I learned to wheel with 30-31" tires, manual trans and open diffs. I watched the lines that others took and looked for the line where all 4 tires would maintain traction and used momentum (Moab bump) to get over obstacles that would reject you if you tried to simply crawl them. I soon got used to fellow wheelers making comments like "you're not going to take that little Cherokee up that, are you?" It was fun to get to the top and see the locked-up folks on 35's scratching their heads.
Fast forward 35 years and having wheeled for the last 20 with bigger rubber, traction devices and auto trans, I still use a similar style.
Smooth is fast.......
Excellent point. I too started wheeling with a 1992 XJ on stock tires and running mild trails/roads. We bought it for the wife's daily driver and a toad to tow behind our first coach back in 1995. That was a great vehicle and a great one to learn with although we didn't do anything too "extreme".
We stepped from there to a 1996 ZJ to use in the same manner. It was the wife's daily driver, weekend wheeler and toad. I lifted it a couple of inches and ran 31" tires and started running trails with more obstacles. I too was criticized when I would show up to a trailhead and airing down. It was equipped with an automatic transmission with open differentials, even ran the OEM aluminum Dana44A in the rear without ever and issue. We wheeled that Jeep for 16 years and through several coaches. My son took it over when he turned 16 and got his driver's license and was his first Jeep as well as learned to wheel with it and drove it respectively. It was as clean and immaculate of a vehicle the day we sold it with 188k miles on it as it was the day we bought it with 20k miles in 1998. We ran trails like Top of the World, Fins & Things, Hell's Revenge, Seven-Mile Rim and many others in Moab as well as all of the trails around Ouray/Silverton without issue and without ever putting a single scratch on it.
When I built my JKUR in 2011 I built it with the intentions of being a nice daily driver and overbuilding it for the trails we were running but being able to run those same trail with less ground clearance issues and to smooth out the ride for the wife and I, as well as not having to stack rocks quite as much.
We belong to a couple of Jeep clubs and it's interesting to see new Jeep owners buy their Jeep and the first things they feel they need to do is go up to 37" tires before they can leave the pavement. I've tried to tell them to wheel it in the stock configuration and get some recovery items and learn to drive it and see what it can do. They want to run before they learn to crawl.
Mike
