Gladiator Sport S Towing Upgrades

[Pips_the_JT]

Raised tire pressures to carry the extra load of the trailer hitch weight plus any cargo all at highway speed in summer heat. Touch the tires and compare front to back. If the back is noticeably warmer, add air.

LT-E tires and Bilstein shocks for tighter handling. A single Moab and Colorado trip wore out the stock shocks. The original soft highway tires were scary to consider on the Colorado rocks. Came back with bash marks all over the sidewalls of the LT-Es, but they held. And I had to have them at 50PSI to carry the cargo and trailer hitch weight. Getting too warm at 40. The better shocks help with the trailer bouncing around the back of the truck. The stiffer tires and shocks also help with the cross winds when passing big rigs, emergency handling, etc.

The back was sagging so I got some Timbren SES rubber bump stop helper springs in back. Haven't had a comparable trip yet so don't know how much these will help, but they don't hurt either. Easy to install.

While offroad was crashing against the front bump stops all the time, so replaced those with Timbren "Active Offroad" bumpstops. Wow. You can nail speed bumps and just feel a thump, now. Again, haven't had it offroad since but these will be great. A pain to install.

A practical tip: Don't fill the bunch of water and gas cans until you are actually about to go out into the wilds. No need to haul all that weight up the mountain passes along the way.

For gearing, mine has the stock 3.73s and a 6-speed manual transmission. Going up the mountain passes fully loaded (including all that water!) there were times I could easily wind out 2nd gear but 3rd couldn't hold speed, so I was stuck around 45MPH with the engine near the red line. Changing to 4.10 gears would get me to only 40 before I'd have to hit 3rd gear, but it would have 10% more torque in 3rd so maybe it could have accelerated some more. But maybe not. Maybe I'd be stuck at 40MPH instead of 45MPH! If you have an auto transmission then you get the advantage of less spacing between gears, so maybe yours would have accelerated in 3rd with the same load.

Trailer brake controller. Why can't Jeep include a little path through the dashboard to get the wiring from down below up to the top of the dash? And another path for the GMRS antenna cable. And for a USB cable. And a way through the firewall. Just make a place for these cables to run, please!

Added turn blinkers on those side cowls near the rear view mirrors. You can also purchase several brands of side marker/blinker lights for the "vent" areas a bit lower. Either way, these let people next to you know if you intend to change lanes.

Anyhow, that's most of what I've done so far to improve towing. We only have a small folding trailer, low height and around 2000lb. 16-17 MPG at highway speeds. The trailer has single-axle LT-C tires good for highway speeds, so we aren't limited by the tires to 65MPH. I've hit 75 a few times, usually around 70.

not sure if I read part of your post wrong, but there's a small firewall hole available on the driver's side - the wires will be right above the brake pedal to the left a bit. I ran my GMRS power and antenna thru it.

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[bd100]

there's a small firewall hole available on the driver's side

That's where the manual transmission clutch stuff goes through. I wish there were a few more places to run wires through the firewall. But I was also referring to the dash board, where I'd like to see places to run wire from below to above the dash.

 

[Bandit’s Lair]

That's where the manual transmission clutch stuff goes through. I wish there were a few more places to run wires through the firewall. But I was also referring to the dash board, where I'd like to see places to run wire from below to above the dash.

This is something I may be working on soon. I’m thinking to run wires through an opening under my 67 Designs base plate for the Wolfbox. Use an appropriately sized grommet and it should be good. Just have to figure out dash removal and what all is directly under there. Probably all manner of ducking nonsense.

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