• RME Gear & Apparel

Marc Bryson lazy "build" -JT Gladiator Rubicon

mbryson

mbryson

.......a few dollars more
Supporting Member
Location
Bountiful, land of rocks
So, actual trail day #16 and 17 were spent on the Expedition Utah Ghost Town Tour. Awesome event and a lot of fun. The JT got to stretch it's legs a bit. @DAA suggested that we'd want about 375 miles of range. With a full "normal" tank, I get about 350 miles. I thought I could get away with 5 extra deezel gallons but not knowing what low range stuff and such we'd be doing I thought I'd grab an extra 10. At the last minute, I went and grabbed an extra can for 15 extra gallons. Turned out to not be necessary but it was good piece of mind.

This thing LOVES cruising dirt roads. Not sure what the hell is up with SkyJacker lift and Rubicon Express shocks but I'm pretty happy with the suspension so far. Good and firm but supple when necessary. I thought I'd want to change out to an EVO or Teraflex lift but I think I'd be hard pressed to improve so I'll just leave well enough alone and enjoy the truck.

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Not really truck related but cool cemetery sign

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GTT trail trim. Kind of a heavy set gal but still pretty sweet looking.

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I thought I had a picture of the deezel cans. Alas, I do not. They are up front of the two yellow topped bins. I think I'll add some hooks to my home made rack to strap the yellow topped bins to the rack pinning them to the bed floor. The turnbuckles worked just as well in my JT as they did in my 2004 Cummins with the ARB Simpson tent. The Mombasa was not bad at all other than the corny steel ladder. I'll just keep dealing with the corny steel ladder until if/when I camp enough to justify an upgraded RTT. On to the pics


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At this point, I'm curious what trail day #18 is. Pretty happy with the truck, the MTZ tires, the SuperLift/Rubicon Express combo. Rock Trix wheels are a little marred up but I earned that against sandstone.

The only way to make this truck better would be to have it come with a 5.7L HEMI with a factory warranty. That would be a bitchin' setup in my opinion
 
mbryson

mbryson

.......a few dollars more
Supporting Member
Location
Bountiful, land of rocks
After the GTT, I thought I should swap the air filter? That's the stock unit (or at least a Mopar replacement). 26k miles. Fuel filter time also

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After GTT, I did knock a bunch of dust out of the stock unit. These filters are stupid hard to get. Docs diesel is where I sourced these from
 
mbryson

mbryson

.......a few dollars more
Supporting Member
Location
Bountiful, land of rocks
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Fixing some brakes on a trailer today. Was kind of a pain to get a brake controller to work on this dawg. Had to swap/rewire the ground and power to the brake controller with the purchased Tekonsha harness. Thought that'd have it licked. Then I wasn't getting any signal from the brake pedal. Farted around quite a bit and didn't feel good tapping the 14 guage brake signal wire into the 22-24 guage brake switch on the JT.

I wondered and chased fuses for quite a few hours and finally settled on checking the Tazer to see if I had to enable a brake controller. The only thing related that I found was a trailer brake lights in the lights menu. It was "yes". I changed it to "no", rebooted the computer, er truck and confirmed it was still set to "no". Checked signal and still none. Changed it back to "yes" and rebooted the truck and now I have signal.... Shouldn't work that way but I have an operating brake controller now. Maybe my truck runs Windows? Makes almost as much sense as Windows sometimes.


Have used the JT to tow the Buick to Logan and back a few times the last month or so. Mantua hills kick it's ass as far as power. Oil and trans temps are easy to monitor. Watching those make me nervous to go over about 50-52 mph as you summit from Mantua into Bear Lake. Probably smart to get a bumper I could put the winch in vs on. That'd be interesting to see. Brett Davis has the same ecodiesel and we've compared temps on hills (no load on either truck) and they are almost exactly the same. He has the in bumper winch.

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Chassis does surprisingly well with the weight distribution hitch. I'm a 67-70 mph tower so if you tow at that speed, you're probably fine. If faster, you'll want more motor/truck. 15mpg towing is pretty impressive if you go to Logan via Garland/Tremonton. That's double the mpg of driving the Buick. With AC and sound system that the Buick doesn't have.

My wife's Navigator couldn't care less about the Buick on the trailer. Just the weird IRS feel on bumps while towing.

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Not sure I'd take the trail Jeep with the JT.

Despite being a bit disappointed in towing this load, the Gladiator is still a pleasant daily driver. I'm pushing 29k on it now. While reflecting as I'm grumpy about the towing (I'm probably comparing it to an F350 that excels at towing?) and trying to find something else, I don't think anything out there can be the swiss army knife this truck is.

I did get my recall notice for the fuel pump (deezel only). No parts available as of yet. I'll change my fuel filter again on the 15k at the dealership so it can be recorded in case of failure. Glad for a mfg warranty and I bought a warranty from my credit union just in case.

Last time I had my oil changed at the dealership, I had a few techs and a parts guy chatting me up about the truck. All like the Gladiators but it was a pretty even split on which would buy the gas vs diesel. I feel the same still.
 
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mbryson

mbryson

.......a few dollars more
Supporting Member
Location
Bountiful, land of rocks
Trail Day #18
Red Rock 4 Wheelers Labor Day Campout 2023
--Hell's Revenge with Richard Mick as the trail leader

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Not a lot of pics. We were trying to figure out how many times I've done this trail? I've been Jeeping since '98. Let's say I run Hells Revenge 4 times per year (kind of conservative number?) --- 25x4= 100 times (that's Cache Valley School District math right there). It's probably more than that but let's roll with that? This is only the 2nd time I've had the JT on it. I didn't do as bad as I did with EJS Hell's Revenge. Only dragged and bumped about 6-7 times. You have to learn to drive AROUND the tail overhang. Sometimes the belly comes into play but for the most part, I didn't drag that on Hells. Maybe some very minor kisses but nothing significant at all. The cloud formations were AMAZING for this trip. VERY small RR4W group. I think 15ish total and that included 4 trail officials.

I'm still struggling with my CB in the JT. It was much better this trip than EJS 2023 (maybe 400-500 yard range) but I need to get about 1 mile if possible at all. I think my antenna is good after working with John Hall.


Trail Day #19
I like this trail (don't tell anyone about it though). Kind of a secret favorite. It's solid, great scenery, some challenges, good spots for a group run and just a little adrenalin on the way in (if you're running it backwards) or the way out after you're ready to find the highway :D.
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A participant Stephan Runge (from Germany) sent me these two videos.
Red Rock 4 Wheelers Labor Day Campout 2023
--Flat Iron Mesa with Rick Wolcott as the trail leader
Down Easter Egg hill on Flat Iron


Through the Intimidator
 
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P

Pile of parts

Well-Known Member
Location
South Jordan
mbryson said:
I'm assuming you're meaning the antenna ground?
Click to expand...
Nope. Ground from the unit itself. I kept trying to ground it to or through different points or wires on the jeep. Finally worked when I went directly to the battery. You may have already know or done that. It took me a long time to figure that out. I don't know what my range is, but it works a lot better than before.
 
mbryson

mbryson

.......a few dollars more
Supporting Member
Location
Bountiful, land of rocks
Pile of parts said:
Nope. Ground from the unit itself. I kept trying to ground it to or through different points or wires on the jeep. Finally worked when I went directly to the battery. You may have already know or done that. It took me a long time to figure that out. I don't know what my range is, but it works a lot better than before.
Click to expand...
I'm grounded to a ground that's grounded directly to the battery. Definitely worth a test to see if running directly to the battery would help though
 
Hickey

Hickey

Burn-barrel enthusiast
Supporting Member
Location
Grantsville, Utah
mbryson said:
I'm grounded to a ground that's grounded directly to the battery. Definitely worth a test to see if running directly to the battery would help though
Click to expand...
Grounding the radio chassis can also help a lot. Sometimes there is too much isolation between the chassis and the guts of the radio. I used to run a ground strap from the chassis mounting bracket to the body, in addition to the regular ground wire.
 
mbryson

mbryson

.......a few dollars more
Supporting Member
Location
Bountiful, land of rocks
Trail Day #20


I had the opportunity to do some business in Moab on Sat and was able to jump into a trail run with a bunch of CJ's on Sat. We did a chunk of Secret Spire (not much 4x4 but cool stuff especially with an eclipse going on) and drove out to Dead Man's Point. We hit Secret Spire (of course, my CB is a massive turd again--I have upgrades on the way but they haven't made it to the house yet) about 9:15 am. LOTS of van-life folks and such in ANY camping area that could be camped in. The BLM is full of shit (not that we didn't know that) about this area not being used.

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That was at "full" eclipse where I was at. Apparently my phone camera didn't seem to care about the eclipse part despite me focusing on the sun and other celestial areas. I even tried using the sun viewing lens over my camera lens and that didn't seem to help. Still kind of a cool pic despite the eclipse not being actually visable.

I didn't get many pics but being on a trail with about 15 CJs and 1 TJ and three electronic Jeeps relegated to the rear of the pack was pretty cool. It seemed very much 1985 a bit seeing the old stuff out there.

Pics at Deadman's Point (first time out there for me--not sure if it's slated for closure or not) 20231014_152643.jpg20231014_152526.jpg
Electronic Jeeps over here.... CJ's over there. Almost like Toyota vs Jeep :D

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The wash in the first picture ends there. It'd be interesting to be here in a rain storm and watch the mass of water dropping into the bottom of the canyon. This is immediately above Hey Joe Canyon that is slated for closure. I hope the BRC can win their litigation battle.
 
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