Gladiator on fire, burned to the ground…

[maligator]

It's 6,000 on the gas, is it the same for the diesel? Dunno - my manual is for the 2020 gas.
Your point is good on the frontal area according to the book.

It's crazy that a towing rating isn't a rating anymore. Well it's 6000 pounds but please enter the frontal area of the trailer, the temp, the elevation , and day of the week into this equation to determine today's towing capacity lol

If the trailer was truly 8x9 it would be 72ft² then right? I think for the overland 40ft² max with tow package and ecodiesel.

Similar sports (like mine) with tow package+ecodiesel is 55² instead of 40ft² . I wonder what limits the overland to 40ft² with

For the type of people pulling a boat/small camper with a jeep why should they need to calculate frontal area to keep the car from starting on fire though.

Sponsored

 

[5JeepsAz]

Glad everyone is okay and welcome to the forum. Hell of an entrance!

 

[dcmdon]

That's quite a large trailer.

 

[Chance575]

Why must we beat down on the diesel so much.? How about the normal things, animal nest in the engine bay, trash on the exhaust, electric issue due to animals ?

 

[gouacats]

Frontal area question - Other than a pop-up or small teardrop are there any trailers that would fit the bill of less than 40 SF or 55 SF? I ask because Jeep shows the Gladiator pulling an Airstream in their ads which has a frontal area of ~72 SF, which is well beyond both. Also, for kicks I checked the Ford Super Duty "Frontal Area Considerations" and they show 60 SF for bumper pulls and 75 sf for 5th-wheels. I think you would be hard pressed to find a 5th-wheel less than 75 SF and as far as I can tell, there aren't very many travel trailers smaller than 60 SF. Is the calculation something other than height x width of the trailer?

 

[Wageslave]

The owner also noted that the cruise control was on. I wonder if that Jeep was under significant boost / derating / etc for several km driving up under hood temps etc.

I know my '21 Overland Diesel worked so much harder to hold the same speed when the cruise was on as opposed to cruise being off, while towing a heavy load. It would go for 6th gear under any amount of incline and wouldn't hold 8th unless you were going downhill. Just pedaling it, it would hold speed in 8th gear no problems unless you hit about a 4% grade, then it would shift to 7th.

I think the cruise control programming is too aggressive about holding speed and forcing downshifts because the engine isn't bringing the speed up fast enough for its liking. Once you are wound up in 6th gear, those oil temps start rising real fast and he could have hit the soft derate before even noticing there was an issue.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I know my '21 Overland Diesel worked so much harder to hold the same speed when the cruise was on as opposed to cruise being off, while towing a heavy load. It would go for 6th gear under any amount of incline and wouldn't hold 8th unless you were going downhill. Just pedaling it, it would hold speed in 8th gear no problems unless you hit about a 4% grade, then it would shift to 7th.

I think the cruise control programming is too aggressive about holding speed and forcing downshifts because the engine isn't bringing the speed up fast enough for its liking. Once you are wound up in 6th gear, those oil temps start rising real fast and he could have hit the soft derate before even noticing there was an issue.

On cruise, my gas Overland drops 2 gears pretty quickly on an incline. In fact, I rarely ever see it drop just one gear. It's pretty aggressive that way. Running the gas myself, I have to push pretty hard to get it to downshift.
Interesting to see the differences.

 

[dcmdon]

Frontal area question - Other than a pop-up or small teardrop are there any trailers that would fit the bill of less than 40 SF or 55 SF? I ask because Jeep shows the Gladiator pulling an Airstream in their ads which has a frontal area of ~72 SF, which is well beyond both. Also, for kicks I checked the Ford Super Duty "Frontal Area Considerations" and they show 60 SF for bumper pulls and 75 sf for 5th-wheels. I think you would be hard pressed to find a 5th-wheel less than 75 SF and as far as I can tell, there aren't very many travel trailers smaller than 60 SF. Is the calculation something other than height x width of the trailer?

You raise really great questions. Questions I have no idea what the answer is.

Frontal area is actually more important than weight in many circumstances.

The flatter the ground and the faster you are towing the more frontal area and actually total drag matter and the less weight matters.

The nice thing about frontal area though is that its easy to accommodate. The force of aerodynamic drag increases as a square function of air speed. That means that if you reduce speed by half you reduce aerodynamic drag to 1/4 its original value.

More practically speaking it means that in order to cut aerodynamic drag in half. You only need to reduce your speed from 70 mph to 50.

 

[am1978]

Everything is just speculation if/until the owner finds out how it happened and let’s us know. No sense the trying to play armchair QBs here.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

drag equation that represents the drag force F_{D} experienced by a body due to the movement through the air (or any other fluid). It is composed of the density of the fluid \rho (which we can’t change), the reference area A (the frontal area in the case of cars or motorbikes), the drag coefficient C_{D} (defined by the body’s shape), and the flow velocity u (relative to the object)

 

[Wageslave]

On cruise, my gas Overland drops 2 gears pretty quickly on an incline. In fact, I rarely ever see it drop just one gear. It's pretty aggressive that way. Running the gas myself, I have to push pretty hard to get it to downshift.
Interesting to see the differences.

I honestly wonder if there should be alternate cruise programming for the Diesel. I could see that behavior as being normal-ish for the Gas motor, where all the power is at high RPM, but when it revs up to 3000+ RPM with the Diesel it seems like there is less torque and power available and it puts it in a place where it is even harder to hold speed because it it outside of it's power band.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Frontal area question - Other than a pop-up or small teardrop are there any trailers that would fit the bill of less than 40 SF or 55 SF? I ask because Jeep shows the Gladiator pulling an Airstream in their ads which has a frontal area of ~72 SF, which is well beyond both. Also, for kicks I checked the Ford Super Duty "Frontal Area Considerations" and they show 60 SF for bumper pulls and 75 sf for 5th-wheels. I think you would be hard pressed to find a 5th-wheel less than 75 SF and as far as I can tell, there aren't very many travel trailers smaller than 60 SF. Is the calculation something other than height x width of the trailer?

Frontal Area is the total area in square feet that a moving vehicle and trailer exposes to air resistance. The chart shows the maximum trailer frontal area that must be considered for a vehicle/trailer combination. Exceeding these limitations may significantly reduce the performance of your towing vehicle.

Page 16 of the below PDF link.

https://www.fleet.ford.com/content/...-guides/2021_Ford_RVandTrailerTowingGuide.pdf

 

[LittleFish]

Frontal area question - Other than a pop-up or small teardrop are there any trailers that would fit the bill of less than 40 SF or 55 SF? I ask because Jeep shows the Gladiator pulling an Airstream in their ads which has a frontal area of ~72 SF, which is well beyond both. Also, for kicks I checked the Ford Super Duty "Frontal Area Considerations" and they show 60 SF for bumper pulls and 75 sf for 5th-wheels. I think you would be hard pressed to find a 5th-wheel less than 75 SF and as far as I can tell, there aren't very many travel trailers smaller than 60 SF. Is the calculation something other than height x width of the trailer?

I did some digging and the general thought is that FA=WxH. My "off road", single axle, travel trailer is roughly 8'x8' and sits a solid 18" off the ground, weighing in at #3600. Technically, my Max Tow Gladiator cannot tow it due to the FA being over the specified limit. I'm not even adding in the roof vents, etc.

Like you, just for kicks, I checked out the Ford Super Duty specs as well. Technically, the Super Duty Ford isn't so "Super" as it apparently cannot tow my #3600 TT as the FA is over the trucks limit! I suppose there's another way to look at this... The GLADIATOR MAX TOW IS A TOWING BEAST!!! The Ford Super Duty just barely edges it out with an additional 5 SqFt more FA capability!

 

[CreepyJeepy]

If I remember right if the angle is 45 percent or greater it doesn’t count towards the total area

 

[dcmdon]

drag equation that represents the drag force F_{D} experienced by a body due to the movement through the air (or any other fluid). It is composed of the density of the fluid \rho (which we can’t change), the reference area A (the frontal area in the case of cars or motorbikes), the drag coefficient C_{D} (defined by the body’s shape), and the flow velocity u (relative to the object)

Total aerodynamic drag = frontal area x Cd

Frontal area describes the size of the item.
Cd describes the efficiency of the shape.

A full scale gladiator and a 1/10th scale gladiator have the same Cd. But since the 1/10th scale gladiator has 1/100th the frontal area its total drag is 1/100th the drag of the full scale Gladiator.

(ps I know you know this. Just explaining more forthose that don't. )

I spoke mainly of frontal area in my earlier post because most camp trailers have about the same shape and about the same Cd. This is also why truck makers talk about frontal area and not total drag. (If you hold the Cd constant, the frontal area is what determines drag)

Of course if we are talking about something like a boat, its CD is going to be better than a travel trailer so for a given frontal area, its going to have less drag.

One other thing, Cd and frontal area are much more complex when we are talking about a towed vehicle, since the size and shape of the tow vehicle's wake makes a big difference in how much drag the trailer actually adds.

As an example, a jacked up F350 is going to make a bigger wake for a travel trailer than a Gladiator Overland.

Sponsored