Highest Clearance Inner Fenders?

[Kindafearless]

Just curious, why is your bed so small?

Because I cut 8ish inches off it.

My Gladiator is a dedicated off-road truck and I got sick of hearing the tail end drop on rocks, so I spent a weekend making it shorter.

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[Escape.idiocracy]

I’m running 4.75 backspacing (which was perfect for 37s) wheels. It has 1.75” spidertrax spacers now for the 40s.

So 3” back spacing, 40” tire, what axles, ball joints and steering are you running?

The JT seems like it turns “ok” on 37’s with the steering pressure boosted, but kinda feel like 40’s aired down is probably not going to be ideal in the rocks…

I do understand that the JL/Jt 44’s are stronger than the jk platform….. but we bent the tubes on a factory jk 44 with 4.5” spacing within 10k miles (predominately dirt road- never beat, never heavy on the skinny pedal..) 3” BS is a lot of additional force on the ball joints.
Post breakage, we then went to an HD44 with an artech truss, dynatrac ball joints. This lasted for awhile. Still blew the factory steering, jumped to a psc big bore and finally felt “ok”- but this was with 37’s…. 40’s add a ton more stress to components.

I’m just curious about your setup, how long you have been running it (mileage, what type of wheeling do you do, and frequency), what has broken so far etc.
- frankly I was pretty set that 37’s are as big as we were going until we can throw on a set of 60’s… and steering (Haven’t found anything aside from the pressure booster set up for the diesels- doesn’t look like PSC is offering a big bore box and pump for the Diesel…)

 

[Escape.idiocracy]

Because I cut 8ish inches off it.

My Gladiator is a dedicated off-road truck and I got sick of hearing the tail end drop on rocks, so I spent a weekend making it shorter.

We planned to bob ours before it was even ordered! Some folks just don’t understand…. Most of them do not really wheel anything more difficult than a forest road…. “Why didn’t you buy a JL” is probably my favorite….

 

[Proximo]

Because I cut 8ish inches off it.

My Gladiator is a dedicated off-road truck and I got sick of hearing the tail end drop on rocks, so I spent a weekend making it shorter.

Nice work. It looks great and I'd imagine your departure is much easier

 

[Kindafearless]

So 3” back spacing, 40” tire, what axles, ball joints and steering are you running?

The JT seems like it turns “ok” on 37’s with the steering pressure boosted, but kinda feel like 40’s aired down is probably not going to be ideal in the rocks…

I do understand that the JL/Jt 44’s are stronger than the jk platform….. but we bent the tubes on a factory jk 44 with 4.5” spacing within 10k miles (predominately dirt road- never beat, never heavy on the skinny pedal..) 3” BS is a lot of additional force on the ball joints.
Post breakage, we then went to an HD44 with an artech truss, dynatrac ball joints. This lasted for awhile. Still blew the factory steering, jumped to a psc big bore and finally felt “ok”- but this was with 37’s…. 40’s add a ton more stress to components.

I’m just curious about your setup, how long you have been running it (mileage, what type of wheeling do you do, and frequency), what has broken so far etc.
- frankly I was pretty set that 37’s are as big as we were going until we can throw on a set of 60’s… and steering (Haven’t found anything aside from the pressure booster set up for the diesels- doesn’t look like PSC is offering a big bore box and pump for the Diesel…)

So I’ve got 5000-6000 miles on the current setup since going up from 37s and several fairly serious off-road weekends. (Multi hour long rock gardens, etc)

I also just bought a tow vehicle, which was the plan for this year and part of the reason I felt comfortable going to 40s this past winter.

So far, the 44s are holding up nicely. I do have trusses, upgraded synergy ball joints, Reid knuckles, chromoly shafts and RCVs, and RPM/Synergy steering.

I built the truck for red/black trails. I like the super technical trails and pushing myself as a driver. The Gladiator way not be the ideal off-road platform, but I love its personality. Big truck, stable wheelbase, challenging to maneuver.

The plan with the 44s is to push them as far as I can. Most people aren’t pushing these new 44s, so I figure I’ll find out what the breaking point is, then report back. Hopefully not too soon though, I’ve got lots of trails left this year.

As for steering, the electric steering actually did pretty well. I did swap to PSC, but I kinda regretted afterwards how fast I made that jump.

I’m a careful driver and prefer to feel when I putting too much stress on components, so I can adjust my approach. With the electric steering I could feel when I was at a bad angle or the truck was leaning hard, which gave me the feedback to back out of it or fix my tire placement. With hydro I’ve got to make an effort to feel it, otherwise the ram will push through anything.

 

[Kindafearless]

Nice work. It looks great and I'd imagine your departure is much easier

Thanks! I’m a little critical of it and plan on fixing a few things this winter, but I’m glad I did it.

It’s a night and day difference, and a huge relief off-road. Can’t beat that feeling of making it through an obstacle without landing something hard.

 

[Kindafearless]

Oh, and to answer your question about breakage:

I bent a stabilizer bracket with the hydro ram, but was able to fix it and strengthen the bracket with welds.

I cracked a front LCA heim, but Rock Krawler sent me a new one no questions asked.

I recently found my rear driver axle is leaking. Looks like some minor abrasions to the seal. Looks to be more like the inner shaft has debris in it than impact damage though.

Everything else is holding strong, but I’m keeping an eye on things.

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