real quick and then I’ll come back to you. Chip Jacob, I see you got your hand raised. Uh, what do you, what, what advice can you give this crawler? Want to do multi-day overlanding event? So my wife and I started off with an expedition trailer. Um, we used to use it behind our H three and we’ve since moved on to a truck camper that we, we boondock with.
And the big one is no matter what you do, you, you got it, Bob mentioned, you got to, you really got to watch your weight and what you actually need and be realistic about what you’re, you’re going to use. Because no matter, I don’t know, it’s the Boy Scout or the jeeper, you’re always reaching for that next tool you think you might need and I can’t count how much extra weight I’ve been hauling around, especially in the truck camper, because I’m taking my tools and I’m taking, you know, oh, we might need this extra blanket or we might need this. And it didn’t matter if the, as the expo trailer of the camper, we’re, we’re always getting too much weight. And then, um, getting back to like the refrigerators, I’ve got three of those 12 volt refrigerators. I got a bougie RV and I got two Dometics and it doesn’t matter the size. And it seems to be like they all use about the same amount of power. And it’s not like, it’s not like, it’s not like, it’s not like, it’s not and I use roughly 600 watt hours per day per refrigerator. So, um, you need to have a solar panel, which adds more weight if you’re going to be out more than two or three days, because they a hundred amp hour. I got 200 amp hours on my, uh, my camper and without solar, without sun, without a generator, I’m only getting two to three days out of that 200 amp hours for those refrigerators.
you guys found a compact stove that’s not going to take up a lot of room, not add a lot of weight that could be used if you want to have more meals.
I use a back at backpacking stove. Oops. A jet boil works great. Jet boil flash for the jet bowl Genesis. Hembo Tusk.
Classic Coleman camping stove.
Really? Yeah, that’s the one we always we always use the Boy Scouts. But somebody had that that little suitcase looking thing. Well, they have a and one of those other companies from folding stove as well. That’s a two burner folding stove that’s the size of a large pot.
Yeah, that’s that. You’re talking about the Genesis jet boil.
I don’t know the name of it. I just know they had it. It’s orange and it folds in half. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s that’s that’s a Genesis jet boil or the jet boil Genesis. All right. I’m I’m going to skip in line here a little bit because I can. Greg, do you have any advice for I don’t know that you do any overlanding. I don’t know that you initially call it overlanding if you do do stuff like that. But we have a guy that used to crawling doing rock crawling and whatnot. But he’s going to be doing a multi land overland, a multi day overland trip. Do you have any suggestions of what he should take with him? Well, my first question would be, what is he driving? Did you ask for the orders because that’s the most important part. He did not provide the information. Yeah, that’s all the things you know. The Jeep.
Well, I know, but there’s lots of Jeeps. So if if he’s in a two door or if he’s in a YJ or if he’s in a speed day or if he’s in an XJ or if he’s in a JL, that all matters on. So I would go with the answer be similar for a JK and a JL. Right. A JK and a JL Wrangler, a two door or four door. I mean, a two door, four door room, but two door and four door to completely different animals. So, so that would be my first question is what are you driving? And how crawler is it? Because there’s crawlers that are. Bobbed in the front and Bobbed in the rear and dove tailed and, you know, our boat tailed and then there’s crawlers that are, they just have a slinky suspension, but it’s still a full body vehicle. So to answer the question, you really need to know, or to answer the question very well, you need to know the whole setup. Okay. I went back, I went back and looked at the message and quite often people, and you guys should know this, I don’t read the entire message.
So I get the gist of it and I quit reading because I don’t like reading. So in the request, he says, assume this person has a JLU or a gladiator is what he’s asking the question for. Okay. So JLU or gladiator, two completely different animals, but if you’ve got a JLU or a gladiator, the next is how crawler is it, right? Is it, is it a ramp champ? What does it do? Because that’s going to dictate the type of stuff you carry and where you put it. However, I’m going to say, um, you want your basics. If you’re over landing, you need somewhere to sleep. You need some form of some, some way to keep your food cold or have non perishable food with you. So, you know, you have to think of those two things first, um, sleeping and eating. Other than that, everything else is up to you. You can go as simplistic as humanly possible and bring a sleeping bag and sleep under the stars or, you know, a bed, cotton, sleep under the stars all the way to JLs and jail and gladiators. You know, you can do rooftop tents, you can do the other stuff. None of it is necessary, right? Over landing is just traveling a long distance while living off grid.
So you don’t need all the whiz bang stuff and you don’t need all the crazy
things to buy. Um, but if you choose to buy them, go for it. So prepare, if, if you think you’re going to go out for five days, prepare for eight,
you know, with your food and your water, if you, if you’re going to go out for a week, prepare for a week and a half, right? Always have a contingency plan. That’s good. And if you don’t have, if you don’t have enough material space to store a week and a half worth of food, well, you better be prepared, bring some fishing gear, bring some hunting gear, learn how to self survive. Because if you’re off grid for an extended period of time, you might not always be bringing the amount of supplies you need. So prepare for the worst, because if something bad happens, you might be stuck out there a little bit longer than you think. Yeah. I think being self sufficient like that is a great idea just for any situation that you might get in. There’s natural disasters all the time. Um, sometimes there’s government disasters and it’s a, it’s a good way to be able to take care of yourself and your family, being able to hunt and fish and set traps and so on and so forth. So. Yep. Um, also in today’s world, um, I would say it’s, it’s not very expensive to get a radio beacon, to get an emergency beacon that, you know, I mean, backpackers and hikers carry them. Why wouldn’t you throw one in your glove box? Right? And then if you pull that pin, emergency and rescue workers can locate you, whether it’s via satellite or via a helicopter or, you know, overlending to you, because even if you’re with a group, something bad happens. Those little emergency beacons could save your life or somebody else. It’s like a winch. Yeah. The, quite often you don’t use the winch for yourself. You use it for somebody else. So yeah, absolutely. It’s the same thing as the pistol I carry, right? I never want to use it, but I have it just in case. So, um, you know, just be prepared, right? Overlending is no different than rock crawling because when you’re overlending, you might find a pile of rocks you need to crawl over. You know, um, another one that I would say with, with true overlending is take it easy on your rig. Oh, that’s good. I fear. If you get to an obstacle that you know you can go over, but it’s a little challenging, take the bypass or stack some rocks and make it easier on your rig because snapping an axle shaft three day drive from the nearest road is an issue.
Um, bring some cash so that if somebody has to go to get parts for you, you can give them cash. An extra ball.
Yeah.
Um, we got to take it easier on your rig. When you’re overlending, don’t just do all the hard things because you know, you normally can do it, especially in a crawler, right? Guys in in purpose built crawlers tend to always take the gnarlier line. If you’re overlending, I would recommend that you don’t do that because you have a better chance of getting it back in the event of a problem. And that’s even if you have a group of people with you that can help winch you out or work on your rig, it may not be something you want to do. You may not have the right thing, but we, we, we could get into the off-road welders and all kinds of stuff that you could take. And then pretty soon you need a, a chase vehicle that’s carrying all of it. Um, and that’s, that’s me is that I always want to take too much stuff, uh, the go and do things. So, all right. So I see Chris has his hand up. Chris, what are you, what can you tell this, uh, would be overlander.
You’re muted, Chris.
All right. Let’s move on to Bill. I think Bill is still here. Bill, do you have, I mean, you’ve got quite a few things set up in your 392, uh, that I would say make it overland capable. Uh, do you, uh, you have any suggestions for, uh, for this gentleman, uh, Ed C as to what to carry for overlanding, overlanding instead of crawling?
Looks like Bill is not available.
Just a quick note, Tony. Sure. Just to, just to jump off of what, um, uh, Greg said is no matter what, do not delete your spare tire. You need a spare tire if you’re going to be anywhere away from civil duty. Yeah, I agree. Or what is it that you take, Greg? You have a bunch of plugs and stuff that you take with you. And yeah, I bring a bunch of cars and a power tank and some other goods. Um, I have literally used boot laces to stitch it higher back together. That’s what I was trying to remember. All right. Uh, let’s, uh, let’s see if Keith is there. Uh, Keith, do you have any, uh, any ideas for this crawler would be overlander?
Yeah. All I’ve ever learned was take a sandwich. That’s all you need. That’s right.
If you go in some place and you take a sandwich, then you’re overlanding. That’s right.
Pretty much what everybody’s been saying is, you know, take what you need. Try not to excess on it.
and he’s not one to really take it off road at that time. We’ve kind of turned him into an actual off-roader there a little bit. Bill and I have been working on it for a while with the guy. But anyway, it was really cool. And so I was like, I want to get one, but I need a four door. So I went up and custom ordered mine with a manual and all that. It’s a JK Rubicon.
Even got the window sticker with my name on it, right? When the custom order to come that way. So first time out didn’t even get off the park roads and all that. So I say a jeeper because that’s when I bought my first jeep. But I definitely I definitely took to it pretty quickly because it was it was just a lot of fun. And then, you know, a lot of it is not just about kind of hitting the big obstacles or whatever it is, but just the friends I’ve made along the way and the trips. Absolutely.
Yeah. We just got back from a trip to Colorado and it wasn’t even a big group. It was a small group, which is actually sometimes more more fun in that way. But Bob was there, Bill came. Dutch was there for a little while. So it was it was a blast. And then, you know, we’ve done Arizona to call her twice. We’ve got the events that it involves. And it’s just you meet a lot of people in the hell. We’re on a swim room now with like 20 freaking people. And all of that is because, you know, I custom ordered a jeep back in 2017. Technically, I ordered it in 16, but I didn’t get it. And you’re here every week unless there’s something major going on with your family, even when you’re on vacation to Florida, you’re here in the Zoom room with us. And I really appreciate that. And then you’re right. It’s it’s more than just a jeep. It’s the it’s the Jeep family.
Yeah, unless dance gets away, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you got to you got to dance. Yeah. When you got to dance, you got to dance. All right. So let’s see if let’s see if Tom P is is listening. I know he’s here in the on the Zoom room. Tom, how long have you been a jeeper?
Probably my first Jeep was a CJ five.
Back in a three.
And I currently unlike Chris, I currently have four Jeeps in my driver.
And the latest, the latest one’s a 23 gladiator that I’ve been kind of absorbed with. Nice. How do you like it? How does that compare to the other jeeps you’ve had in the past? Well, I mean, I like I like the ones we currently have. I’ve liked them all for different reasons.
But the gladiator, the more I drive it, the more I love it.
It’s a it’s a really, really nice Jeep. I’ve really enjoyed mine. I only the only thing I have to compare it to is the wife’s T.J. And our ex J. You notice I said I was going to say my but I corrected that really quick.
So I’ve been I’ve been very, very pleased with it so much so that the I haven’t driven the ex J. Since I brought the gladiator home, it was really cool finding out that I could do so many things off road with a gladiator with
just it was just really nice. I mean, I need to get back to the the ex J. And I will. But I got to clean up the damn garage first. All right. So let’s get over. I think I see. Is that Pat, is that you that I see right now? Pat, how about you? What do you how long you been a jeeper? Well, early on, I when I was just in my teens, I wanted to Jeep, but my my parents wouldn’t let me get one because that was back in the all they all roll over. Right. I and my dad was a 60 minutes guy. So right. Bastards. I didn’t get the option option there. And then as I kind of moved through things when I was in my late or my early 20s, I got in the car business and I I didn’t sell Jeep. So I didn’t have the option for it was really I had to drive what what was business oriented. Right. As I got deeper into it,
it I when I left the car business, finally, I bought my first F-150 because I thought I needed one of those because I always wanted one. Sure. I created it for my first JK and I and it had one hundred and five thousand miles on at the time. I drove it for quite a long time.
So if it’s just fine, it’s fun. It’s mixing it up with, with all the jeepers and not all of them are going to think the same way as you and that’s an opportunity to learn something.
So until next time, keep those Jeep running strong, hit those trails with confidence and remember, it’s not just a vehicle. It’s a way of life. And I think that one’s going to be a little bit bigger. So, um, so Tony actually, so this has been Tony hosting the Jeep talk show round table episode and we’ll catch you on the next round. Ron Cass Dixon’s 20 10.
I sent him with that and he’s going to go through
You’re my friend, you’re my new friend.