Mojave Owners; How Does Your Truck Handle Snow?

[ShadowsPapa]

Faster in 4wd low

Right - on a surface that lets tires slip you can drive any safe speed in 4H

Tires and driver. The rest doesn't matter a lot. Any JT should do the same if the tires and driver are the same.
The only time springs matter is if the surface is so uneven they are being compressed and asked to rebound, otherwise on 12" of snow - it really won't matter unless it's wind-blown and very uneven.
My Overland did great after a big snow/blizzard event last winter with good A/T tires, in 4H on roads that were mostly unplowed, with some drifting, etc.
I was the first vehicle on our road that morning, unplowed, had a mile to drive, then the rest normally takes about 30 minutes took me about 40 or so.

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[ShadowsPapa]

....... 1. open diff will leave one front & one rear tire spinning on ice (and no power going to the other tire on that axle),
2. limited slip - put slight pressure on parking/emergency brake & both rear tires will have power. Let off brake as soon as you are moving & you won't slide right off the road surface.

1. No, not with the traction control. I've often taken our Jeeps and my Silverado up our unplowed, slick driveway in 2wd and you can hear the brakes and traction control working and they walk right up the hill.

2. Never had to ever apply brakes - they simply work as long as one has traction. On modern vehicles, the BLD function does all this for you.

 

[Jefe1018]

I don’t know why bur it’s amusing to me the number of Mojave’s Jeep is selling in places outside the desert. I get why, it’s freaking awesome, they just picked a peculiar name. I know local dealers try to say that “Jeep designed this specifically for us” and at first ordered 2:1 vs Rubicon models.

 

[dcmdon]

New England skier here. How a vehicle handles snow is 60% dependent on tires 30% driver skill, and 10% everything else.

With all the diffs open, on the same tires, the Mojave and Rubicon will for all intents be identical.

The ability to lock the front diff would give some benefit to the Rubicon in the most horrific low speed conditions. (getting yourself unstuck). But then again, the brake based traction control works great in the snow.

I don't have any first hand experience with SelectTrac, but plan on including it in my order. I'd be a fool not to for $600. Turn it on in November, turn it off in May.

Last winter we discovered that my wife's AWD Volvo on dedicated SNOW tires was vastly superior to all the 4wd trucks on AT or MT tires. Even the ones with the snowflake designation.

Winter tires are winter tires. Nothing beats them.

It was funny. We watched an AWD Audi on 4 snow tires pull out a Jeep High Altitude on its stock tires that was stuck in a ski area parking lot one afternoon. Ha.

Driver skill and tires. Period.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

New England skier here. How a vehicle handles snow is 90% dependent on tires.

With all the diffs open, on the same tires, the Mojave and Rubicon will for all intents be identical.

The ability to lock the front diff would give some benefit to the Rubicon in the most horrific low speed conditions. (getting yourself unstuck). But then again, the brake based traction control works great in the snow.

I don't have any first hand experience with SelectTrac, but plan on including it in my order. I'd be a fool not to for $600. Turn it on in November, turn it off in May.

I wish mine had that because of the constant having to shift in and out of 4H - you hit a long hard drift, then a quarter mile of clear bare concrete, then some ice patches, then clear pavement, then a quarter or half mile of snow, then nothing again. In and out - I'm going to wear out that old-fashioned shift lever.
You almost always have places where you really don't want a standard t-case locked together in this state. Snow is usually accompanied by wind - if not during the snow storm, directly after it falls.
That means the pavement cold be blown clean in spots, or spots that look clear - aren't, then you suddenly hit upon a wide drift.

It's got to be similar to the transfer case in my Chevy when I had it - it had an "auto" mode.

 

[dcmdon]

In the White Mountains of NH, the shady parts of smaller roads can remain packed snow all winter. While the parts that get direct sunlight can be clear and dry in 2 days.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

In the White Mountains of NH, the shady parts of smaller roads can remain packed snow all winter. While the parts that get direct sunlight can be clear and dry in 2 days.

Yup. Sounds a lot like home. I live in a hilly wooded area, rural, and the trees line the south sides of many of the roads here because of the river being just a little ways away. So we get patches that don't clear for weeks or months while other spots are cleared by the winter sun in short order.
Lots of hills, lots of trees. The guy who drove up from Texas to buy my 70 even commented - "I've never seen so many trees, and so many tree lined highways and roads".
That's good - and bad. Along I35 the state has planted natural snow fences of trees, bushes and shrubs because those open areas through the flatter farm ground cause huge trouble with blowing snow and white-outs. Tons of accidents each year.

 

[Mac]

IMO the best JT in the snow assuming they all had the same tires would be one with the Trac Lok rear end, I have used a spool on a truck in the snow and it is only useful in very slow deep conditions. Select Trac would be nice to have but in snowy conditions I would leave it in 4WD, an occasional dry patch is not going to cause any issue, in my experience driving manually shifted transfer case 4wd vehicles for 40 years in the northeast never had an issue with dry patches or shifting on the fly into 4wd when snowy conditions are present.

 

[dcmdon]

IMO the best JT in the snow assuming they all had the same tires would be one with the Trac Lok rear end, I have used a spool on a truck in the snow and it is only useful in very slow deep conditions. Select Trac would be nice to have but in snowy conditions I would leave it in 4WD, an occasional dry patch is not going to cause any issue, in my experience driving manually shifted transfer case 4wd vehicles for 40 years in the northeast never had an issue with dry patches or shifting on the fly into 4wd when snowy conditions are present.

Its not the occasional dry patch that's the problem. Its the occasional snow patch when you are driving along in 2wd.

Its funny. I asked the Jeep sales manager at a Boston area huge jeep dealer why they don't order all stock jeeps with SelectTrac. He said that nobody wants it. Which is kind of sad. Until you have driven an AWD vehicle I guess you won't quite get it.

 

[Mac]

Its not the occasional dry patch that's the problem. Its the occasional snow patch when you are driving along in 2wd.

Its funny. I asked the Jeep sales manager at a Boston area huge jeep dealer why they don't order all stock jeeps with SelectTrac. He said that nobody wants it. Which is kind of sad. Until you have driven an AWD vehicle I guess you won't quite get it.

Yeah okay, I have driven plenty of AWD vehicle and currently own two of them, regular RWD vehicles with 4WD and manual transfer cases are still perfectly fine for driving in snowy and slippery conditions.

 

[The White Rabbit]

New England skier here. How a vehicle handles snow is 60% dependent on tires 30% driver skill, and 10% everything else.

With all the diffs open, on the same tires, the Mojave and Rubicon will for all intents be identical.

The ability to lock the front diff would give some benefit to the Rubicon in the most horrific low speed conditions. (getting yourself unstuck). But then again, the brake based traction control works great in the snow.

I don't have any first hand experience with SelectTrac, but plan on including it in my order. I'd be a fool not to for $600. Turn it on in November, turn it off in May.

Last winter we discovered that my wife's AWD Volvo on dedicated SNOW tires was vastly superior to all the 4wd trucks on AT or MT tires. Even the ones with the snowflake designation.

Winter tires are winter tires. Nothing beats them.

It was funny. We watched an AWD Audi on 4 snow tires pull out a Jeep High Altitude on its stock tires that was stuck in a ski area parking lot one afternoon. Ha.

Driver skill and tires. Period.

After living in Wisconsin and Vermont for 33 years, AWD and 4WD are a must and tires and driver are the other factors. Find somewhere safe (very large empty parking lot) and test the ability of your vehicle and your skills.

 

[Jason Oliver]

(Selective editing for emphasis)

... Winter tires are winter tires. Nothing beats them...

... Driver skill and tires. Period.

Until one has driven in snow on dedicated snow tires, you won't fully grasp this.

The only downside to them is the fact that you need cold temps for them to perform and wear decently.

 

[TwelveGaugeSage]

I always liked my auto-locker in the snow. Great for donuts!

 

[Choatecav]

I don’t know why bur it’s amusing to me the number of Mojave’s Jeep is selling in places outside the desert. I get why, it’s freaking awesome, they just picked a peculiar name. I know local dealers try to say that “Jeep designed this specifically for us” and at first ordered 2:1 vs Rubicon models.

Yeah, good point on the name vs where it sells.

Same thing with the Rubicon. It's a river in northeast Italy, crossed by Julius Caesar to commit him to the Roman civil war and ultimately led to his Emperorship. What zup with that??

 

[ShadowsPapa]

IMO the best JT in the snow assuming they all had the same tires would be one with the Trac Lok rear end, I have used a spool on a truck in the snow and it is only useful in very slow deep conditions. Select Trac would be nice to have but in snowy conditions I would leave it in 4WD, an occasional dry patch is not going to cause any issue, in my experience driving manually shifted transfer case 4wd vehicles for 40 years in the northeast never had an issue with dry patches or shifting on the fly into 4wd when snowy conditions are present.

Here the "occasional dry path" isn't the issue, it's the fact it's more than a patch. You definitely bind things up if you drive a quarter or half mile on dry concrete that's shaved to make it "rougher" or cut to drain water. I had a Ford that would literally shudder if I did that. Then you tried for several minutes of back and forth to get it out of 4wd.
As a mechanic who's worked on trucks and cars for decades - it ain't good.

When the Eagle came out, at least one dealer in Iowa moved their plows OFF the Jeeps and onto the Eagle. Why? Because the 4x4 system and the car were better balanced. That VC in the transfer case allowed each wheel to do its thing instead of being locked together front and back.
I've had a lot better luck with things with something similar to the SelecTrac or a system that allows limited slip in the transfer case under certain conditions. My Silverado was a huge improvement over my Ford. The Chevy would go through stuff the Ford actually had trouble with. The Ford was easier to get to slide, the Chevy never did. (and the Ford had tires rated for snow - the Chevy had ordinary all weather tires)

It's like the magazine article I have on limited slip - real world tests - not perfect for ALL conditions. Better over-all, but not perfect in all conditions.

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