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Awesome read and comparison :like:

https://www.autoblog.com/2020/05/07/2020-jeep-gladiator-mojave-suspension-flex-test

2020 Jeep Gladiator Mojave Suspension Flex Test
What's lost and gained with Mojave vs Rubicon? Dan Edmunds and his RTI ramp explains

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 2_f34_oa


I’ve been eager to get my hands on a new 2020 Jeep Gladiator Mojave ever since it was first announced. The specs are right up my alley: A 1-inch front lift to level the truck and give it more front compression travel, softer rear springs to allow the rear to be better synchronized with the front and more freely conform to terrain, beefier 2.5-inch Fox remote reservoir internal bypass shocks tuned to handle the inevitable pounding that comes with tackling desert terrain at speed, and hydraulic front bump stops to take the edge off the hardest hits.

But the trade-off for these high-dollar suspension bits is the elimination of some Gladiator Rubicon features. The Mojave only has a rear locker, and its low-range transfer case ratio is 2.72-to-1 instead of 4-to-1. I don’t think I’d miss either of those. I’m frankly more concerned about the absent steel rub rails behind the rear tire that protect the rear corner of the Gladiator’s bed because the desert has ditches, too. The last big missing piece is the electronically disconnectable front stabilizer bar. The Mojave’s is always connected.

I wondered how this last change and the Mojave’s unique suspension tuning might affect the overall flexibility of its suspension. The Mojave’s timing was perfect, because I had just acquired an RTI (Ramp Travel Index) ramp that’s designed to measure exactly that. And I had just run a Gladiator Rubicon up it as a test, so I had those numbers in hand.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 1_r34_oa


The idea of an RTI ramp is simple. It creates an artificial but repeatable frame-twist situation that allows you to safely reach the point of maximum suspension flex and quantify that through a simple measurement. Numerical scores are based on a vehicle’s performance on a 20-degree ramp, an angle that was chosen some time ago and works well for stock vehicles.

Extremely modified vehicles can be tested on a steeper ramp (or by lifting a wheel with a forklift), but any number that results from that would have to be back-calculated to the 20-degree standard if the resulting numbers were to be compared to these.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 3_front


But it’s not just a matter of how far up the ramp up can drive. The wheelbase factors into it. Why? A vehicle with an 8-foot wheelbase that drives 6 feet up the ramp has flexed a substantial amount in an extremely impressive way. Think of the front axle dangle angle it would take to do that. More radical than you see here, I can assure you. By contrast, an imaginary rig with a 100-foot wheelbase that makes it up 6 feet hasn’t accomplished much at all. That’d be like driving a Subaru onto a 2x4.

There is math involved, but the math is easy. And I’m calling the RTI score the Flex Index.

Flex Index = amount of ramp climb ÷ wheelbase x 1,000

A perfect score of 1,000 happens if the rear tire reaches the ramp before it lifts off the ground.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 4_LF_compressed_arrowed


Let’s tour around the Gladiator Mojave at the point of maximum flex. This is the left front suspension. There’s plenty of daylight between the Fox hydraulic bump stop (yellow arrow) and it’s landing pad. This is fully usable travel if both front tires were compressing at the same time, but here we’re in a situation where this side is compressing while the other is extending.

The torsional stiffness of the stabilizer bar is defining the limit of deflection, along with the stiffness of the spring itself. A harder spring could always worsen things, but here the stabilizer bar is the limiting factor. That gap between the bump stop and its landing pad hints at the potential improvement that could be gained by disconnecting the stabilizer bar, as a Rubicon can.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 5_RF_hangin


The opposite is happening here on the right front. The axle is hanging below the vehicle, but not as much as it might if the stabilizer bar wasn’t working against it.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 6_RR_compressed_close


Here at the right rear, the suspension is fully compressed. There’s a stabilizer bar back here, too, but it’s much less influential than the one up front. It’s not disconnectable in a Rubicon or a Mojave, and there’d be little to gain if it was.

The important bit to notice here is the tire clearance. There’s plenty. A 35-inch tire (these Falkens are 33-inch tires) would probably have no trouble if you didn’t monkey with the offset and were careful not to choose ones that were too much wider. If you want to let your freak flag fly, the lower dark part of the fender flares can be removed.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 7_LR_hanging_shocks_close



The suspension is on full display here at the right rear. Nice-looking stuff, I must say.


Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 8_answers


All right, enough talk.

To get my number, I get out my T-square and project the hub center perpendicular to the ramp. The upper edges of the tape represent that point. The higher one is the Gladiator Mojave, the lower one is the Gladiator Rubicon with its stabilizer bar connected.
So the Mojave is slightly more flexible. But, and this is important, the only reason we can eyeball it like that is they both share the same 137.3-inch wheelbase. It’s two versions of the same vehicle.

My ramp doesn’t come to a perfect point, so I determine the amount of climb using trigonometry (feel free to skip ahead to the results in bold if the following brings back nightmares of high school math class). I measure the vertical height of the farthest point up the ramp and divide that by the sine of 20 degrees, our ramp angle. It’s an easier measurement, but there’s one extra math step.

Flex Index = vertical height of farthest point ÷ sin 20 ÷ wheelbase x 1,000

The Rubicon’s lift was 21.5 inches, which is 62.9 inches of climb

The Mojave’s lift measured 22 11/32 inches, which is 65.3 inches of climb - 2.4 inches more.

Dividing both by the wheelbase of 137.3 inches and multiplying by 1,000, we get:

Flex Index = 476 for the Mojave and 458 for the Rubicon with the bar connected. The Mojave’s differences add up to 18 points of improvement. Not much, but not nothing.

So why does the Mojave do better than the Rubicon in its normal state? It comes down to three factors, although I’m not certain if all of them help.
First, the rear springs are a bit softer, a change made so they’ll respond smoother over desert whoop-de-doos and washboard. The tow rating drops from 7,000 to 6,000 as a result. But they’re progressive, and it’s hard to know how they differ at this level of compression. Let’s set this aside.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 9_alt_both_wheels


You may have read that the Mojave’s track width is a half-inch wider than the Rubicon. It’s done by reducing the offset of the wheels, which pushes the tires outward to create more inside clearance for those bigger Fox shocks.

How? First, assume the axle’s maximum dangle angle is the same. Now, change the wheels so the tires are spread farther apart, as they are here. The hiked up wheel will be hiked up a little more, which means the vehicle can go farther up the ramp. I’ve measured this with my own Jeep before and after a major tire and wheel upgrade that involved huge offset and tire width changes.

These pictures show the wheel offset of the Rubicon and Mojave rims. The difference between them is 7.3 mm, so changing both sides together will create a track width increase of 14.6 mm. That works out to just over 9/16 inch, so Jeep seems to be underselling it by saying a half-inch. Still, this change isn’t meaningful enough to explain much of it.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


The stabilizer bars themselves almost certainly hold the key. The Mojave’s rear one is 1 mm smaller – 20 mm instead of 21 mm. That may not sound like much, but the torsional stiffness of a stabilizer bar is proportional to its diameter raised to the fourth power. All else being equal, that drop of 1 mm represents an 18% drop in the stabilizer bar’s torsional stiffness. But the rear bar isn’t as crucial as the front one, so this probably isn’t it, either.

But there is a difference up front, even though both bars measure 32 mm in diameter. The key is how they look different. The Rubicon has the swaged look of a solid bar where it necks down for tire clearance, because it is. The Mojave has the squished look of a hollow tube, because it is.

That tube’s wall thickness is 5.1 mm, so if you do all the diameter math (to the fourth power) you get a decrease in torsional stiffness of about 20%.
That number assumes two things that might not be true: 1) the Rubicon’s sliding mechanism doesn’t negatively affect the bar’s overall stiffness in its connected state and 2) the bar’s material is the same despite one being hollow and the other solid.

This seems to explain it no matter how those turn out. And softer stabilizer bars would indeed help with high-speed desert performance and might represent another reason why the tow rating is a smidge lower.

All of this begs the question: What about the Gladiator Rubicon with the bar disconnected? My ramp tells us it destroys both of these. How does a Flex Index of 607 points grab you? Yes, pushing a button in a Rubicon is good for nearly 150 Flex Index points.

If all of this has soured you on the Mojave, it shouldn’t. The Gladiator isn’t the rock crawler that the Wrangler is, so there’s that. And you can add a stabilizer bar disconnect by installing special aftermarket links. I paid less than $100 for the ones I added to my own JK Wrangler Sport. It’s not as simple a pushing a button, and you have to be absolutely sure you reconnect them once you get back to pavement, but your Mojave can score better than 600 points, too, if you install a simple mod.

Contributing writer Dan Edmunds is a veteran automotive engineer and journalist. He worked as a vehicle development engineer for Toyota and Hyundai with an emphasis on chassis tuning, and was the director of vehicle testing at Edmunds.com (no relation) for 14 years.
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So, how those results interpret to me is... For the money, the Rubicon is still the better off-roader’s value with the F&R lockers, push-button sway bar disconnect, etc...

But if you prefer the desert, get the Mojave.

Who’da thunk it? ;)
 
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5JeepsAz

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Agreed. If you prefer softer tail and full speed ahead for the desert ranch, mine, power line, sandy road, you appreciate the built just for you Mojave. You want a jeepier truck that tugs itself up a dry waterfall, you might want a high ass and two front tires pulling you forward Ruby. Interesting analysis. Answers a ton of my questions Mojave vs LE vs bone stock sport. I'm wondering on this Flex scale how all sorts of vehicles compare.
 

BLK HOLE

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Anyone that cares enough about flex to this point isn’t going to leave it stock anyway. Which means, with a Mojave, you’ll end up with a lifted Sport model with just a rear locker for the price of a rubicon....and maybe retain the bump stops.
 

aj8544

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For me the lack of a front locker and 1000lb less towing are the biggest deal breakers on the Mojave. I'm sure I don't really need the sway disco, but I would really miss that front locker.

Still think the Rubicon is the best value JT, unless you plan on building up with a big lift etc...
 

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steelponycowboy

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Great work on the comparisons.

Other than the frame and other improvements of the Mojave, it was built more for overlanding and speed, not rock crawling. If you want a rock crawler, get a Rubicon, overlanding, get the Mojave.
 

Duke56

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It’s driving me crazy to see pics of Fox Rear remote shocks on the Mojave JT while Fox denies having any Available and or will not divulge any release dates for When I might get them. I need a pair to complete my build with the 3” Rock Krawler No Limits Pro kit. I have the Fox 2.5’s on the front and need the rears to complete the set. C’MON FOX!!!!! Let ‘em go!
They really do make a difference in ride and handling -VS- OEM’s. I like being able to adjust them for different rides. I open ‘em up on both High and Low for slow going and then set both speeds about halfway for every day Street. I haven’t towed anything heavy yet sans some 36 pressure treated 12ft 2X6’s. But I don’t have the rear Fox 2.5s either. If I did I would imagine they would get cranked up to the higher settings. (Tapping foot, waiting for Fox)
 

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Where those Fox shocks really shine is driving at speed on rough roads. When a few of us did the Dempster Hwy in Canada to Inuvik, the guys with standard shocks had a tough time keeping up with me. The remote reservoir shocks make a big difference.
 

WhatExit?

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Awesome read and comparison :like:

https://www.autoblog.com/2020/05/07/2020-jeep-gladiator-mojave-suspension-flex-test

2020 Jeep Gladiator Mojave Suspension Flex Test
What's lost and gained with Mojave vs Rubicon? Dan Edmunds and his RTI ramp explains

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


I’ve been eager to get my hands on a new 2020 Jeep Gladiator Mojave ever since it was first announced. The specs are right up my alley: A 1-inch front lift to level the truck and give it more front compression travel, softer rear springs to allow the rear to be better synchronized with the front and more freely conform to terrain, beefier 2.5-inch Fox remote reservoir internal bypass shocks tuned to handle the inevitable pounding that comes with tackling desert terrain at speed, and hydraulic front bump stops to take the edge off the hardest hits.

But the trade-off for these high-dollar suspension bits is the elimination of some Gladiator Rubicon features. The Mojave only has a rear locker, and its low-range transfer case ratio is 2.72-to-1 instead of 4-to-1. I don’t think I’d miss either of those. I’m frankly more concerned about the absent steel rub rails behind the rear tire that protect the rear corner of the Gladiator’s bed because the desert has ditches, too. The last big missing piece is the electronically disconnectable front stabilizer bar. The Mojave’s is always connected.

I wondered how this last change and the Mojave’s unique suspension tuning might affect the overall flexibility of its suspension. The Mojave’s timing was perfect, because I had just acquired an RTI (Ramp Travel Index) ramp that’s designed to measure exactly that. And I had just run a Gladiator Rubicon up it as a test, so I had those numbers in hand.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


The idea of an RTI ramp is simple. It creates an artificial but repeatable frame-twist situation that allows you to safely reach the point of maximum suspension flex and quantify that through a simple measurement. Numerical scores are based on a vehicle’s performance on a 20-degree ramp, an angle that was chosen some time ago and works well for stock vehicles.

Extremely modified vehicles can be tested on a steeper ramp (or by lifting a wheel with a forklift), but any number that results from that would have to be back-calculated to the 20-degree standard if the resulting numbers were to be compared to these.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


But it’s not just a matter of how far up the ramp up can drive. The wheelbase factors into it. Why? A vehicle with an 8-foot wheelbase that drives 6 feet up the ramp has flexed a substantial amount in an extremely impressive way. Think of the front axle dangle angle it would take to do that. More radical than you see here, I can assure you. By contrast, an imaginary rig with a 100-foot wheelbase that makes it up 6 feet hasn’t accomplished much at all. That’d be like driving a Subaru onto a 2x4.

There is math involved, but the math is easy. And I’m calling the RTI score the Flex Index.

Flex Index = amount of ramp climb ÷ wheelbase x 1,000

A perfect score of 1,000 happens if the rear tire reaches the ramp before it lifts off the ground.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


Let’s tour around the Gladiator Mojave at the point of maximum flex. This is the left front suspension. There’s plenty of daylight between the Fox hydraulic bump stop (yellow arrow) and it’s landing pad. This is fully usable travel if both front tires were compressing at the same time, but here we’re in a situation where this side is compressing while the other is extending.

The torsional stiffness of the stabilizer bar is defining the limit of deflection, along with the stiffness of the spring itself. A harder spring could always worsen things, but here the stabilizer bar is the limiting factor. That gap between the bump stop and its landing pad hints at the potential improvement that could be gained by disconnecting the stabilizer bar, as a Rubicon can.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


The opposite is happening here on the right front. The axle is hanging below the vehicle, but not as much as it might if the stabilizer bar wasn’t working against it.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


Here at the right rear, the suspension is fully compressed. There’s a stabilizer bar back here, too, but it’s much less influential than the one up front. It’s not disconnectable in a Rubicon or a Mojave, and there’d be little to gain if it was.

The important bit to notice here is the tire clearance. There’s plenty. A 35-inch tire (these Falkens are 33-inch tires) would probably have no trouble if you didn’t monkey with the offset and were careful not to choose ones that were too much wider. If you want to let your freak flag fly, the lower dark part of the fender flares can be removed.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled



The suspension is on full display here at the right rear. Nice-looking stuff, I must say.


Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


All right, enough talk.

To get my number, I get out my T-square and project the hub center perpendicular to the ramp. The upper edges of the tape represent that point. The higher one is the Gladiator Mojave, the lower one is the Gladiator Rubicon with its stabilizer bar connected.
So the Mojave is slightly more flexible. But, and this is important, the only reason we can eyeball it like that is they both share the same 137.3-inch wheelbase. It’s two versions of the same vehicle.

My ramp doesn’t come to a perfect point, so I determine the amount of climb using trigonometry (feel free to skip ahead to the results in bold if the following brings back nightmares of high school math class). I measure the vertical height of the farthest point up the ramp and divide that by the sine of 20 degrees, our ramp angle. It’s an easier measurement, but there’s one extra math step.

Flex Index = vertical height of farthest point ÷ sin 20 ÷ wheelbase x 1,000

The Rubicon’s lift was 21.5 inches, which is 62.9 inches of climb

The Mojave’s lift measured 22 11/32 inches, which is 65.3 inches of climb - 2.4 inches more.

Dividing both by the wheelbase of 137.3 inches and multiplying by 1,000, we get:

Flex Index = 476 for the Mojave and 458 for the Rubicon with the bar connected. The Mojave’s differences add up to 18 points of improvement. Not much, but not nothing.

So why does the Mojave do better than the Rubicon in its normal state? It comes down to three factors, although I’m not certain if all of them help.
First, the rear springs are a bit softer, a change made so they’ll respond smoother over desert whoop-de-doos and washboard. The tow rating drops from 7,000 to 6,000 as a result. But they’re progressive, and it’s hard to know how they differ at this level of compression. Let’s set this aside.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


You may have read that the Mojave’s track width is a half-inch wider than the Rubicon. It’s done by reducing the offset of the wheels, which pushes the tires outward to create more inside clearance for those bigger Fox shocks.

How? First, assume the axle’s maximum dangle angle is the same. Now, change the wheels so the tires are spread farther apart, as they are here. The hiked up wheel will be hiked up a little more, which means the vehicle can go farther up the ramp. I’ve measured this with my own Jeep before and after a major tire and wheel upgrade that involved huge offset and tire width changes.

These pictures show the wheel offset of the Rubicon and Mojave rims. The difference between them is 7.3 mm, so changing both sides together will create a track width increase of 14.6 mm. That works out to just over 9/16 inch, so Jeep seems to be underselling it by saying a half-inch. Still, this change isn’t meaningful enough to explain much of it.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


The stabilizer bars themselves almost certainly hold the key. The Mojave’s rear one is 1 mm smaller – 20 mm instead of 21 mm. That may not sound like much, but the torsional stiffness of a stabilizer bar is proportional to its diameter raised to the fourth power. All else being equal, that drop of 1 mm represents an 18% drop in the stabilizer bar’s torsional stiffness. But the rear bar isn’t as crucial as the front one, so this probably isn’t it, either.

But there is a difference up front, even though both bars measure 32 mm in diameter. The key is how they look different. The Rubicon has the swaged look of a solid bar where it necks down for tire clearance, because it is. The Mojave has the squished look of a hollow tube, because it is.

That tube’s wall thickness is 5.1 mm, so if you do all the diameter math (to the fourth power) you get a decrease in torsional stiffness of about 20%.
That number assumes two things that might not be true: 1) the Rubicon’s sliding mechanism doesn’t negatively affect the bar’s overall stiffness in its connected state and 2) the bar’s material is the same despite one being hollow and the other solid.

This seems to explain it no matter how those turn out. And softer stabilizer bars would indeed help with high-speed desert performance and might represent another reason why the tow rating is a smidge lower.

All of this begs the question: What about the Gladiator Rubicon with the bar disconnected? My ramp tells us it destroys both of these. How does a Flex Index of 607 points grab you? Yes, pushing a button in a Rubicon is good for nearly 150 Flex Index points.

If all of this has soured you on the Mojave, it shouldn’t. The Gladiator isn’t the rock crawler that the Wrangler is, so there’s that. And you can add a stabilizer bar disconnect by installing special aftermarket links. I paid less than $100 for the ones I added to my own JK Wrangler Sport. It’s not as simple a pushing a button, and you have to be absolutely sure you reconnect them once you get back to pavement, but your Mojave can score better than 600 points, too, if you install a simple mod.

Contributing writer Dan Edmunds is a veteran automotive engineer and journalist. He worked as a vehicle development engineer for Toyota and Hyundai with an emphasis on chassis tuning, and was the director of vehicle testing at Edmunds.com (no relation) for 14 years.
Thanks for posting this.

I just found it online (hadn't seen it here) and it is, I think, eye-opening in regard to why the Rubicon is the better way to go. Either staying stock or as a starting point for builds.
 

steelponycowboy

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Apples and oranges. The two Jeeps were designed for totally different purposes. Personally I think the Mojave is close to the ultimate overland Jeep, the Rubicon is for those looking for the more extreme Jeeping. Neither of them in stock form was designed for those 8, 9 or 10 rated trails so I am not sure what the deal is here.

Again it is a matter of what you are looking for, if you are looking for a rock crawler to beat up, you are better off getting a 2 door JL than the longer wheel base Gladiator in any trim level.
 

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brianinca

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I do think it's darn near amazing that the same basic pickup design can be made into a tow truck, a rock crawler OR a desert runner with judicious application of engineering and design.

The Rubicon is not something copied before now, but having the Mojave be able to brawl at speed with the TRD's and ZR2's of the world is pretty dang cool.

Same truck BASICALLY but one is a pine-cone and the other a tumbleweed!

Apples and oranges. The two Jeeps were designed for totally different purposes. Personally I think the Mojave is close to the ultimate overland Jeep, the Rubicon is for those looking for the more extreme Jeeping. Neither of them in stock form was designed for those 8, 9 or 10 rated trails so I am not sure what the deal is here.

Again it is a matter of what you are looking for, if you are looking for a rock crawler to beat up, you are better off getting a 2 door JL than the longer wheel base Gladiator in any trim level.
 

Socks

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Awesome read and comparison :like:

https://www.autoblog.com/2020/05/07/2020-jeep-gladiator-mojave-suspension-flex-test

2020 Jeep Gladiator Mojave Suspension Flex Test
What's lost and gained with Mojave vs Rubicon? Dan Edmunds and his RTI ramp explains

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


I’ve been eager to get my hands on a new 2020 Jeep Gladiator Mojave ever since it was first announced. The specs are right up my alley: A 1-inch front lift to level the truck and give it more front compression travel, softer rear springs to allow the rear to be better synchronized with the front and more freely conform to terrain, beefier 2.5-inch Fox remote reservoir internal bypass shocks tuned to handle the inevitable pounding that comes with tackling desert terrain at speed, and hydraulic front bump stops to take the edge off the hardest hits.

But the trade-off for these high-dollar suspension bits is the elimination of some Gladiator Rubicon features. The Mojave only has a rear locker, and its low-range transfer case ratio is 2.72-to-1 instead of 4-to-1. I don’t think I’d miss either of those. I’m frankly more concerned about the absent steel rub rails behind the rear tire that protect the rear corner of the Gladiator’s bed because the desert has ditches, too. The last big missing piece is the electronically disconnectable front stabilizer bar. The Mojave’s is always connected.

I wondered how this last change and the Mojave’s unique suspension tuning might affect the overall flexibility of its suspension. The Mojave’s timing was perfect, because I had just acquired an RTI (Ramp Travel Index) ramp that’s designed to measure exactly that. And I had just run a Gladiator Rubicon up it as a test, so I had those numbers in hand.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


The idea of an RTI ramp is simple. It creates an artificial but repeatable frame-twist situation that allows you to safely reach the point of maximum suspension flex and quantify that through a simple measurement. Numerical scores are based on a vehicle’s performance on a 20-degree ramp, an angle that was chosen some time ago and works well for stock vehicles.

Extremely modified vehicles can be tested on a steeper ramp (or by lifting a wheel with a forklift), but any number that results from that would have to be back-calculated to the 20-degree standard if the resulting numbers were to be compared to these.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


But it’s not just a matter of how far up the ramp up can drive. The wheelbase factors into it. Why? A vehicle with an 8-foot wheelbase that drives 6 feet up the ramp has flexed a substantial amount in an extremely impressive way. Think of the front axle dangle angle it would take to do that. More radical than you see here, I can assure you. By contrast, an imaginary rig with a 100-foot wheelbase that makes it up 6 feet hasn’t accomplished much at all. That’d be like driving a Subaru onto a 2x4.

There is math involved, but the math is easy. And I’m calling the RTI score the Flex Index.

Flex Index = amount of ramp climb ÷ wheelbase x 1,000

A perfect score of 1,000 happens if the rear tire reaches the ramp before it lifts off the ground.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


Let’s tour around the Gladiator Mojave at the point of maximum flex. This is the left front suspension. There’s plenty of daylight between the Fox hydraulic bump stop (yellow arrow) and it’s landing pad. This is fully usable travel if both front tires were compressing at the same time, but here we’re in a situation where this side is compressing while the other is extending.

The torsional stiffness of the stabilizer bar is defining the limit of deflection, along with the stiffness of the spring itself. A harder spring could always worsen things, but here the stabilizer bar is the limiting factor. That gap between the bump stop and its landing pad hints at the potential improvement that could be gained by disconnecting the stabilizer bar, as a Rubicon can.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


The opposite is happening here on the right front. The axle is hanging below the vehicle, but not as much as it might if the stabilizer bar wasn’t working against it.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


Here at the right rear, the suspension is fully compressed. There’s a stabilizer bar back here, too, but it’s much less influential than the one up front. It’s not disconnectable in a Rubicon or a Mojave, and there’d be little to gain if it was.

The important bit to notice here is the tire clearance. There’s plenty. A 35-inch tire (these Falkens are 33-inch tires) would probably have no trouble if you didn’t monkey with the offset and were careful not to choose ones that were too much wider. If you want to let your freak flag fly, the lower dark part of the fender flares can be removed.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled



The suspension is on full display here at the right rear. Nice-looking stuff, I must say.


Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


All right, enough talk.

To get my number, I get out my T-square and project the hub center perpendicular to the ramp. The upper edges of the tape represent that point. The higher one is the Gladiator Mojave, the lower one is the Gladiator Rubicon with its stabilizer bar connected.
So the Mojave is slightly more flexible. But, and this is important, the only reason we can eyeball it like that is they both share the same 137.3-inch wheelbase. It’s two versions of the same vehicle.

My ramp doesn’t come to a perfect point, so I determine the amount of climb using trigonometry (feel free to skip ahead to the results in bold if the following brings back nightmares of high school math class). I measure the vertical height of the farthest point up the ramp and divide that by the sine of 20 degrees, our ramp angle. It’s an easier measurement, but there’s one extra math step.

Flex Index = vertical height of farthest point ÷ sin 20 ÷ wheelbase x 1,000

The Rubicon’s lift was 21.5 inches, which is 62.9 inches of climb

The Mojave’s lift measured 22 11/32 inches, which is 65.3 inches of climb - 2.4 inches more.

Dividing both by the wheelbase of 137.3 inches and multiplying by 1,000, we get:

Flex Index = 476 for the Mojave and 458 for the Rubicon with the bar connected. The Mojave’s differences add up to 18 points of improvement. Not much, but not nothing.

So why does the Mojave do better than the Rubicon in its normal state? It comes down to three factors, although I’m not certain if all of them help.
First, the rear springs are a bit softer, a change made so they’ll respond smoother over desert whoop-de-doos and washboard. The tow rating drops from 7,000 to 6,000 as a result. But they’re progressive, and it’s hard to know how they differ at this level of compression. Let’s set this aside.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


You may have read that the Mojave’s track width is a half-inch wider than the Rubicon. It’s done by reducing the offset of the wheels, which pushes the tires outward to create more inside clearance for those bigger Fox shocks.

How? First, assume the axle’s maximum dangle angle is the same. Now, change the wheels so the tires are spread farther apart, as they are here. The hiked up wheel will be hiked up a little more, which means the vehicle can go farther up the ramp. I’ve measured this with my own Jeep before and after a major tire and wheel upgrade that involved huge offset and tire width changes.

These pictures show the wheel offset of the Rubicon and Mojave rims. The difference between them is 7.3 mm, so changing both sides together will create a track width increase of 14.6 mm. That works out to just over 9/16 inch, so Jeep seems to be underselling it by saying a half-inch. Still, this change isn’t meaningful enough to explain much of it.

Jeep Gladiator Gladiator Mojave vs Rubicon Suspension Flex Test (RTI - Ramp Travel Index) 10_both_bars_titled


The stabilizer bars themselves almost certainly hold the key. The Mojave’s rear one is 1 mm smaller – 20 mm instead of 21 mm. That may not sound like much, but the torsional stiffness of a stabilizer bar is proportional to its diameter raised to the fourth power. All else being equal, that drop of 1 mm represents an 18% drop in the stabilizer bar’s torsional stiffness. But the rear bar isn’t as crucial as the front one, so this probably isn’t it, either.

But there is a difference up front, even though both bars measure 32 mm in diameter. The key is how they look different. The Rubicon has the swaged look of a solid bar where it necks down for tire clearance, because it is. The Mojave has the squished look of a hollow tube, because it is.

That tube’s wall thickness is 5.1 mm, so if you do all the diameter math (to the fourth power) you get a decrease in torsional stiffness of about 20%.
That number assumes two things that might not be true: 1) the Rubicon’s sliding mechanism doesn’t negatively affect the bar’s overall stiffness in its connected state and 2) the bar’s material is the same despite one being hollow and the other solid.

This seems to explain it no matter how those turn out. And softer stabilizer bars would indeed help with high-speed desert performance and might represent another reason why the tow rating is a smidge lower.

All of this begs the question: What about the Gladiator Rubicon with the bar disconnected? My ramp tells us it destroys both of these. How does a Flex Index of 607 points grab you? Yes, pushing a button in a Rubicon is good for nearly 150 Flex Index points.

If all of this has soured you on the Mojave, it shouldn’t. The Gladiator isn’t the rock crawler that the Wrangler is, so there’s that. And you can add a stabilizer bar disconnect by installing special aftermarket links. I paid less than $100 for the ones I added to my own JK Wrangler Sport. It’s not as simple a pushing a button, and you have to be absolutely sure you reconnect them once you get back to pavement, but your Mojave can score better than 600 points, too, if you install a simple mod.

Contributing writer Dan Edmunds is a veteran automotive engineer and journalist. He worked as a vehicle development engineer for Toyota and Hyundai with an emphasis on chassis tuning, and was the director of vehicle testing at Edmunds.com (no relation) for 14 years.
I had a Mojave. Wish now I'd kept it. Looking to get into another Mojave. Keeping it stock...for what I do it's perfect. 2nd thing...I wish I was a tenth as good in math as Dan Edmunds is. I would have made it through college then. Amazing reading this article. I was in the automotive business for 26 years. Having his understanding of things, I'd still be there. Thank you for a GREAT read.
 

Bjeepz

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I do think it's darn near amazing that the same basic pickup design can be made into a tow truck, a rock crawler OR a desert runner with judicious application of engineering and design.

The Rubicon is not something copied before now, but having the Mojave be able to brawl at speed with the TRD's and ZR2's of the world is pretty dang cool.

Same truck BASICALLY but one is a pine-cone and the other a tumbleweed!
The Rubicon Fox stuff is comparable to the TRD stuff. Not made for speed. If you take a TRD Pro for a drive then a ZR2 right after, you will totally discount the TRD from any high speed driving. I currently have a ZR2 and am waiting for my Mojave to arrive. Remember Toyota is still trying to convince ppl that rear drum brakes are better......
 

Gvsukids

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raypla

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Interesting comparison. I found Rti results gathered by a guy on YouTube, adds some relevance
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