In Praise of Gladiator Comfort

[jgphil09]

When mine was new and still had the skinny Bridgestone Dueler street tires on it, I could easily get 22-23 mpg on the highway if (and this is important) - IF - I kept my speed below 65 MPH. I have a 80-mile round trip commute to work & back - about 80% highway - and I could easily average 22 mpg. I have since put stock 33" Rubicon take-off wheels/Falken Wildpeak A/Ts which are a couple of inches taller than the stock tires, wider, and a LOT heavier (which hurts you in stop & go driving). I also did a 1.5" leveling lift on the front - which didn't help the already awful aerodynamics (but looks SO much better). I am now only able to hit 19-20 on the highway - and that's only if I drive REAL carefully and keep the speed down. I take a backroads route on 2-lane highways for most of the way - where the speed limit is 55mph, so I go that way to keep my speed down and get decent MPG (and because the interstate is a madhouse). I now typically average around 18 MPG when I commute if I drive "normally". I can eek out another MPG or 2 if I really try, but wher's the fun in that? LOL Thankfully, I work from home half of the time, so the fuel mileage is no big deal. The road trip we did over Christmas was mostly interstate, so we were doing around 75 MPH most of the time - sometimes 80-ish. I think I averaged 16-17-ish over the whole trip. Another thing is the faster I go (the higher the wind resistance), the less likely I am to see 8th gear because I'm still running the stock 3.73 gears. If I were to put 4.10's in it, I might see 8th more and get better fuel mileage - but maybe not. The higher RPMs of the 4.10s might off-set getting to 8th more often... I don't know. It's not worth the big expense to swap the gears just for that to me. I didn't buy this thing to get great fuel mileage.

Thanks for info. I do have the 4.10s with the towing package. Also I am getting better fuel economy now after another Gladiator owner told me to turn off the auto/start each time I drive. It makes no sense to me but I am now getting 21 highway (65mph) and 17 city. Go figure.

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[KJ Jeeper]

My Glad is my 6th or 7th truck. Other than a brief visit from the Death Wobble (defective steering damper) the “ride” both in comfort and handling perspectives has been fine, and as good as the other truck predecessors. I just spent four hours this afternoon on errands that included several stops, including picking up 800 pounds of wood pellets, two flats of shotgun shells, groceries for dinner and a gas fill up. Oh and at 21 mpg. Despite the loading and unloading of the 20 bags of pellets I’m feeling fine, which at 72 is an accomplishment without the errands. So I guess that indicates the seats are pretty good.

But good as the Gladiator truck seats are, they do not come close to luxury car standards. We have German cars that are not known for super comfort, but the wife’s Q5 seats and ride beat the Gladiators. The seats/ride in my other car are on par with the Glad, but the P4 will also do 145 (on the track of course) without breaking a sweat.

I had my steering damper replaced on my 2021. I’m interested if you had any more steering issues after that.

 

[HankB]

I had my steering damper replaced on my 2021. I’m interested if you had any more steering issues after that.

Nothing since. I did learn from my service guy was that the replacement damper part number was different and superseded the original suggesting the new part was changed.

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