Episode 1012 – 4xe Fire!
2021 to 2023 4xe Recall
On a recent episode, we spoke about the 2021 to 2023 Jeep Wrangler 4xe recall. Fire could result from an internal battery issue. Stellantis recommended NOT parking your 4xe inside, and NOT charging the battery pack.
32,125 4xes were recalled in the United States. 3,856 in Canada, and 9,249 outside of North America.
Stellantis provided documentation stating that some of the 4xe high voltage batteries may fail internally. Although the defect hasn’t been identified, the cause is still being investigated. Samsung SDI is the battery manufacturer.
Owners are advised not to recharge their vehicles and to park outside and away from structures until they are repaired. Dealers will update the high voltage battery pack software and replace the battery pack assembly, if necessary, free of charge. Owner notification letters should have been sent out by January 11th, 2024.
Best Jeep
Chip you own, and have owned, several Jeeps. Which was the best one, and why is it a TJ?
Jeep Talk Show Gladiator Update
My wife and I recently attended EJS 2024. Shortly before leaving, I completed the installation of the Motobilt Skid System. I don’t know how heavy it really is, but according to Motobilt, it’s 240 lbs. Having lifted each of the four skid plates, I can believe it. I’ve gotta say it again, what a beautiful skid system. I made a great choice.
Now we all know how weight affects the overall MPG of your vehicle. Logically this makes sense but what about drag, that causes poor MPG as well, right?
I was talking to Bender about my theory that a smooth surface under the Gladiator might help improve the MPG, he laughed and said something like “So you’re going to go with that?” but I think it may have an effect.
My best MPG on the trip was 18.46! Looking back, I record every fill-up, my best in the past was 18.5. So many things can cause your MPG to be better or worse so hard to say. What I can say is I believe it hasn’t changed overall. If you’re not getting armor, or you’re going with aluminum perhaps this information will help you get the good stuff, 100% steel…. Hmmm, I wonder if someone is coming out with synthetic armor, at least the Sun UV shouldn’t be able to get to it like the rope on your winch.
Must-Have Stuff for Your Jeep!
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This Jeep Talk Show flagship episode is brought to you by realtruck.com with over 1 million plus parts and accessories for your Jeep truck and life. Stay tuned for more on Real Truck’s latest off-road adventure, running the Rubicon, available on Motor Trend Plus.
All right, Chip, thank you for joining with me today, being this week’s guest host. I got to say, I really enjoy having you on here as I do Bill and Chuck on occasion, and I really like doing this guest host thing. I think it works out really well, and the people get more voices besides mine.
That’s a lot of fun. It’s a good time. Yeah, I’m glad it is because I haven’t always played well with others, so it’s a personal best for me to actually have people return.
All right, so I don’t know if you remember this. You and I might have even been the ones that talked about this originally, but surely you’re aware of the 4xe fire recall.
Yeah, I’ve heard of it. Yeah, I was listening to the show. I wasn’t on that episode, but yes. Okay, so the 2021 through 2023 4xe recall is going on, and like I said, on a recent episode we spoke about the Jeep Rengar 4xe recall.
Fire, good result. I need a fire engine noise here. Good result from an internal battery issue. Cilantro recommended not parking your 4xe inside or near a structure, not charging the battery pack.
I mean, I understand.
Well, I mean, it’s nice that it has an internal combustion engine that you don’t have to worry about bursting into flames, because they’ve been around for a lot longer time than these battery things.
Yeah, but I’d hate to lose my whole house because my Jeep, first off, I’d hate to lose my Jeep. That would be very traumatic, and then you lose your house too, or your garage. Oh, and worse, maybe somebody in the house, maybe yourself. True. Wow. Yeah, exactly. So I’m not saying that this isn’t something that Stellantis shouldn’t recommend. They absolutely should err on the side of safety, but can you imagine having to tell customers, “Oh, by the way, don’t park this inside. Oh, by the way, don’t charge your hybrid because it may burst into flames.”
Yeah. So now why did you buy a hybrid? Yeah, exactly. Well, if you’re getting, and I forget what the mileage is on the batteries, but if you’re getting 30 miles to a charge, was there really a reason to buy a hybrid to start with?
I think it was more like 23. Yeah, I think it’s lower than that. And when I went off-road with people, they were getting about three miles off-road. Yeah, that’s right. I mean, it takes a lot more energy to move things up and down and around on things. But there have been very good sellers. And I think primarily it’s because of the, and I think they’re still getting this, the $7,500 off your taxes at the end of the year for buying a hybrid. There was some discussion they were going to lower that or discontinue it or cut it in half, but then it seems like as of recently, of course, there’s other companies like Ford and different people that are kind of stepping away from this. So I’m curious to see where this thing goes in the future. I think they were ahead of themselves. They were trying to play fast. I will say this. I think Jeep has done a very good job of building very good EVs. And I’m interested to see about the Wagoneer S, which is going to be 100% EV, no internal combustion engine or ICE in there at all.
And I’ve not had factual numbers, but there’s been rumors of 400 miles per charge. And the 400 miles is now starting to get me interested, not necessarily in buying one, but more on board the EV market.
Yeah. With, you know, I just start thinking about my job and the fact that I may jump in my truck and drive 600 miles, they have to make sure that there’s charging stations along the way. If I time it right, but then the time to charge versus fill up with gas and keep moving and play fast, it doesn’t fit. Now driving around Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, yeah, EVs are fine. You got a 10 mile commute to work. Okay, great. You’re covered. Right. But not if you have to seriously do anything on the road at this point. I’m not there yet. Well, I don’t think the EVs are there yet, but they’re doing amazingly well. I believe I’m a little older than you. So I remember, and you made it also remember the D size batteries that you had to have for everything, especially flashlights. And if you left your flashlight on. My wife had some tools that were B size batteries, I think. Oh, okay.
Did it have a kickstand? No, don’t answer that. We’ll start.
So the D size batteries, and if you left your flashlight on like I did as a kid, I don’t think every kid did. The batteries were dead within a couple of hours. And the battery technology we have now is a lot better than what it was when I was a kid. So that’s great. It’s just not, and I’d say this all the time, it’s just not where it needs to be for an EV to replace an internal combustion engine. And then too, I think we talk about battery life and flashlights, the LED, the LED light bulbs now make a flashlight last so much better too. But I’m a big Duracell fan just because I have had better luck and success with those over time. But yeah, I just don’t think that they have the car battery or the EVs totally, totally figured out. But hey. Well, I mean, the problem, and this is a good thing that you brought up, the LED light technology is much more efficient. It doesn’t radiate 360 degrees like an incandescent bulb does. It radiates the light in one direction, primarily in one direction. So now you can get brighter and require less energy.
So certainly the LED technology has certainly made batteries last longer. And even in phones, it’s LEDs facing towards you, facing what you’re looking at. And the LED isn’t lighting anything up behind it or to the side. It’s primarily at you. So that helps. But we don’t have anything like that in electric motors.
And you really can’t have an electric motor just generate power in one direction. It has to do the same thing that an internal combustion engine does. So there’s no efficiencies there like you can get from an LED. So the battery technology has to make up that difference. What’s interesting to me, so I was just talking to a friend of mine two weeks ago. Apparently he’s developed, he’s calling it an electric motor, but really it’s more of an electric generator that continuously runs and he can power one room of lights off of a little nine volt battery. And that it’s self perpetuating.
That there’s, it doesn’t have negative draw. It’s got positive draw that gets producing more power than it’s consuming. So if he tries to get you to invest in this, don’t do it. There’s no such thing as perpetual energy. He’s got two guys, he’s supposedly he’s flying over to Israel and talking about patents and stuff. He’s, he’s moving forward with it. He’s been running in his house for a month and it’s supposedly working, but we’ll see. He used to be an engineer at NASA and then he lost that job. So I’m not sure why, but anyway, it’s a whole nother discussion. Yeah, no problem. Well, you know, that’d be great if it actually works out just scientifically. There’s no such thing as a perpetual perpetual motion machine. This is initially motion, but it is a energy for nothing. Correct. Correct. Yeah. So it’ll be, I mean, it’ll be wonderful. We’ll have him on the show if it all pans out, especially if he gets a patent, you know, because you can’t get a patent off of this, some sort of a crackpot stuff.
So as we reported in the past, there’s 32,125 four by ease that were recalled in the United States, 3,856 in Canada and about 9,249 outside of North America. And the ones outside of North America, did they really matter? I didn’t, I don’t care. Do you? I mean the Canadian Canadian say, yeah, I know some Canadians. So I care about that. We’ve got some international, don’t cut off the international, but those guys in Australia are yelling at the radio. I know they are. They know me.
So Stellantis provided documentation stating that some of the four by E high voltage batteries may fail internally.
Although the defect hasn’t been identified, the cause is still being investigated. So these batteries are from Samsung, specifically Samsung SDI. And I’m a little surprised. I mean, anybody can have problems with a manufacturing process, but Samsung, at least the phones and I think the, my refrigerator is a Samsung.
I generally associate good things with Samsung.
Yeah. I mean, quality wise, I would too. I’ve got some, I think Samsung TVs and different appliances. I would have confidence in Samsung as a brand, but that doesn’t mean that the latest technology, there’s still bugs to be worked out. Right. And especially with batteries because there are people or companies are trying to get more and more energy to density in the batteries. And of course that can lead to, lead to issues, but you gotta, you gotta imagine there was a lot of testing and stuff that went on before these things were put in vehicles. And I’m sure Jeep Stellantis did a bunch of testing as well because they didn’t want something like this to happen.
I don’t know about to date, but I know that very few four by E’s have actually caught fire. And in the cases, at least in the first two that caught fire, Stellantis purchased those back from the, from the people that own them so they could use it to investigate the issue. So from all that I can tell, nobody’s lost a structure. Nobody’s lost their lives.
And the, and I don’t think anybody’s lost money on the deal. You gotta wonder what they, if they purchased another Jeep Wrangler and was it a four by E? I would think probably not.
Well, I mean, I, you gotta applaud Stellantis for standing behind it and they’ve got to cover their butt, right? They’re going to come out with this recall so that if they, everybody comes back on them and says, Hey, my, my Jeep burned down in the garage and I lost my house.
If they knew about it and they didn’t announce it. So if there’s only been two or three or four, who knows how many has it, is it really, it’s a risk and it’s a concern, but do I, would I lose sleep over it? Yeah, I wouldn’t call it a danger, but I mean, it’s, it’s, and I think this is a voluntary recall. I think the, the government has made Stellantis do this. They’re voluntarily doing this, getting out ahead of it, which they should and hats off to them. So I’m sure they’re going to figure it out. And it’s, it’s a shame that it’s the battery that Jeep didn’t make. So they have to go back to the manufacturer and try to find out what happened with the batteries and why didn’t you guys test this properly? So on and so forth. But it doesn’t look that way from the consumer. The consumer is looking at it like this is Jeep’s problem. This is the four by design issue. And I don’t, and I don’t think that’s necessarily fair.
Well, so they have stipulations on specs on parts, right? And, and you have to have confidence in your, because just like some of the strikes you talked about back on previous episodes, if it’s a supplier part that we couldn’t get, why couldn’t we get trucks? You couldn’t get the chips, that the supplier issues that they’re not, Jeep’s not going to make every part that’s in their Jeep. They’re contracting those out. So if they meet the spec, but was the spec written tight enough or did somebody make a mistake? Maybe they were trying to make it just a better battery. And when they tweaked it now it overheats or combust. I don’t know. Well, I’ll, you know, I’m a Tesla fan boy, primarily because I’m a, a, a stockholder, but a company that does make all their stuff, Tesla, including the chips. Actually they, they took some chips and during the cheap chip shortage and got them and redid them. So they, they could use them in their vehicles. They reprogrammed them. So they didn’t have a chip shortage. At least that’s what I remember reading. At any rate, I think that’s one of the downfalls of the manufacturers these days is outsourcing so much stuff.
And I think they would be, I think that they could have a much more, a less expensive product if they were doing their own stuff. Now maybe just the sheer number of vehicles that they make precludes them from being able to make their own stuff. But I remember the unibomber, he was so hard to catch because he was even making his own screws for the moms.
I’m just saying there’s presidents for this. Outside of the unibomber, I mean, is it efficient? So if somebody knows how to make a great car, they may not know how to make a great battery. And to hire the man that’s no excuse.
I don’t know. I think that there’s people that specialize that should be allowed to work there special. Yeah. No, you can look at it either way. I’m just saying you can control cost a lot better. And sometimes too, you could get better products because you’re putting the pressure on your own internal employees to come up with something better. And you actually mentioned about Ford pulling back on the EV stuff. And I think that might be part of the reason why is because they just don’t have control over aspects of it that they need control over. Just guessing. I don’t know.
Maybe. But you got to think, if it was truly a battery company, they’ve got a heck of an R&D staff.
How much money is Stellanis or any manufacturer going to invest in a battery R&D staff? Are they going to gear up as much as Samsung or Duracell or all these other battery companies? I think they’re going to know more and they can bring more technology. I mean, that’s like suspension work. I mean, I’ve heard that they use some Teraflex parts. They may use other manufacturer’s parts on Jeeps. That’s the big deal, right? You get your product approved into the manufacturer as part of their specs and you work in a partnership with them in product development. I think actually we have better quality stuff allowing those partnerships in general. Now with this battery thing, okay, this is a problem. But were they being asked to do something that maybe was not capable yet or the technology? They turned the battery up too much because this is talking about the high voltage issue. Had they tried to extend the range of the battery and when they did that, something else went wrong. It’s not listed.
So as far as the recall goes, dealers will update the high voltage battery pack and software.
And well, actually the software that will replace the software and the battery pack assembly if necessary free of charge on a notification letter should have been sent out by January 11th, 2024. So if you have a 2021 through 2023 4 by E and you didn’t receive a letter, I’d give your dealer a little chat, a little call. And this is interesting too because it also, since they said if necessary, but they haven’t identified the issue yet, I got to feel that there’s certain batch numbers or build dates or something they must be looking at. And apparently I’m guessing the recall means they’re going to look and see if you have this version of software or a version of the hardware on the battery pack and then that gets replaced because it sounds like they’ve at least narrowed it down to some ranges, even if they don’t know what the cause is.
All right. I’m Tony and welcome to the Jeep talk show where we put the fun and off-road fun strap in, grab your favorite beverage and get ready to laugh, learn and have a good time. Chip, do you, do you strap in before you do the show?
Oh, strap in. You’re thinking. I can see you think about that. I thought you thought about strap on. I was like, yeah, I get ready. So I’ve got some lubricant. Well, as long as the camera stays above the table, I’m okay with whatever you do over there. Okay.
On tonight’s episode, we discovered it, the news story, 4 by E fire recall update, and our Jeep Gladiator update, a motor belt, skid system and miles per gallon. And Chip, you’re going to be talking to us about what?
We’re going to be talking about tread lightly a little bit. I just participated in a cleanup day and we’ll go into some, uh, the discussion on that. Very, very cool. Yeah. I actually did some tread lightly stuff out at EJS this year. It is like last year. Oh, and then our must have stuff for your Jeep Oracle lighting, racetrack, tailgate panel light for the 2020 through 2024 Jeep Gladiator JT.
I want to get your opinion on that, uh, that chip because I think it’s really cool because it’s nice bright lights, but, uh, I don’t think it’s much, it’s not really off-roadish. We’ll talk about that here in a little bit. Are you ready? It’s time for the Jeep dog show with host Tony, Josh, Wendy, and Chuck.
Hi, I’m chip and have you participated in a tread lightly event?
I would say yes. I have at least a twice now and both times at EJS. So it’d be interesting to know about the people out there. If they’ve been in a tread lightly event. Yes. All right, chip. Um, you’ve had or have several different Jeeps and different models and stuff. So my question to you is, uh, owning several different Jeeps, which one is the best and why is it a TJ?
Well, you know, I almost, I almost agree with you. I think, uh, well, so the story, I mean, I’ve got a, I’ve got a 46 Willys, which is, I don’t ever really want to get rid of because it was the first year of CJs and, but it’s not as capable. It’s not as comfortable. I shouldn’t say as capable if I drove it right, maybe, but it’s not built up. I don’t have it lifted. So it doesn’t have the clearance, right? It doesn’t, it’s got narrow tires on it. I don’t have, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna hot rod it. I’m not gonna modify it. I want to keep it stock. Sure. That’s an old Jeep. That’s a classic.
I’ve wheeled some CJ fives. I’ve wheeled some CJ sevens. I, I, I wheeled a TJ.
And I, then I, when I was going to Moab the first time in 2020, I was going to, I didn’t have a trailer. I didn’t have a tow vehicle. So I decided I wasn’t going to drive the TJ all the way out. Now that could be wussy on me, but I wanted to upgrade and I bought a JK two door Rubicon and it set it up to run at Moab. And, and then that’s my primary off-road vehicle and it’s really comfortable. It’s got a lot of nice creature comforts. I think if it was uncomfortable, my wife wouldn’t join me as much. So there’s a lot to be said for a JK and now I’ve got my wife in a JL and we’ve had it off-road a couple of times. That’s a four door Rubicon and very capable vehicle. Love it. You know, I’ve trail guided for a lot of people in JKs and JLs, but boy, you watch those TJs. The TJs just are nimble, lighter, capable. That’s why I went out and just bought an LJ. I couldn’t, I was missing my old TJ that was just a, it was a 2006 TJ and I wanted an LJ for the wheelbase. And so it’s not built up. It’s three inch lift. It’s capable. I took it off road in Arizona, but it’s not going to be my rock crawler at this point. But I love, I love that. I don’t know. I, everybody’s going to argue, right? I mean, there’s people that are going to say the YJ was best.
Wrangler. I still go back. I love the classic design of a CJ and I think that the TJ still had more of that look. And as we go to the JK and the JL, we’re, we still have that basic look, but it doesn’t look the same. It’s more modernized and as Chuck says, it’s got more plastic on it. Right. Well, I think I’ve only been in a JK once and it was a very short duration and a minivan is was my, my feeling about the interior design. It didn’t look very Jeepy to me. And then, then, then that is the, so, I mean, that’s just a hundred percent opinion. I mean, because people would say that with a sat in a CJ and then got in a Wrangler, a YJ or TJ. So I mean, send all your hate mail to chip. I kind of disagree. Okay. The seats are more plush. There’s more creature comforts.
Yeah. The dashes change every time they change a model. Yeah, but didn’t it, didn’t it seem like a, like a minivan, a dash? I mean, that’s what I’m talking about really is the dash. It just had a feel of not Jeep to me.
See, it took me a couple of weeks to get used to, but now that that’s what feels now when I’m in my well, the JK to the JL didn’t have totally dramatic. I don’t know what I’d feel like in these 2024s with that huge screen on it. I think that’s pretty wild, especially the long thing like that’s like Star Trek stuff.
Anytime there’s a change though, right? I mean, when they came out with the gladiator, my first, I thought they were ugly. That was my first response. I’m like, they are. Oh my God. You know, that’s, and then they’re wrong. Somebody was calling me on this the other day. They said that I had said in a prior show that the gladiator looked anemic and I said it does. I mean, without any kind of lift or bigger tires on it, it looks funky. It needs to have stuff done to it. And even after that, it still looks a little funky. It doesn’t have that. That’s the sleekness of the JL or even the JK. Yeah, but then you look at what are the guys that were driving CJ5, CJ7s and the CJ8 came out. Those are cool looking. Yeah. Look how long, but they were, they were, those weren’t that popular because they, they looked kind of weird having that be that long. And then the TJs, how many TJs did they sell versus LJs? The LJ, that has to grow on you a little bit because it’s long. It looks funny. Yeah, it does look funny being long like that, but still it’s a coveted TJ era Jeep. And I would have loved to got one, especially whenever you have the soft top on it. It looks weird because it’s so much longer than the TJ. But there’s, there’s, I think you did a really cool thing getting an LJ. How much did that thing cost you? Yeah. And you can tell me the wife, the figure you told your wife.
There is a difference, right? So my budget. Jeep it standard. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t tell us the truth. Well, the whole story was I was going to Arizona and I started to look at renting Jeeps and to rent a modified Jeep with insurance and everything else out on the trails. It’s going to be a couple of thousand dollars for, for seven days of wheeling. And I’m like, why am I going to throw away a couple of thousand dollars? I’ll just buy a TJ. Right. So I started looking at five and then I quickly progressed to eight. And then I thought, well, I’d really like to have a Rubicon. And I got up to 10. While you’re in there. That’s, that’s a great price though, especially for a Rubicon, I think. Yeah, but that was a TJ, not an LJ. Right. Buying an LJ Rubicon, you’re going to probably be approaching 18 or 20 real quick. But I found this one, it was extremely clean and picked it up. The real number is 15. I think my wife thought it was, no, she saw the check. She knew I paid 15, but she doesn’t know as I had to stick another $4,000 into it before we went off road. But that’s, that was hidden. But so I’ve got close to 20 in it after mods, but the price, the purchase price was 15 for a rust free Arizona G 130,000 miles, 128,000 miles. So I’m happy with it. Did you do a car facts on it to see if it had been in Arizona the whole time or if it came from the salt belt?
I did not do a car facts. I probably should have, but I recommend that to everybody. I’m not giving you a hard time, but I recommend that to everybody because you can see accidents that occurred. Maybe it spent its life someplace else that you might want to be a little more detailed in your examination of it. The frame specifically. Looking at, looking at it, there is no rust whatsoever on the frame and its original paint, original interior and everything. It’s, I just wanted a clean vehicle.
I think living in the Midwest, it’s pretty quick that you can go under and find out if there’s rust. This thing has virtually, I haven’t found any rust on it at all. I’ve been under it and over it and around it. And it hasn’t been repainted. You know, some of those signs when you see a little slightly different color finish or whatever on the paint, when you’re going around it, looking at it and trying to evaluate, you know, are they hiding something?
The guy that owned it for several years, he knew the guy that owned it for several years before him.
I’m confident that it’s, it is what he described it as. And you’re happy and you’re happy with your purchase. How long have you had it now? Two, three months?
Well, we bought it. I bought it the first of the year. So yeah, just over three months.
It’s been its first eight weeks of my ownership in Arizona. I wheeled it for a week and then it was in storage for a couple months. And then I lined up a freight company to haul it back here. I was thinking about driving it back, but with my job changes and things I had, I needed to just have somebody do it. And they called them, they loaded it on a Friday. On Monday it showed up in my house. Oh, that’s nice. That’s really cool. So now you have several Jeeps. I don’t remember how many you have, but you have several Jeeps. Are they all undercover or do some of them sitting outside? I seem to remember you talking about one you got in the field or something.
Well, I’ve got, so I’ve got, I live on a farm. So there’s a barn and a machine shed behind me. I’ve got a couple of them inside, but most of them are outside. Unfortunately, I need to clean up and make space for it. I just, that’s every time I think about doing it, it’s a bigger job than what I want to tackle. Of course. But you know, I don’t mind, I don’t, we’re, I don’t mind having them outside that much. This LJ, I’d really like to get it inside. And I’ve got a couple of the Jeeps that I really like that I try to store inside the old 46 Willys is inside, but yeah. Well, yeah, you don’t need any more aging going on on that 46. So, so what do you think out of all the Jeeps, so maybe you already answered this, but out of all your Jeeps, what do you, and then don’t say it too loud so they won’t hear you. But what’s your, which is your favorite Jeep?
It depends on what you want. It depends on what, what, what aspect. Oh, you’re a damn politician. No, no, it’s a serious answer because if, if, if you said, if I walked into a Jeep show and I, and you, and you tell me to pick out my favorite model, I’m probably going to hover around a really cool CJ seven just because of that classic look. That was when I for me formulated in my head that someday I want to own a Jeep. It was a CJ seven. So the CJ seven is to me the, the epitome of a classic Jeep, even though the 46 it’s got its own thing. Right.
The CJ seven was right there. And then you go into the TJs and now you’ve got more creature comforts. It’s still nimble. It still has similar appearance. You get into the, the JK and the JL. I mean, there’s some great looking vehicles and from an off-road perspective, I put my two door JK up against pretty much anybody except where you go over an obstacle. It’s got, it needs a long wheelbase. Right. You know, there’s, it depends on where you’re at. I went through an obstacle just last Saturday that, that the, the JKU in front of me struggled with and, and even with my short Jeep, I went up and over it and got around it. And, but then there was a Toyota pickup truck behind me that also made it. So that’s a whole other thing. But, but you know, it’s, it’s really personal preference. I mean, if you grew up looking at JK saying, God, I have to have one of those. The guy’s going to love the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it rides. If that’s all you know, I’ve been driven all of them. I mean, if I’m just going to run a town four or five miles, I’m jumping in the LJ or I’m probably going to jump in a CJ and just buzz around and have fun. If I’m going to drive for an hour, I want some creature comforts. When you get into the JK or the JL, it’s a lot more comfortable to ride and as a daily. And I think what I’m hearing here, and you correct me if I’m wrong on this is it doesn’t really matter because they all are Jeeps and they all will do things that a lot of vehicles can’t do. And there’s certain aspects to certain models of Jeeps and the length of the wheelbase and stuff that make them a little bit better than another one. So the cool thing is, is that Jeep has not lost their way at least yet. They’re continuing to build Jeeps from the forties all into now, what are we like 2020 or something here? I’m going to go back to 2020.
So that’s the cool thing is that you really can’t go wrong with a Jeep buying a Jeep unless it’s a four by and you don’t like fire. You might have seen this when you’re out in EJS. I know they were bringing it back out, but they’ve got that shorty Jeep. It’s a Wrangler, so little two door, red two door. It’s like stripped down bare minimum.
We reported that on Tuesday’s flagship because there’s a potential that that 2016 concept vehicle may be coming back as a $15,000 four wheel drive Jeep from Jeep. I still think they should have just did a partnership with Mahindra, but whatever.
No, no, no, no, no. I’ve driven them to Mahindra. I mean, it’s a side by side and I’m not, I would really have a K&M or florist before I buy a Mahindra. And I too, I’m just, I’m a prorist and I don’t like the fact that they try to use the seven slats despite whatever legal argument you could have. However, that little short Jeep for $15,000 just for having some puts around, I mean, that might actually, it intrigues me. I think that that would kick the ass of the side by sides, especially the ones that are 50, 60, $70,000, whenever you could have a Jeep, that’s a four wheel drive, simple four wheel drive, that would get a lot of people into the off-road game. And it’s funny, I was telling Bill about this and Bill says, $15,000, and there’s no, then there’s no figures. There’s not even discussions. It’s actually happening. It’s just all theory at this point. But he said for $15,000, I’d buy one. And then he’d have a 392, a 2024 V6 and one of these new $15,000 Jeeps. I do, I have heard the rumors that it was probably going to be an electric one or a hybrid electric. Yeah, I would much rather, because the 2016 one had the, I think it had a three six, it was a V6 that was in it. And I think that would be the simplest way to go. I’m interested if it’s a three six or if they can figure out how to slam that new straight six into it. I’d be all over that if it’s all electric. Now you’re just taking my name out of the hat for right now. Yeah. And I think that’d be true for a lot of people. Hey, if you can’t buy a side by side, a decent side by side is 20. Yeah. Hey, if you want to get more out of your weekend, you got to get more out of your truck. Storage for your tools, cover from the elements and protection that stands up under pressure, whether it’s a little DIY or your next big project, we say bring it to the backyard, to the barnyard, to everything you can throw at it and everything that stands in its way, because it’s not about getting the job done. It’s about getting the job done right. Real truck, bring your truck to life.
Also to give your take on this page, the realtruck.com slash blog slash real truck presents running the Rubicon a full episode in case you don’t have a Motor Trend Plus and you can just go to the show notes of this episode, episode 1012, my God, four digits. It’s still four digits. We’re not going to go backwards, I guess, and go over there and click the link there on our show notes and enjoy what you see.
This is your check. I mean, it’s you. All right. Take a little pause. Take a little pause. So I can edit this. All right.
So Tread lightly. I’ve heard of them. You know, when I was at EJS back in 2023, a year ago, I ran into the Tread lightly guys out at EJS and we were talking about the 50 50 event that they were doing where they were doing 50 days of cleanup on all 50 states.
And in my conversation with them, they said they were having a problem with Illinois and Indiana and Iowa. And I said, well, I could maybe hook you up with some people. So they did one in Southern Illinois in Shawnee Forest getting ready for the eclipse, cleaning some trails and cleaning out a parking area. Had a lot of tools donated. Midland radio got involved too, along with Tread lightly and the Shawnee Jeep Club.
But then they needed something in Indiana and I kind of sicked them on the Badlands off-road park, having been over there for several events with jamborees and Jeep academies and things. Anyway, as it turns out, Scott Ammerman was unable to attend and he’s the regional director out of Pennsylvania, but he was unable to attend in person. So he reached out to me to go as the representative from Tread lightly. So it was a really cool event. We set up when they first doing their, you know, you go in and sign up, they open up at nine o’clock in the morning, you sign up and right next to the sign up table, we had a table set up where they could sign in. And we had over 200 participants in the first two hours that signed up and took garbage bags out. And what was really cool, they did it as a March Madness thing. So they had brackets so you could sign your Jeep club up or your Jeep team up. They also did it as individuals and they had three little trophies that were made out of little garbage cans that were really cute. But it wasn’t just like all the guys out there. There was a lot of families, a lot of husbands and wives, but what it was really cool to, the kids really got into it. And so they went out and during the course of all day Saturday, I don’t know, I’m estimating it was about 10,000 pounds of garbage hauled out. I mean, in that 10,000 pounds, we had five refrigerators, a stove, a dishwasher, a washing machine. We even had an old boat trailer.
Now this was at the Badlands or some… Okay, so you have to know the history of the Badlands. It was originally a rock quarry, so it was an active quarry. So there were some parts out there that were tractor tires or big truck tires that were still there from when it was operating quarry, like 30 years ago. This sounded like a dumping ground. Well, I think too, in the back of this quarry, I mean, they’d already harvested whatever they were going to harvest, so they just had people that would sneak out at night or who knows, maybe some of the stuff was stuff that the quarry people themselves dumped. But there were 40 tires, there were axle parts. We filled up a 40 foot dumpster with bottles and cans. Good God. There were also fender flares and Jeep parts and Toyota parts and side by side parts. Anyway, it was just a great event. And I just really encourage people to look at opportunities because you have to look at what Tread lightly is doing. Tread lightly is about trail cleanup, but they’re really about conservation. And they’re not just talking about picking up garbage. They’re talking about keeping trails open. And as we’ve seen going on in Moab and other areas, we’re losing trails and we want to keep them for the next generation and beyond. And so Tread lightly is really stepping up to do that, to not only work on the trash part of it, but to work on working with local communities. They’re very involved with the National Park Forest or the National Park Service, the National Forest Service. They were telling me that they were even back involved when Smokey the Bear first came kind of on the scene. Tread lightly has been in a partnership with these organizations for a long time. So I was really proud and honored that they asked me to go over and help coordinate it. Because they’re helping sign people up and giving them Tread lightly stickers and explaining what Tread lightly was about. I think several people mentioned they would hopefully join, but you can join Tread lightly for 50 bucks.
There’s a hundred buck level. There’s 250 a year. You know, 50 bucks gets you involved and gets you supporting the group and supporting these events and supporting keeping trails open. $100 level, you actually get a, I think, is it $1,000 off of a purchase of a new Jeep? So if you’re going to be buying a Jeep, you ought to throw a hundred bucks at Tread lightly because you’re going to save $900 additional. Yeah. Plus it’s a really good cause.
And I think I heard about Blue Ribbon Coalition several years before Tread lightly. And they’re both great groups. Although I was told that the Blue Ribbon Coalition is more of a, not necessarily legal, but fighting in courts and stuff to try to keep things, trails and stuff open. Whereas Tread lightly does that. And they also clean up trails and protect things on the trails. Both times that me and the Jeep Talk Show folks have been involved out at EJS with Tread lightly.
We’ve been protecting building fences to either protect dinosaur footprints in the rock. And this other one, most recently it was to protect an area. There’s a couple of columns that we were at. I forget exactly where we went to, but these are these huge columns. And we were putting fences up to keep people from tracking over there and damaging the area and keeping it where people can still enjoy what’s around Moab while still being able to use the trails.
I don’t, I asked Scott and was talking to him about that in particular. They don’t really hire the lawyers and all that to go fight court battles. That is the blue ribbon correlation. And some of those groups, there’s a group out of California that they go in and have activists that give our side of it. Right? So that you just don’t have the people that yell allowed us to have the attention. Right. What Tread lightly is doing, one of the examples that Scott shared with me was there was, there’s a community in New Jersey. They had a kind of a gravelly road that a lot of off-roaders like to run up and down, but the amount of traffic they were getting and the dust and some of the issues they were having, the city was talking, a little town was talking about closing that road down to all traffic because of some of the complaints coming from the residents. And so Tread lightly got involved and worked with the residents to find out what their concerns were, worked with the local other associations like the Jeep clubs and things to discuss what they could do to have everybody happy that to try to minimize any dust or issues that they were having with too much traffic to still allowing the trail or the, or in this case, a road to remain open to the public to use. And so they’re really working more locally and they’re working more proactively than they are defensively fighting it in court or fighting it through the legal system. Well, that’s good to know. I didn’t realize that, but I didn’t want to take a, take away the, the legal, any legal battles that they were doing. Right. Right. Gladiator.
My name is gladiator gladiators.
All right. That intro is too long.
So I’ll just stop it there. Oh, two Tony’s. No waiting. All right. So, uh, the, uh, this week’s Jeep talk show gladiator update. I got to start off with this. My wife and I recently attended EJS 2024 and oh my God, it was, I’m going, I’m not going, I’m going, I’m not going. Ultimately, I don’t know the head flipping, uh, the coin flipping wound up heads and she went and she’s really glad that she did now shortly before we left, uh, I completed the installation of the motor built skid system. Uh, and chip, I know this isn’t an easy answer for you because you’ve got so many Jeeps, but do you have a, uh, any armor on your Jeep, like a complete skid package where the basically the hole underneath is covered with a skid system? Yeah. I got the rock hard system on my two door Rubicon JK that I run off road mostly because that’s a rock crawler that I’m doing. So I don’t want to rock rolling up in there and damaging. So, yeah. Did you go with steel or aluminum? I went with steel. Um, at the time it was before I was a, uh, Patreon member and would have had my discounts through some of the other companies. And so I went through extreme terrain, which is more of an East coast company. And with East coast wheeling, there’s a lot more rocks and they really discourage me away from aluminum. Um, if I had to do it again with the amount of what I’m doing, I think I might’ve done aluminum just for a little bit wet, more weight benefit, but they talked me into the durability of the steel and I’m not unhappy with it. It’s just a heavy system. Yeah. So with the, the weight of the steel, were you concerned about just the overall weight of the Jeep and its ability to wheel or, uh, MPG or maybe both? I don’t, you got a Jeep. I don’t care about MPG. There you go. There you go. Well, I was, I was a little concerned about it because, uh, the, the, the motorboat skid system, which I don’t know that it’s actually 240 pounds, but that’s what motorboat says. I don’t know if that’s shipping or, or what it, what it is. Cause I didn’t weigh each one of the skid, uh, skid plates to figure it out. Uh, but, uh, you know, I recently got back from EJS. So I had a lot of collected, a lot of a mile per gallon data with the new skid system on it. And, uh, I got, I always get really excited whenever I get really good, what I consider good gas mileage. I normally see 13 to 14 on the gladiator, not a lot of highway driving, and that does make a big difference. Uh, so, uh, but at one point, uh, I think it was heading out to EJS and if everybody doesn’t know it’s about a 20 hour drive, uh, from Southeast Texas to, to Moab. So on the drive out, I actually hit 18.4 miles per gallon with the skid system on it. Really? Yes. Wow. So I got really excited and then was thinking, you know, I had a lot of think I’ve ever hit 18 miles to gallon before and I went, well, I record every fill up. So I scrolled back in my little app on my phone and I did find an 18.5 and I didn’t go all the way, all the way back. I’ve been collecting a mile per gallon data since getting the Jeep. So I have a hundred percent, uh, what my miles per gallon are since the beginning. And it did change with the 35s and, uh, you know, putting the, the heavier tires and wheels on there, uh, certainly, and also to putting the bumpers on. I don’t think it changed dramatically with the bumpers. Uh, it did change notably with the, the, the tires and actually come to think of it, I haven’t done wheels. I’m still using the stock wheel. So really it’s just the, the addition of the, uh, of the tires. And it’s also possible too, that it just could be the rolling resistance of the wider tires.
At any rate, I went back and looked in my highest prior, uh, mile per gallon, uh, was 18.5. So we’re talking about a 10th of a mile per gallon difference between my best and what I got this time. And it was 18.46 I think. So it was virtually the same.
But so you were talking earlier, so you asked me what my favorite Jeep was. And I mentioned, I liked TJ’s because they were lighter. I mean, it’s there significantly like a thousand pounds or more lighter than a JK. And so by going from the TJ to wheeling the JK, I was concerned about weight. And I was, you know, there are obstacles that if you turtle on them, a little bump will get you off with a TJ where you’ve got a little bit, a little bit more aggressive with a strap or, or winch with, with a JK because of the weight. And you start loading like Larry, I’ve got a lot of tools in the back of my JK and you throw your winch on the front and you’ve got steel bumpers and I’ve got 30, you know, running 37s now and everything just weighs more. There is a, there is a point. I’m not worried about gas mileage as much as I am. I mean, it’s not my daily, it’s my toy. I’m more worried about the nimbleness and getting around on the trail and trying to limit weight. But I think you made a great point in episode last week. I think it was, he said, really, it’s only like adding an extra adult person in your Jeep and a big adult person at 240 pounds, but you know, and then you had your wife with you too. So there was another 50 or 60 pounds. God bless you.
She will, she will very much appreciate that.
Not that she’s heavy. She’s just, you know, how women are any, any weight that you say is going to be too heavy for a woman to hear. But, and also too, I thought it was interesting that, and I think I said this on that same episode, it’s 240 pounds, but whenever you have a 240 pound person, it’s going to be in one spot. And the skid system goes from the front all the way to the back. So it’s, it’s more of our overall weight. And I think the lower center of gravity too, I was going to mention that there was somebody doing some 90 degree turns out there that I was following and I was like, okay, you son of a bitch, let’s see. And I could only do so fast. I like to, I actually like to, to accelerate in those turns and to say, yeah, now you’re not going to get away from me.
Because what the, it’s like, it’s like every sleeper you’ve ever had or wanted. There’s things that you’ve done that they don’t have any idea what you’ve done and it’s fun. So yeah, I had to, my wife was like the first one, the first 90 degree turn that I made like 60 something miles an hour. She was like, oh, you know, like, like it was fun. And I went, okay, well I could do another one then. You’re talking about your wife going, has she been off-roading with you very much before? Very, very little. And, and, and I think you know this and I think most listeners know I haven’t been off-road very much just by myself.
It just was curious if she was excited. First off it’s Moab. I mean, oh my God, the scenery, right. And all this stuff to see besides all the people and all the Jeeps and all the events, but the off-roading aspect of Moab. I mean, that’s just second to none to me. I mean, I guess St. George and those areas that are similar maybe, but
how did you like the, did you like the off-road part? Well, I didn’t do a lot of off-road. My goal at EJS, EJS this year was to meet people and get them lined up for Jeep Talk Show interviews and just make sure that even the ones that know about us, because I think most of the businesses out there now know about, about the Jeep Talk Show, but giving a face and a bit of a feel of what the show is about directly. You know how it is. You’re in sales. So I’m trying to do the sales things sadly.
But, and to that point, I got to meet Dan, owner of Moto-built and got to talk to him a little bit about, I’ve been trying to get him on the show and I think he is more on board now after us having about a 10, 15, 20 minute conversation. And then right before we were getting ready to leave, I had to find Bender who also works for Moto-built now. And just to say hello, cause I’ve talked to him several times on the show, never met him in person. And I was telling him that I got the Moto-built skid system on and I’ll tell you guys, I actually absolutely love it. It is just absolutely gorgeous. It’s smooth. There’s nothing to catch, nothing on there unless somebody sticks a finger in a hole. That’s the only way they’re going to slow that thing down. And, and, and both of them are just so giddy whenever you talk about their products. It’s, they’re not jaded to, yeah, we make a good product. We know you’re not telling us anything. We don’t know. Not like that at all. They just get big smiles and love hearing about how much you love their products. And you know, we’re the same way here on the show and people like the show. I never get, it never gets old people telling me how good the show is. It’s an appreciation for the hard work that we put in. Same thing. It’s exactly what I got from both of them. Anyway, while I was telling Bender, I got the skid system on and I was all concerned about the miles per gallon and stuff, and I said, it hasn’t heard it. And in fact, I think it may have helped. And I said, maybe it is the, the airflow underneath the gladiator because now it doesn’t have all those little eddies and stuff that can, can happen. And I think Bender sits on along the lines like you’re going to go with that, huh?
Yeah. Hell yeah. So my, my F-150 has an air dam under it. That’s plastic. That’s supposed to redirect it away from the engine compartment and it’s supposed to improve mileage. So there could be something to that. Oh, absolutely. But it was funny. His response was like, yeah, you’re going to go with that. I said, I’m using that. I knew it makes me feel better. These skid play systems. I mean, when I tell, try to tell somebody that doesn’t have a clue what they look like, I’m like, flip a Mac car over. Exactly. You have a Mac car or a Hot Wheel car. Or a smooth model. A Formula One race car, right? I mean, don’t they have a smooth bottom so it can get through the air faster? Uh, and, uh, yeah. When you slide over those obstacles, you’re on a big rock and for some reason, whether you turtle truly turtle or not, but you’re dragging over a rock and you, and it screeches on something. All right. Is it going, is it, is it hitting one of the factory skids that is just, I mean, basically it’s angle iron and tubing and it’s not a smooth system versus you catch a rock and you slide over the top of it with this and especially the better built skid systems have recessed bolts or at least covered the nut heads, the bolt heads, so they don’t catch on anything or they’ll roll right off of it. Oh, and so you can, and you may be able to use them in the future to get them out. Now it’s like, oh, that’s our skid plate. And it gives me peace of mind. It gives my wife peace of mind that, Hey, that’s what it’s there for. It’s doing its job. Yeah. I mean, I ran across some stuff last year when I actually did some shelves and things, a couple of metal masher and things like that. And I definitely wanted to have a skid system for this year, but I just never really got off road. I mean, we did long Canyon. Uh, and I don’t know if you’ve ever done Shafer’s trail. Uh, we accidentally, we, yeah, we accidentally did Shafer’s trail. My wife and I, she was not a happy camper or I should say a happy jeeper. She did not like, like the switchbacks didn’t like being in the passenger side on the very edge of death.
I thought it was so cool. Cause I could see the trail we came in on and there was a jeep over there, about an eighth inch big trail. It’s so far away and so high up. Cause I’ve been on Larry, Larry took some really good footage of that. But because it was in the lands that you’re not supposed to, uh, what publicly broadcast on a commercialized channel, I’ve just been trying to get them to share some footage. Cause I would be with your wife. I don’t like those 2000 foot drops that are right outside my window. I’m concentrating on the trail and making sure that I don’t go too close to the edge. My wife is looking over the edge going, Oh, how beautiful look over there. And I’m like, screw you. I am not looking out the window. I’m with her. It was so cool. And I know I’ve told this before, but it was so funny. My wife had the camera on her, on her phone going, she’s holding it over to the window, looking at the edge, but her, she’s facing forward, looking at the ground in front of us. And I said, you can’t see what you’re recording. She goes, I don’t care. I don’t want to look at it. I’ll look at it later. And do you know, she couldn’t look at it immediately after it was like a day or two later before she felt comfortable looking at the video that she shot. It’s so funny.
That’s my problem is that shock, right? If I look out my window and look at that fall, I’m going to be thinking about that and not thinking about the trail in front of me. So I’ve got to focus. Oh, no, absolutely. You got to do what the, what’s the best way. Your pilot in command. You need to be the one making sure that things happen the way, the best way possible, but it was, I absolutely loved it. It was just really cool. And I’ve mentioned this a couple of times before, so sorry guys, but it started snowing halfway up, big fat snow. And it was just so cool. And we had the G-top so you could look, you know, look through the clear tops, see the snow landing on there. And of course not, maybe not helping. You could also see the, all the wall going up.
And how much further you had to go to get to something that was flat ground and wider than the width of a Jeep.
Those switchbacks are incredible though. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. So, as I mentioned, I’ve recorded every fill up since I got, first got the, the gladiator and 1846 as compared to a best of 18.5. And I need to look further into it. I’m sure that I’ve never hit 19 in the gladiator. So this is good news. So if you’ve been holding back, getting armor, or maybe you didn’t know whether to get steel or aluminum, because you were concerned about miles per gallon, this should help you. And now I’ve only ever had one skid system, which is the motor belt skid system. They make it for the diesel gladiator. They make it for the JL, the JLU. I really like it. It’s smooth, nothing to catch on. But don’t think that’s the last skid you have to get because there’s also the lower control arm skids that you want to get and maybe something for the the differentials that will protect your, your opinion on the rear and the front. So it’s never over. You’re continuously doing these things. But I have the majority of the bottom of the gladiator taken care of. Go over to motorbelt.com and have a look at this stuff. It is just amazing. You know, come to think of it now that I’ve made personal connections with Dan and Bender, I need to hit them up for a discount code for our Patreon subscribers. There you go. I like it. Yeah, I like it.
From the mind of Nicky G.
Hey, this is Nicky G. And I guess everybody is up in Moab right now going to the Easter Jeep Safari. Wish I can go, but I couldn’t. But in honor, I have some of my favorite Utah jokes. You know what the capital of Utah is? It’s an uppercase U, of course. Oh man. In front of a Utah firing squad, they’re all standing in a circle.
Well, I guess all I really have is two, which is not a whole lot. Well, that’s not what I’m calling. I’ll tell you, I have another joke. Are you ready for it? Because this one’s horrible. We’re not. The equator is long enough to wrap around the earth one time.
Let’s see if we can do better.
A normal skeleton has enough boats to make an entire. Oh my God. Who you guys sending me these jokes are making me look bad. A normal skeleton has enough boats to make an entire skeleton.
The distance from the earth to the sun is the same exact distance from the sun to the earth.
I’m not good at math, but that one seems seems right. Most humans were born on their birthday. Oh my God. All right, poison. I’ll chat at you later. You have a good one.
Jeff, I feel I feel he’s resetting the bar. He’s setting the bar low for future. Really, really low. If he got all those out of his system, maybe the next episode will be better. So you have you heard this one? I bet you have. Did you know that if you took every vein, every artery, every capillary and from your body and placed them end to end, you’d be dead.
Yes, yes. And halfway around the equator. All right. For this week’s Oh, not actually before I get there, we got to talk about the interview. So coming up on Friday, Friday, here’s our interview episode tomorrow. We’re going to be talking with Allison, you know, the duck duck Jeep lady, you know, the one that started it all. So we have a really good, interesting story that she has to tell some repeats and some things that are, you know, things that we’ve had on the show before, but also to some things that are going on now with Allison and chip. I don’t know. Did you know that she got a brand new jail you for free in Florida, right? She was picking it up last year. Yep. Yep. She couldn’t make EJS this year. She was there last year and I got to meet her in person and get an autographed duck as everybody was getting out there at the vendors meetup. I think it was on a Thursday that I went, but anyway, so she didn’t make it this year. She has some, some problems with a hand, her right hand that was bitten by a dog. And you know, she’s in the Canadian and they have that wonderful free healthcare system that somebody, that somebody pays for. And there is a two year wait for her to have surgery on her hand.
So she can’t, she doesn’t have feeling and three fingers. Uh, and she has to wait two years, I guess, cause it’s not critical enough for her to be worked on. She just has to wait. That’s crazy. I’ve got a friend of mine that is a fishing guide up there and his wife had some serious health challenges on medications.
They just paid, they just bit the bullet and came to the states and paid for medical and she was cured in 30 days. And it was going to be years before they got to her up there. If you know this, this healthcare, nationalized healthcare, that’s a whole nother debate, right? Well, I mean, it’s not fair to everybody because not everybody can get, uh, can afford healthcare or get the quality healthcare, but so that’s not fair in that regard, but then again, for the people that can afford it and can do it, they have to wait because they’re, they, they have to wait the same line. Everybody else does. Uh, you know, this reminds me of, uh, the, the tales we used to hear about Russia, where they’d have to stand in line for toilet paper. Um, and my comment was always no shit. And they said, no, not until you get the toilet paper. I know that’s a whole nother. My wife’s a nurse. She worked in ER for awhile. You come in bleeding. They’re not going to turn you away because you don’t have insurance and you’re, and they would charge you proportional to what your level of coverage or lack of coverage or your financial situation.
I think it’s, there’s a lot of, uh, what I want to say is that, you know, but I want to say ghosts or skeletons that there is, you’re not getting turned away from a hospital. If you had something elective, I mean, if you were transgender and wanted to get a, uh, at a dicta me surgery done or something, those DSI’s, uh, flashlight batteries and stuff, right? Then that’s a different story. You make them have them wait and think about it a little longer before they cut body parts off. But, but if you’ve got a life threatening situation, they’re not going to turn you away. And this is a quality of life issue. I mean, she can’t use her right hand. She’s right handed. And, uh, that also means she can’t sign ducks. My God, the humanities. I mean, but it is, it’s important for her and it’s important for people that want to get a duck, a signed duck from her. So she can’t do it anyway. We’re not going to work about this. Is Greg going to listen to this episode about ducks?
I think Greg only listens to the, the round table episodes. I think that’s the ones he enjoys the most. He may have them playing in the shop, but he always talks about the round table episodes. Um, okay. So, uh, must have stuff for your Jeep. Now, Chip, I want you to pay attention on this cause I want to honest, uh, an honest opinion on this from you. So you can see the bit, the picture of this, uh, this, uh, this light that you can put on a gladiator, uh, and it’s very reminiscent of, uh, I think, uh, like a Dodge Charger or, um, one of the, I think that the lighting system is similar to some, some vehicles, some cars. So this is the Oracle lighting racetrack flush style, Ellie tailgate panel light for the 2020 through 2024 Jeep gladiator, uh, JT. Um, now this is lights. I absolutely love it.
And it matches it. It actually, uh, goes well with the, the, the tail lights for the gladiator, which I have, uh, and it just looks like it’s an extended tail light from wrapping around the, the, the, the front of the gladiator all the way across the back. Now, if you have a Jeep, uh, logo there or a gladiator logo that you, you installed, or in my case, uh, a sticker that says Jeep talk show that has to go away cause this goes all the way across the tailgate. Um, I actually absolutely love this. I was thinking about how I could go about getting this. Uh, but they in the, in the, in the, the title here, it says Oracle lighting racetrack flush style, Ellie D. I don’t have a racetrack truck. I don’t want a racetrack truck. It’s an off road truck. It’s a Jeep.
Yeah. So, uh, what do you think it’s, does this not look off road to you?
Hell no. Okay. Good. Good. It’s not just me.
I’m not there. You could give me one of these and I would give it away to somebody else. I, it’s not, this is not for me. I, it’s not a mod that’s doing anything for me for capability of the Jeep. I think the only time, I guess if I was driving in a rush hour traffic, in a major city and I really wanted to be visible at night driving.
Yeah. Okay. I could get that. Maybe not get better ended. Right. How from a traffic safety perspective, I could see that, but that’s like asking me if I’m going to buy one of those antennas that have the little LED lights that go all the way to the same trailer. It’s not going to be on my Jeep. Yeah. So let me ask you this. What, what are those lights called? Uh, is it chase lights?
Yeah. So when you’re off on the trail and it’s real dusty or at night that the people behind you can see where you are. Um, what do you think about it from that standpoint? I mean, really, I guess that those lights, the chase lights should be up higher. Uh, like probably on the back of the, uh, the top there, but this is certainly B would fill that bill, I believe if you were driving. There were, were, were facing. So they’ve got in this picture, it almost looks like a little amber, but they have to be red on the back. Right. Right. Um, is amber the right, is amber the right color to go with the chase lights? Yes, because of the visibility and all that. Yeah. In a dusty situation, it really Amber cuts through better, but.
Okay. Maybe if you’re running through dust all the time, but I, if you’ve got, you’re going to see the lights of the vehicle in front of you, you’re going to see the tail lights here, you shouldn’t be following that close to your gun. You’re not going at a speed if you’re truly off-roading. I guess if you’re down in a desert and you’re running at 60 mile an hour and doing that, maybe you’re kicking up a lot of dust, but on a typical off-road.
I don’t see it. I mean, and you were talking, I know you love rock lights too, right? Rock lights light up the vehicle in front of you as well. You see the vehicle. There’s no problem with visibility that I’ve had, but in a truly really high dust situation, I guess that would be the only place I could see. And traffic, which I think the highway type traffic was a good dust or late at night, especially during rain. I bet you snow too, with this, this would work out really good to keep people from slamming into the back of you. I think that the people that have halo lights are going to probably be excited about getting this because it almost looks like we got halo for their tail tailgate. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, but I got to tell you, I love them. I like it. I’m not going to get rid of the Jeep talk show on the, on the tailgate. And, but you may, this may be right up your alley, especially if you’re not an off-road purist and, but the Oracle light light, Oracle lighting, racetrack, flush, led tailgate panel light for the gladiator. It’s $489 and 95 cents. And if you already have the Oracle tail lights, this meshes with that. It looks, it looks factory. It looks like it’s the, it came that way from the factory. Beautiful. Oracle does the lighting. I think that some of the Oracle lighting goes overboard, but the, you know, they do whatever they, they do to sell, sell things and stay in business. They’re off-road stuff. I mean, I love the tail lights. You don’t have them hanging out like the factory tail lights. So yeah. Yeah. And that is a very practical thing. Yes. The tail lights being recessed. Yes. And since I crushed one of mine, it was an easy choice to go with this instead of buying a factory one that was probably 25 to 50% more than what the Oracle tail lights are. So anyway, there’s a link to this product and the show notes for episode, uh, uh, one thousand and 12, I started to say 10,000 as well. I was going to freak somebody out.
Well, it’s always a little sad when we hit the end of the trail, but there’s always another trail ride just down the road. Jeep talk show has four episodes a week, Tuesday through Friday, subscribe and never miss an episode and speaking of subscribing, consider keeping the Jeep talk show, uh, in the red. Is that right? Is when you’re, when you’re doing it is in the red. No, in the green. Black accounting terms, red and black. You don’t want to be in the red. Oh, that’s right. Red ink is bad. So consider keeping the Jeep talk show in the black by becoming a Patreon subscriber today. You can just go to Jeep talk show.com slash contact for patreon, how to join us on our zoom room, how to join us on our discord server, uh, anything that you want to find about how to reach out to us or get involved with us. That’s how you can do it. Oh, and I forgot to mention last couple episodes that, uh, the Jeep talk show, a Texas off-road event is going to be June 8th this year and maybe the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and even the ninth, uh, depending on, uh, but the official one is on the eighth, but there’s going to be a little driving around and seeing the area, maybe eating barbecue, uh, at least on the seventh. So that’s a Friday. Uh, the eighth is a Saturday. Uh, had somebody reach out and was asking about the dates and the details on it today. So that reminded me to mention it here. So, and they heard it about it on the Jeep talk show. So we’d love to have you come down and we’re trying to do a few more days this year. So if you’re coming from out of state, uh, the issue, not driving 12 hours, spending a day wheeling with us and then driving back 12 hours the next day.
So anyway, thank you very much, chip. Thank you for being here tonight. And, uh, we hope to see you here at the, the Jeep talk show event on June the eighth.
Uh, I will be in the black Hills off-road. Sorry. So you’ll be in the black. That’s good. We’ll be in the black. Broadcasting since 2010.
You’re my friend. You’re my new friend.