What's a mod that you wouldn't do again?

[JTnw96]

Cheaping out on Amazon special ditch lights. Long story short, great deal on fantastically bright lights that look good and perform good. Down side, the LED emits so much interference my HAM radio gets knocked out when they’re on.

I replaced them with the ones I was going to purchase at 3x the cost and have had zero issues.

What lights did you end up with? I bought KC's and still have the same problem.

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[aprez27]

Rugged Ridge Tri-Fold Tonneau Cover - No fault of the cover itself, but the Mopar Roll-Up cover would have worked better for my setup.

Original Run of KBVoodoo's Bed Croosbars. They just never lined up properly, not as easily removeable as they advertised. Understandable why they re-designed them.

 

[AverageOverlander]

Warn 101335 Elite full width bumper. It claims to clear 37’s with a 2” lift. I have a 3” lift in front. It clears fine, until you disconnect the sway bar and go off road. Now I’m cutting the hell out of it to redesign it.

I feel like 90% of the, "Nope, no rubbing for me" comments are when driving on a highway, which is nice to know, but still completely useless info for many of us.

I have 33" tires with a 2" lift on an Overland, and yes they rub just a little bit with sway bars disconnected and at full stuff. Would probably be quickly solved with spacers or rims if it were a bigger problem... but the fact that mine rubs, makes me laugh out loud at some of these scenarios where people are saying they don't rub. On one hand you can't fault them if they're telling the truth from their experiences, it's just very misleading to someone who plans on off-roading

 

[WILDHOBO]

I feel like 90% of the, "Nope, no rubbing for me" comments are when driving on a highway, which is nice to know, but still completely useless info for many of us.

I have 33" tires with a 2" lift on an Overland, and yes they rub just a little bit with sway bars disconnected and at full stuff. Would probably be quickly solved with spacers or rims if it were a bigger problem... but the fact that mine rubs, makes me laugh out loud at some of these scenarios where people are saying they don't rub. On one hand you can't fault them if they're telling the truth from their experiences, it's just very misleading to someone who plans on off-roading

They first told me they never claimed it wouldn’t rub on a 2” lift with 37’s. When I showed them the text on their site, they put me on hold. Then came back to tell me it won’t rub with factory wheels and offset. That made me laugh. I told them how silly that was. 37x12.5 with a factory offset would rub when steering on the road without limiting steering travel. I agree with you. The marketing is pretty poor. Who would buy a bumper rated for 12k of winching without distortion, and not take it Offroad?

Edit: it won’t rub when I’m done with it, but it won’t be the bumper I purchased by a long shot. But now I know why Warn doesn’t sell 0 offset wheels. They’d rub on their own bumpers.

 

[Jobofly]

Rugged Ridge Tri-Fold Tonneau Cover - No fault of the cover itself, but the Mopar Roll-Up cover would have worked better for my setup.

Original Run of KBVoodoo's Bed Croosbars. They just never lined up properly, not as easily removeable as they advertised. Understandable why they re-designed them.

I looked at that cover as well and ended up going with the mopar roll up. I love it so far.

 

[Sandevino]

I've said it on here before and I'll say it again. If you haven't purchased the same part twice because you thought you could get away with the cheaper option only to have to purchase the more expensive one later anyway, can you really call yourself a real jeeper?

Everyone learns "buy once, cry once" at some point. It's like a right of passage where you transform from Jeep Boy into Jeep Man.

But it was an 8 pack….🥸

 

[Sandevino]

What lights did you end up with? I bought KC's and still have the same problem.

I tried multiple LED lights with the same issue and ended up with ferrite chokes on the power wires.

 

[bakobobby]

Swaybar disconnects. Likely a contentious topic but me personally I don’t like em. I have bought into the less is more camp that expouse better to have some swaybar front and back. There are a good deal of options these days. Discos just feel like old tech.

 

[chorky]

Warn 101335 Elite full width bumper. It claims to clear 37’s with a 2” lift. I have a 3” lift in front. It clears fine, until you disconnect the sway bar and go off road. Now I’m cutting the hell out of it to redesign it.

i did not want to hear this. Mine is supoed to get here on friday. do you think 35’s will have enough clearance?? Or am I gonna be in the same situation?

 

[HooliganActual]

I had to think long and hard about this one because it's easy to confuse a "bad" mod with one I have simply outgrown or one which was rendered ineffective because my use case changed.

However, I guess I would throw my bedslide into the "Mod I Wish I'd Never Done" category:

I really thought that this was going to be the right solution to allowing me to use the WHOLE bed AND promote easy access to the stuff in the front of the bed even with the canopy and its cupboards:

It was heavy and left lots of dead unusable space. it is now collecting dust in the garage and I should prolly try to sell it to recoup some of the cost I am out.

 

[AverageOverlander]

Swaybar disconnects. Likely a contentious topic but me personally I don’t like em. I have bought into the less is more camp that expouse better to have some swaybar front and back. There are a good deal of options these days. Discos just feel like old tech.

Curious what options you're referring to?
If you're running fire roads or high speed desert trails I would actually say to leave the swaybars connected. For our low speed, big ruts, roots, & rocks trails, there's no comparison, it's simply more comfortable and requires less effort driving to have the swaybars disconnected. I've disconnected just the swaybars before while being too lazy to air down, just because the quick disconnect gave me enough comfort. Same thing for climbing rocks, connected the truck will teeter, spin, struggle a bit... Disconnected the truck just climbs up the rocks and swallows them up like a basic speed bump.

 

[chorky]

What lights did you end up with? I bought KC's and still have the same problem.

I tried multiple LED lights with the same issue and ended up with ferrite chokes on the power wires.

I have Baha Designs all around plus D&L lucid cowl lights. Zero radio or coms issues noticed so far. But I do not have any ham frequencies.

 

[Puch]

How come?

When I was test driving, there was one with aftermarket RC shocks, the salesman asked me what I thought, I was turning and not fully paying attention to him or the conversation, and just kind of muttered, "Yeah this one isn't worth the effort, I'd rather just stick stock because I'll be replacing the tires and suspension anyway." He was shocked and explained that this one had aftermarket wheels/shocks already. I felt a bit bad and didn't want to insult their custom build... but with those cheap shocks and cheap MT's, I'd sooner have bought a shopping cart.



I just watched a video on a guy being very disappointed with the aluminum skids.
What was the issue with your bumper?

Nothing wrong with it other than it weighs a ton. I don’t remember the exact weight, but I ended up swapping it for aluminum.

 

[chorky]

genesis dual battery system.

I cannot say this is a mod I would ‘never’ do again because it does have some awesome applications. However, now that I know about the fuse 42 trick, I might have gone that route instead. Seeing as I ended up adding a 115ah AGM battery in the bed because the underhood aux 64ah battery alone was not sufficient. However the caveat is at that time I did not know the realization of several week long trips would actually be occurring this summer. The main thing I dislike about the genesis system is how much space it takes underhood. But that is unavoidable. And seeing as how I have a additional battery in the bed, my winch will have to be connected to the main battery and turn off the battery combiner when winching so power is not pulled from the in bed battery as it is fused at 100a and only using a 4ga wire. Pulling fuse 42, and putting a 150ah AGM in the bed for camping stuff would have been a simpler and cheaper method. But for 1-2 night trips (my original intent) the genesis 64ah aux battery would have been plenty sufficient.

 

[bakobobby]

Curious what options you're referring to?
If you're running fire roads or high speed desert trails I would actually say to leave the swaybars connected. For our low speed, big ruts, roots, & rocks trails, there's no comparison, it's simply more comfortable and requires less effort driving to have the swaybars disconnected. I've disconnected just the swaybars before while being too lazy to air down, just because the quick disconnect gave me enough comfort. Same thing for climbing rocks, connected the truck will teeter, spin, struggle a bit... Disconnected the truck just climbs up the rocks and swallows them up like a basic speed bump.

Agree with all your points. Stock bars are much too rigid to allow articulation needed on rough stuff.

I have run quite a few options on the Gladiator including no bars, no rear and front bar, rear/no rear with front discos. Now running antirocks front and back. After years of crawling stuff my own opinion is no swaybars is not as good as a purpose built swaybar solution. There is a lot more control and I would argue no loss or even gain in articulation. Tires also stay better in contact with surfaces so more traction less spin, less need to lock up.

Will say that there is more body roll but mostly solved that with shocks and spring rates.

@terraflex has an interesting dual bar setup I have wanted to try but they have yet to release it for the gladiator. Essentially can have stock like bar rates and with turn of a knob run a much lower rate.

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