Love my Gladiator, but…. Thoughts on a couple of items

[Harleyred66]

Leak fix. Very easy and cheap. Don’t wait.

Thanks for sharing this. Just realized today that my '23 JTR has the leak, thought it was on the outside.

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[ShadowsPapa]

2 - We recently moved and I’ve towed several 6x12 enclosed Uhaul trailers and even without Max Tow, the Gladiator was performed flawlessly. That brings me to this weekend. Rented a 6x12 Uhaul open trailer to put my lawn equipment on to bring it to our new home. When we left Friday evening the Gladiator seemed to have a hard time pulling the empty trailer. Coming back yesterday, I started noticing spark knock when I pulled a hill. I stopped a fill up with mid-grade gas and the spark knock went away. Seemed to tow better. Do other members use regular or higher grade gas when towing?

Manual or automatic?
Let it REV. Don't try to keep the RPM down. It needs to be over 3,000 RPM when under load.

I usually run the 88 octane E15 in mine whenever possible. I have never had an issue when towing.

It used to be that around here it wasn't available all year 'round, so I normally ran 87.
I run U88 because it's a lot cheaper now.
However, even with 87 neither of mine have ever had a bit of ping or knock when towing, even up grades here.

One big thing i see in the forums is people seem to want to try to keep the RPM down on these and that's a bad thing. Let 'er rip. Mine does 3,300-4,300 on the hills of I80 here towing 5,000 pounds and it likes it.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

35” tires on a Sport S without re-gearing the will put a strain on the engine and towing with this setup will just add to the strain.

Absolutely. There's a reason the max tow comes with the tire sizes it does with the gear ratios it does. It's about load vs. rpm vs. heat rejection and more.
No way I'd run 35s on 3.73 gears of the non-max tow JT and expect to tow without issues.

 

[BearFootSam]

That's a heck of a trip. It's a pretty drive through WV; sometimes I go up there for work and take my Subaru.

I've owned several houses in Houston, and moved several times to St Louis and back over the last 10 years. Life happens fast. The last 3 interstate moves I did on my own, I think I have a weird sickness where I correlate towing a moving trailer with a road trip adventure, starting with 3D virtual tetris during the loading, airline pilot weight and balance calculations, and of course overcoming the weight of objects loaded and injury prevention. I suppose I like weird challenges.

MA is pretty; was just up in Boston in August to see Metallica. Took the kids to their first concert.

Before moving to the Olympic Peninsula we lived in MD and would go to WV a couple times of year. One winter we were going to Canaan Valley and I had a rack and a sled on top of my Forester and that thing was wheezing on the hills trying to hold 60mph. It was a manual and the only way to hold speed was to run 4th gear and wind it up. I'll say here that the Pentastar is vastly smoother at RPM than the 2.5 boxer. We worked that Subaru so hard, it was not enough vehicle for our needs hence the JT.

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