How successful would my Gladiator Sport be on the Rubicon Trail?

[CrazyCooter]

I went slow through a couple places for sure, but it depends on how you built your JT. Mine is built to do these trails, yes the Rubicon is a beast of a trail for the JT. But it can do it with no body damage. I would not take one with Painted Fenders. In hindsight, I would have 40's and a 6" lift. But its done now. The JT can be built to be an off road beast, which in my opinion is really all its good for. I've said it before and I stand by this, the JT is a horrible DD, but if all you can afford is one vehicle, have fun driving it to the mall and work everyday. I will continue to build mine for off road use, and occasionally pulling my boondock trailer. Yes, 1 ton axels maybe on the horizon with 40's, but that opens up a whole new can of worms, and the Rubicon trail is done for me. Trail eudicot of the non-jeep crowd was the worst I've ever seen it of all the places I've been, and this observation was shared with me by other jeepers on the trail this weekend. Most of the "Buggies" hung out in gangs/packs and were driving the trail drunk, I witnessed several confrontations that were disrespectful instigated by the buggy drivers. It was extremely disappointing since there were so many families on the trail. Ouray and Moab have had a much more relaxed, and Jeep friendly atmosphere. IMO.

Yes, sad state of affairs at that trail these days. I assume it's a "Gang" of locals that kinda treats the areas as if it was their own to trash? These days I visit and try to enjoy it as if it will be the last time till it gets closed since we have seen so many fall into that fate. Probably the only things keeping the Con open are the great groups of volunteers and the fact that it's an old county road. No doubt the Forest Circus would have locked it up by now if they had control over it.

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[sass JT]

Hey op! Good to see ya again! It’s been a bit since top of the world.

Personally I’ve seen your rig… I’d say go for it. Run that rubicon trail

 

[Josh903]

Hey op! Good to see ya again! It’s been a bit since top of the world.

Personally I’ve seen your rig… I’d say go for it. Run that rubicon trail

Cool to run into you again here, that was a fun time on that trail. Thanks for the pics!

 

[hjdca]

No sound ? I wanted to hear the crunching!

Ok, here is her last video. More scraping sound on this one... All the Rubicon Springs out takes are at the end.

 

[hjdca]

I went slow through a couple places for sure, but it depends on how you built your JT. Mine is built to do these trails, yes the Rubicon is a beast of a trail for the JT. But it can do it with no body damage. I would not take one with Painted Fenders. In hindsight, I would have 40's and a 6" lift. But its done now. The JT can be built to be an off road beast, which in my opinion is really all its good for. I've said it before and I stand by this, the JT is a horrible DD, but if all you can afford is one vehicle, have fun driving it to the mall and work everyday. I will continue to build mine for off road use, and occasionally pulling my boondock trailer. Yes, 1 ton axels maybe on the horizon with 40's, but that opens up a whole new can of worms, and the Rubicon trail is done for me. Trail eudicot of the non-jeep crowd was the worst I've ever seen it of all the places I've been, and this observation was shared with me by other jeepers on the trail this weekend. Most of the "Buggies" hung out in gangs/packs and were driving the trail drunk, I witnessed several confrontations that were disrespectful instigated by the buggy drivers. It was extremely disappointing since there were so many families on the trail. Ouray and Moab have had a much more relaxed, and Jeep friendly atmosphere. IMO.

yeah, good points. I have 5:13s, the JTR 4:1 transfer case and with stick, I was in low lock first gear the whole way. Really just crawling slow. Buggies were catching us, and we would let them by... Also, There is hope yet, if you look at our last video, a group of buggies coming up the hill (they had the right away) pulled over, because they could, and let our group of Jeeps by.... One of them even gives me some spotting help as I go by. Here's to rooting for the good guys !

 

[hjdca]

Yes we were at Buck Island on Friday night. Here is the photo of our camp (Blue tent lower right), unfortunately, my JT is behind the huge boulder on the left of our camp. You can barely see the top of my RTT. I think we rolled out about 10ish on Sat morning. Huge traffic jam on Big sluice for 2 hours. Stopped and spoke with all the JT owners in the JT group in Rubicon Springs. Here is a good photo of what my JT looks like, as we were camped at Loon Lake Thursday night. Yes the tires did excellent. It was a cold and windy trip.

Cool ! We left two hours before you on Saturday morning and hit zero traffic through Big Sluice and were in Rubicon springs by 1 am or so. We took the first campsite by the water with the fire ring just as you get into the Springs - right by the donation box. We saw lots of rigs pull in a few hours later. They had that poker run going on...

 

[Tommyd]

Challenging but very doable on 37s without lockers. On 35s, you're going to struggle in some sections for sure, especially with the geometry brackets and not adjustable LCAs.

How will adjustable lca’s help? I’m clueless lol

 

[Tommyd]

I just did it last weekend. Sport Max tow, no lockers no rear LSD and never spun a tire for more than a few seconds. 5.13 gearing on 37's with a 5" lift. Challenging trail, but I never needed pushed, pulled or winched. I did skip little sluice. I ran it in the traditional direction from the Loon Lake start to the Cadillac hill finish. We stayed 1 night at Buck Island Lake.

If you have max tow you do have lsd right??

 

[Gvsukids]

If you have max tow you do have lsd right??

Check out the replies above and you'll have your answer.

 

[Tommyd]

Check out the replies above and you'll have your answer.

Sorry. I didn’t take 10 minutes to read through 4 pages . My bad.

 

[hjdca]

How will adjustable lca’s help? I’m clueless lol

When you lift your truck, you have a number of choices for fixing the length of your control arms.

1. You can just fix the length with adjustable control arms. This does not effect your clearance.

2. You can also keep the same length control arms and get "geometry correction" brackets which lower the control arm bracket connection point to the frame a few inches or so. This hurts your clearance off-road, but, gives you better suspension geometry on the road.

 

[WILDHOBO]

When you lift your truck, you have a number of choices for fixing the length of your control arms.

1. You can just fix the length with adjustable control arms. This does not effect your clearance.

2. You can also keep the same length control arms and get "geometry correction" brackets which lower the control arm bracket connection point to the frame a few inches or so. This hurts your clearance off-road, but, gives you better suspension geometry on the road.

Or you can buy the replacement fixed length lower control arms that are the appropriate length for your lift. Then you’ve got one less adjustment to worry about, and don’t need geometry correction brackets.

 

[Josh903]

When you lift your truck, you have a number of choices for fixing the length of your control arms.

1. You can just fix the length with adjustable control arms. This does not effect your clearance.

2. You can also keep the same length control arms and get "geometry correction" brackets which lower the control arm bracket connection point to the frame a few inches or so. This hurts your clearance off-road, but, gives you better suspension geometry on the road.

Yea I wanted the geometry brackets for the better handling since it is my daily driver. My understanding is the more parallel the front LCAs are to the frame/road the less jarring bumps are so that's why I went with them.

I do plan on getting better control arms with the Clayton kit, but will likely keep the geometry brackets along with the new control arms for the same reason. Even with keeping the brackets, the Clayton arms will give me more flex which is mainly what I am after.

 

[Ghetto Fab.]

Yea I wanted the geometry brackets for the better handling since it is my daily driver. My understanding is the more parallel the front LCAs are to the frame/road the less jarring bumps are so that's why I went with them.

I do plan on getting better control arms with the Clayton kit, but will likely keep the geometry brackets along with the new control arms for the same reason. Even with keeping the brackets, the Clayton arms will give me more flex which is mainly what I am after.

Adjustable control arms and geometry correction brackets are two totally different animals really. Adjustable control arms simply allow you to get your caster and pinion angles back to where they should be, but do nothing for geometry. Geometry brackets kinda suck since they space everything down on the frame 3-4" and that typically ruins ground clearance, but it restores all the suspension geometry to where it was before the lift. From what I've seen firsthand over about 2" lift the jeeps start developing roll oversteer and thats where some form of geometry correction is beneficial. Ideally, going to a long arm suspension fixes the geometry issues without killing ground clearance.

I would just ditch the rear sway bar. It doesn't do much and hangs down. The way they designed it attaching to the frame it looses ground clearance as the suspension compresses. I'd imagine some of the guys that have bent or ripped the mounts off have done so by trying to drive the links into rocks as the suspension articulates and compresses. That design just doesn't work for wheeling.

Its really cool to see the Glads being used on the Rubicon! Thats one of the things they were built for! Now to just find that extra $50k somewhere, hmmm......

Kevin

 

[Josh903]

I thought about removing the rear sway bar but then I came across this video and it gave me cause to rethink it. For now I think I'll keep it, now moreso since I resolved the frame side weakness, but I may later replace it with an AntiRock like I did the front.

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