Episode 1057 – 4th Annual JTS Event Recap

– Hi, I’m Tony. I want to welcome all you new listeners and our regulars to the Jeep Talk Show Roundtable. I’m your host and I’m excited to have you here for this special gathering of passionate Jeep enthusiasts. On tonight’s episode, we’re gonna be talking about the fourth annual Jeep Talk Show Off-Road Event, Texas.

 

And anything else you’d like to talk about, as usual, it’s a wide open discussion tonight. You know, you can submit your questions for the Roundtable, for future Roundtables anyway. Just go to jeeptalkshow.com slash contact to find out how. – Are you ready? – It’s time for the Jeep Talk Show with hosts Tony, Josh, Wendy, and Chuck.

 

– Hey, whether you’re a die-hard Jeep enthusiast or just starting to explore the world of off-roading, we’re thrilled to have you as part of our discussion. Please consider joining the discussion by being part of our weekly Zoom meeting. Just go to jeeptalkshow.com slash contact to find out how to join.

 

All right, so let’s get started with this. First off, our Roundtable meeting attendees. Please introduce yourself with your name and location the first time you speak tonight. This helps the listeners know your voice when you speak. Hello, Zoom people.

 

– Hello. – Hello. – Hello, hello.

 

– All right, so I think we have a few people here that didn’t make it to the fourth annual Texas event. It’s a long drive for some folks. I know, Larry, what you were planning on coming, but you just recently had a knee operation and that was just a little too much sitting still for you. – Yes, sir.

 

We’ll be there for the next one. – Yeah. – And you drive a clutch too, don’t you, Larry? – Is there anything else?

 

(laughing)

 

Yes, I do.

 

– All right, so anybody else wanna jump in here with the reason, any excuse why they didn’t go? I mean, don’t want to is fine. I think that was Chuck’s reason this year. – Well, this is Chip from Illinois. I didn’t go because I was with a group of friends at the Black Hills off-roading in South Dakota on an annual event with 15 Jeeps. – So you’re saying we’re not your friends. These were better friends that you went with. – These are longer term friends and it wasn’t quite as far to go. – And it was five days of wheeling. – Five days of wheeling, so.

 

– Sounds horrible. – There was no spooning required with these friends. – Actually, I’ve got, well.

 

Those are stories I’m not gonna say.

 

– You better to stop it actually, Chip.

 

(laughing) – Chip likes breaking the mold.

 

– I couldn’t make it because apparently I was buying another Jeep.

 

Cool.

 

– Yeah, this is Roger from Wisconsin. I just can’t make it. Long ways to go for a couple of days and I gotta pick and choose when I’m gonna take time away from work and that wasn’t one of them. – Translation, give me. – I couldn’t make it. – Go ahead. – Oh, this is Greg from Michigan. I couldn’t make it because I’m not independently wealthy like everybody that went down to this event.

 

– Yeah.

 

– So Roger didn’t go because he gets made fun of enough here on the Zoom meeting much less when he comes to events. – Oh, that’s not a deterrent. I mean, that’s like going home every weekend. What the hell is the difference?

 

(laughing)

 

Something different would have been welcome. – You know what? Next time we go to EJS or somewhere where Roger and his wife are out there, I need to record little snippets from the GMI’s radio so I can play it when Roger’s not around. – Yeah. – Do the back and forth of the GRS.

 

– I thought you were gonna tell on me or something. I was about to say, “Well, that ain’t gonna do any fucking good.” – More Debbie, yes, dear. Yes, dear.

 

(laughing) – Yeah. – Dear.

 

– Not somewhat yes, dear, but yes, there is just dear. – So I’ve mentioned it already on one of the other episodes, but I wanna mention this again. Bill and John Lee were the primary people behind this. Bill, you correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that you guys were the two that were responsible for all the configuration and the Thursday run and the Friday run. All that is stuff you guys came up with on your own. And feel free to say that John wasn’t a part of it at all. – No, it was a joint effort. And so Friday I kind of took the lead on Friday for the Little Hill Country Ride and barbecue outing. And then Saturday John was leading the group ride for the easy group or whatever. And then Zabo and team were on another group with I think the Platinum Off-Road guys were there doing kind of their own run. But I would say I probably got the better part of that deal in terms of barbecue and not having to get in and out of my vehicle. I think John was in and out of his vehicle nonstop. And at the end of the day, the sun burnt and wore out and he was like, “I’m done wheeling. I just wanna sit in my chair and drink a beer and smoke some cigars.” – He did a wonderful job. I mean, certainly trail riding, but we had a brand new lady out there from the standpoint of she had a Jeep. It was, as far as I remember, it was not modified. And she was an absolute beginner. She had never taken her Jeep off-road before. And I am just so proud that she came out. I think we talked about it last Zoom meeting because she was messaging me on, or really rather the show on Instagram. – Yeah, you never did post her picture. – But she doesn’t have any pictures online.

 

I did apologize for you guys. I mean, I invited her to the Discord server and did apologize how you guys act on the Discord server. And she says, “I work with men in oil and gas. I’m fine.” – Yeah, I mean, he had scrapes from some fall on the trail and bruises and sunburnt. And so, like I said, I think I got the better end of that deal. – John Lee looked like he’d been put through the ringer. That’s for sure.

 

– Were you the tail gunner, Bill? – I was, yeah. On the day two, I’m like, “I’m gonna sit here in the back and hang out with Andrew or whatever.” – So your job was basically, yeah, we all made it over the obstacle. – Yeah, it was to help with the stragglers and just keep things moving. – So, yep. – So how was the barbecue? – It was good. Yeah, I got some to go and had it for dinner later on that night, so. – Yep, same here. Barbecue, it was a very unique experience. That’s the first time I’ve been to a pit barbecue like that where you actually line up in front of the pit first, you go through and you pick out what you want. And they got everything in that pit. Pick out what you want. And then they wrap it all up in this pail and take it in and cut it all up for you. And then while they’re doing that, you go in and you pick out your sides and stuff. And they’re extremely, extremely friendly, extremely helpful. It was a very, very pleasant experience. And the food was good, really good.

 

– I mean, good brisket barbecue is just, it’s heavenly.

 

It’s wonderful if you find a good place.

 

– Yeah. – That’s Rick from Arkansas by the way. I know I forgot to introduce myself.

 

– All right, well, man.

 

– Yeah, I was curious to see what you guys thought of that, that ride on their little hill country ride. I mean, it wasn’t technical by any means unless you consider the heat as technical and you’re Rick driving out there at no top in the dust and all that, but I’d be curious to kind of get some feedback on what you guys thought of that. – Yeah, it’s a good thing to do next year. I think is where Bill’s gone with that. – Yeah, Rick from Arkansas again. I enjoyed it. It was just, it was a nice leisurely, no pressure type of deal. We just kind of cruise through. And like you said, through the countryside, I saw a lot of Texas countryside that I would not have got to see other than the, I mean, the dusty rocky stuff, like in the picture behind me.

 

And some of it was hot, it was nasty, but it was really pretty. I mean, the landscape changed several times as we was going through there. And we actually hit an area that actually had real, real trees, not just those little scrubby brush things. So it’s pretty nice. – Yeah, Central Texas is kind of like that brush, mesquite type stuff. East Texas is a lot of pine trees. And we get oaks and pine trees down here in my neck of the woods.

 

So was there anything else that stood out about the, for anybody that did go to the event, was there anything that stood out about the event to you?

 

– This is Kevin from DFW. I didn’t make Friday. I was late due to a trailer blowout, but John and Bill did a real good job with the size of the group and kind of adjusting. They had a basic plan, but they had to adjust a little here and there, especially with a couple of brand new people. And they did that real well. So I’d like to give them a shout out and a thanks for doing a great job. – Oh, they really did.

 

– Yeah, I think it was a nice mix of kind of just breaking things up because we did some night wheeling that was out there. That was a lot of fun.

 

We had the outing on there with the lunch or whatever.

 

There was a couple of new trails that were a little higher and higher in terms of just technical. And we hit those this year or whatever. So a couple of those I had never been on before and it was a lot of fun. So I think we just kind of sized up the group and the capabilities and kind of decided, yeah, you probably need to ride with somebody. And then we went off and hit those trails. So it was just a lot of fun, just kind of breaking that up with just hanging out under a shade tree with a nice wind or whatever. So it was just a nice mix of just hanging out and doing different things. So it was three days, but it seemed like it went by pretty quickly. – And I’m glad that Bill, you and John expanded that out because I know we didn’t have as many out of state visitors this year, but it was good that we had those additional days in case they wanted to come. It’s kind of a more of a justification for the long ride and gives you an opportunity to relax and not have to get right back in the Jeep or tow vehicle and drive back home immediately. – Yeah, and I would say the heat wasn’t as bad as I thought it was gonna be. There were some pretty good breezes and as long as you were in the shade,

 

but there was a good breeze and it really wasn’t that bad under those conditions. So there was even up on Wildcat, I think this year we decided not to spend a whole lot of time up there. It’s like we went up there, it’s like, okay, this is good. See you later. Going back to fine. – I was a little disappointed that the group that Zabow was in didn’t make it up there. So we didn’t have a full group picture,

 

like a total number of Jeeps up there. Did anybody ever get a count?

 

– 26.

 

– Well, we had some new people and we had Andrew out there in the same vehicle he was driving last year, but this time it was on 35s with long arms and he was acting like it too. – I think you’re the only one that got winched, weren’t you? At least on Saturday.

 

– Yeah, cause that’s, cause I was purposely getting myself in a bind.

 

Yeah, I’m the one that got winched. – That’s how you learned the rig.

 

– No, I winched myself out too. – Okay. But he broke out the winch, yeah. – Yeah, I had to winch up the waterfall there on wet and wild, I didn’t make it. I’d almost get it, but I had a 10 hour drive home, so I didn’t want to push it too hard. – Well Zabow and his heavily modified JLU or JKU, I can’t forget what he had, JLU I believe. He was having trouble with it. I think it was the line and the water on the wheels or the tires.

 

– Yeah, I definitely got to, going with the advanced group Saturday, I got to stretch my legs a little bit, get tested a little deeper and learned a lot. Mike, the guy that was kind of, I don’t know, coaching everybody through everything. He knows the stuff, he could drive that rig he had and he did some pretty impressive stuff with it. – And that was– – And that Zabow was a mechanic. – Yeah. – Yeah. – Back in the white Jeep. – Yeah. – And speaking of mechanics, I see Zach has joined us from Unlimited Off-Road. That was the first time out there for Zach with us and it was him and his girlfriend. And Zach, you didn’t break anything, did you? – No, we didn’t break anything. We were out there with Rick and Zabow and we all did make it to the top of Wildcat just after y’all did. – Oh, okay. I thought you guys didn’t make it, but Bill made the command decision. Like, there’s no reason to sit here and be hot. I’m gonna go get food. That sounded good to me. – Yeah, no, we, yeah, it was just, it took a little while for us to get up that last trail.

 

– Yeah, last office. – We made it.

 

Yeah, no, I didn’t break anything and no lockers and yeah, 37’s on 20’s, so that was fun.

 

– Yeah, I saw those 20’s. – Yeah, well, you know, that’s what you get when you got a Jeep that you got $5,000 in, but nice to chase the advanced group people around with your $5,000 Jeep. – And 20 inch wheels, that’s pretty amazing. – Yeah, and 20 inch wheels, yeah. – Did you air down? Could you air down at all? – Yeah, I did air down.

 

I did air down, did not have to break out the winch,

 

but I also, you know, trailred out there. – Yeah, that’s the case. – It’s not a big deal. It’s not like, yeah, unlike Rick who, you know, can’t break it because he’s got a drive 10 and a half hours home. – So I know I asked you out there on the trail, how did your girlfriend like it? Was it her first time off-roading? – It was definitely her first time off-roading and I think we’ll see her again out there. She had a great time.

 

It was really nice to, yeah, her and Janet or Charlie

 

kind of hit it off and they were, got, yeah, they got to be good friends and actually, her and I went out to eat and everybody else randomly showed up at the same restaurant we did from that group, so that was kind of fun. – It was neat having two women that were the primary drivers of their Jeeps out there. We had several women out, but they, we had two women that were driving their Jeeps out there and I thought that was really cool. I like to see a lot more of that happen.

 

– Yeah, Janet did amazing. She drove that thing, she did really good. She drove that thing, she kind of showed us men a lot. I mean, because it was, there were several obstacles. She went right up and we struggled on, so I was pretty impressed.

 

– Going up that waterfall, she was smoking the tires and getting after it.

 

She was having a good old time.

 

– Out. – And it was really neat. I think it was Leslie, the other one that was up there driving herself in her Jeep. I spoke with her after we were done for the day and she absolutely enjoyed the hell out of wheeling her Jeep for the first time. So I knew it could go either way.

 

And she was actually, I think John Lee actually started mentioning that you could tell she was gaining confidence as the more and more wheeling that she did, which you would expect. – Yeah, and I think her Jeep had like close to 100,000 miles on it and it was the first time the transfer case had been shifted to four wheel drive. – Yeah, she was in trouble. – Like factory tight and I was like, it’s like this thing’s never been in four wheel drive.

 

So. – I didn’t realize that had 100,000 miles on it. I mean, you can put a lot of miles on anything, but it looked like a fairly new Jeep to me. I didn’t look at it super careful, but. – And how’s Lauren doing? She had a little bit of a spill out there. I don’t know if it’s the heat or adrenaline dump or what, but she had a little bit of a spill and had to kind of take it easy. – Yeah, she had a little bit of a heat stroke going on out there. – I know.

 

– Yeah, I don’t think she drank enough water. So I think we had to get her back to the car and get her back to the Jeep, turn the AC on and fill her with fluid. But yeah, no, no, no, no. By the time the sun went down, she was back drinking wine, having a good old time. So, no problems for her, but thanks for asking, right?

 

– Well, I’ll just mention, I think I’ve mentioned this in one of the other episodes. I was a little more adventurous out there this year with the full skid system from MotoBelt. And I absolutely love it. And I absolutely loved having that skid system on there. Whether it did or anything for me or not, I don’t know. But for the confidence standpoint,

 

I didn’t care because I had a skid system and it’s beefy as hell. So I went up a few things. I think Bill was telling me I was throwing boulders, chunks and stuff back, going up one, one fairly aggressive thing. – You launched a rock going up wet and wild or going up Wildcat on there. There’s a big old rocket king flying off one of your back tires there. And I think John Lee got hit with a rock or had a Dodger rock out on. – We can either confirm, Durn and I, that we shot any rock that John Lee. – Well, it was Rick that did it or whatever. But it’s a funny story. So Tony, my buddy, John, who had a little green two door who was behind you, saw you tearing it up or whatever. And he freaked out and he calls for, hey, someone come help me or whatever. And I had to tell him, I was like, well, don’t do what Tony did.

 

(laughing) – And that’s not a normal thing people say when I go off road. – Well, he’s got a gladiator, so he doesn’t have a choice in this creek bed or whatever. He’s like, you got a little two door. I was like, look, if you just drive right up here, like give him the right through it. And he’s like, okay. And he did it. He’s like, oh, that was easy. Okay. – So was that the guy I told the backup? Because I had high centered, I had turtled on a rock there. He was behind you on that wet and wild trail. – Okay. – But you freaked him out. So, you know, he’s calling for help. – I heard him. I heard him ask. There’s nothing absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I did think it was funny because seldom do I do anything that makes people concerned for their safety and wellbeing in their Jeep. – He’s a big gladiator. You’re in a two door. Like you can pick your line. He can’t pick his line in this creek.

 

(imitates a tute) (laughing)

 

– I was concerned for Garrett. Garrett showed up in that gladiator. He’s got that black one, man. It was pretty and shiny. I mean, that thing looked like a showroom gladiator. It was nice built up, but. – He took care of that. – He took care of that. (laughing) – Yeah, I had just cleaned it that week before because I was at S’more two weeks ago. So I had just cleaned it up from that trip. So it was pretty clean. – And Garrett, I really appreciate you coming down. You came all the way from Kansas, I believe. And you did that last year, I believe. Also, it was really funny. It was a TRO, I think, that you just kind of climbed up that one little obstacle. You just kind of climbed up and out with your TJ. And we were pointing that out to Chuck and his scrambler that didn’t make it.

 

(laughing) – Yeah, I tried it again the, what was it? Friday night. And I tried it three times in the gladiator and I kept sliding into a spot where I couldn’t move. So I just took the bypass. – Sure, that’s what you do.

 

– I think, was it Kyle from Off-Road 101?

 

He, boy, he bounced his up there hard. He got up it, but boy, he bounced it up there. – Yeah, Kyle’s aggressive. You know, he’s down from, I think, 40s to 37s. So he was doing a little relearning out there. – Yeah, he drove that lower control arm bracket like right into the rock. And his Jeep just bounced up in the air. (laughing) Like four inches or so, boom. – Well, Andrew did a wheelie out there too, didn’t he?

 

– I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing that. – Andrew’s always showing out. – I heard you did, but I didn’t see any video of it. Somebody slammed it in reverse to get out of it real quick. – Yeah, no, I was trying to take the, on that North Pole, I was trying to take the same line Chuck did on the left side, on the second ledge. And I did a wheel stand and slammed it in reverse. So I didn’t go over backwards. – I wanna see the Saturday night video when you decided you’re gonna set a record doing midnight run in the dark. And we’re all just like, he’s a grown ass man. – Oh, that was a fun time. Garrett, I just full sent it down midnight run. – I know, we could hear you cause that trail kind of runs close by where we’re sitting. So we’re sitting around the campfire where you should, (imitates engine) his engine just going nuts. And we’re like, well, as long as we’re here, the engine going, it’s like they’re still moving, right? And then boom, you guys popped out like, you’re gone like maybe 10 minutes. We’re like, you did that whole trail in like 10 minutes. – Oh, speed run, speed run of the century. – You did run across the top of the box. – You would have a video of that, cause that was crazy.

 

– Next year I’ll take a video of doing it again. – Four leader was screaming. – Yeah.

 

– Oh, real quick, I know we’ve talked about it. I know we’ve talked about how the, not that the hidden fall staff is not nice. They’re just kind of like middle of the road, hi, how you doing, blah, blah, blah. But this year I noticed that all the hidden falls people that I ran across were super interested and super nice.

 

– Yeah, yeah, we even talked to Trey with Baldy’s Jeep Shop, cause he’s, I guess, partnered with the hidden falls folks and they had a bunch of newbie runs going on. So they probably had, I don’t know, it looked like 30, 40 vehicles out there or something. – Was that the guy with the cowboy hat that was right there at Wildcat? – Yeah, the one you were talking to,

 

John and I went and talked to him, cause we were like, there’s a lot of vehicles out there. So we kind of said, this is kind of our plan. And he’s like, okay, I’ll make sure that I’ll keep them off of this trail. So we were kind of working together to make sure that we weren’t all going to the same trails that we were gonna run into each other. So I was actually kind of surprised. I think we crossed paths a couple of times, but it wasn’t ever a problem that really slowed us down. So I think that helped out just working together to make sure we weren’t stepping on top of each other. – Yeah, I was just real happy. I mean, the guy that was parking me at the front gate or telling me to pull up and stuff,

 

he asked me if I had done any modifications since last year. And I don’t know who the guy is. And I said, well, I don’t think so. I said, oh, the skid system, but you can’t see that. But very friendly, asking questions about the Gladiator from last year. And then I went up to the window to pay and it was on Brainfart in his name. It was a guy I did the interview with a couple of years ago. And he introduced himself and said that he had done the interview with me and super friendly. And I said, hey, if anybody else comes through here, that’s part of the Jeep Talk Show group, it’s our fourth annual event. If you’ll just direct them over to area B, he goes, that’s what I’ve been doing.

 

(laughs) So it worked out really, really well. And then, yeah, and then I was really, I thought it was really cool that it was a hidden falls photographer, videographer, I think, that was out there that we saw, that we passed by, I forget where we were, but that was really cool. They’re actually doing some promotion. – Yeah, and that guy that was parking the cars, that dude was pretty serious about his job. Like he must’ve like worked on an aircraft carrier or something, because he’s doing all the hand signs and he’s like very animated or whatever. And then when you’re taking off, he’s doing the full salute to you or whatever. – Oh, that’s so cool. – Like you do for pilots or whatever, when they’re taking off, I was like, and we’re, that guy’s like a military guy. – I talked to him before I left and I told him that we had talked about him and had supposed that. And he said, and he was, he was on a, actually he was on a Spruance class destroyer, just like me. And he was a signalman and his job was directing the helicopters in. Actually he had to, he spent some time on the Nimitz training for all that. And so yeah, he was military. And I knew when he saluted, I said, that was not a civilian salute. – Exactly, yeah, it was like a, I’m watching a plane kind of salute or whatever. – Yeah, we were talking about that when we came in and it was like, well, I’m not landed. I’m not that big. (laughing) But he was very serious about his job. – That’s great, that’s great. Did anybody get a name?

 

– He told me, but unfortunately I don’t remember. – Yep, I know, I’m the same one. – I’ll say we were probably 75, 25 with the staff.

 

The people up front were real nice. The lady when I turned in my key for the starlight was super happy and real nice to me.

 

One of the rangers that was working the front gates was Friday night, we had to go and get something and came back in after the technical closing. But as long as you were already in and had your little plaque here, they would let you back in up to like an hour and a half later. He was real not happy to get out of his truck for us. – Oh.

 

– And he was also working the,

 

what do you call it, the general store. Yeah. – He was on a 16 hour shift, that’s why he wasn’t heavy.

 

Well, he wasn’t real happy in the beginning of that shift or the end of it.

 

– He talked to me for a long time in the store because I had that shirt, you know, that for the crap.

 

The breakdown for the, what crap, Clayton, the Clayton manual, I think it’s Clayton. – Oh, okay.

 

– The Clayton manual for the kildoser. He talked to me for a long time about that.

 

I’ll say there was an older gentleman that worked the general store that was real nice. And then like I said, the people up front, it was kind of the, I’d say I’d call him the younger one, but he was still probably not aged.

 

– I don’t have any evidence for this, but I kind of get the feeling that the park rangers are,

 

they have their bullet in the pocket, like Barney Five is what I’m thinking.

 

But I haven’t been, I haven’t had a lot of interaction with them, but they just seem to be a little,

 

well, like Steve O is, you know, Steve O has been a police officer. He’s not here, is he? Damn it. He would have enjoyed that. – Are they actually armed? I don’t remember seeing that they’re armed or not. – No, no, but they have the bullet. It just makes them feel better. – Just a bullet in their pocket.

 

– Well, they probably have to deal with a lot of stupid, you know, crap out there. – Oh, I don’t doubt it. – Absolutely. – Well, so do the people at the window and so do the other people that we’ve run into and they’re nice. So I’m just saying.

 

Anyway, I was really, really impressed. It was definitely different. And again, it wasn’t bad before, but it was kind of like, yeah, whatever, you know, go wheel your Jeep, you know.

 

When you’re spending money and you look, you kind of like having some customer service and they were doing a much better job at that, in my opinion.

 

– I was very surprised to be my first time at that park that you had to drive three miles off the road.

 

– Yeah, you mean actually to get to area B? – Yeah. – Yeah, it is a long drive, especially at 15 miles an hour.

 

– And very dusty.

 

– Yep. – Yeah, well, there it is. I felt a little bad leaving. I’ve dusted out a few people.

 

– Rick doesn’t mind. He’s used to it. So was there anything that was surprising out there this year? Maybe an obstacle that you did, that you tried, it wasn’t too sure that you could do it and you were able to accomplish it. I think I tried two new ones this year that I’d never done before and was very happy that I didn’t have any problems with them.

 

– Yeah, we did on the night of the later, one of the later runs, we did the Bronco Buster and the Midnight Run. And those were really, I really enjoyed those. Of course, I’m smaller than a TJ. And so I was able to maneuver a little bit better in there, but I really enjoyed both of those trails because the FMTRO was always my favorite, but I don’t know, those two were pretty good. – I don’t recommend Bronco Buster with 30 PSI.

 

– All I can say is that was amazing watching y’all do that with 30 PSI getting thrown around like champs. – I can grab it all, bounce it around. – Good core muscles, man, good core muscles. – That’s why they call it Bronco Buster.

 

– Speaking of which, I was really, again, really happy with the skid system that I have on the Gladiator. I think my next thing to do is the Teraflex shocks like Bill has. And I thought John had them, but I think John has, I think somebody on Discord today said John’s using Falcons. – Fox, yeah. – Oh, the Fox shocks, okay. Not Falcons, Fox. So I can see that it would be going over, especially up there on Wildcat. It’s always a very bumpy ride. It’s not horrible, but I mean, if you could go faster and not have to go have all those jarring bumps, that sounds like a good deal.

 

– Yeah, they’re definitely worth their weight.

 

– It was Zabow had the, I think Mike was saying that Zabow had the first set of the Falcon coilovers. They looked real interesting. – Yeah, yeah.

 

– I text messaged Zabow earlier today, I believe, and asked him if it was challenging enough for him. And he said, yeah, it was a lot of fun. I know he had several friends of his up there. I think Charlie or is it Janet that drives Charlie? I think that’s one of his friends, Mike. What was his business? I forgot the name of his business. – Platinum Off-Road. – Platinum, yeah. – And the GP has, I think it’s called Collateral because I think it was one of the customers that didn’t pay him.

 

He just took the Jeep as collateral and put the stickers on it to call it Collateral. – I think it was some kind of insurance fraud thing that he, I don’t know if he’d pulled over, figured it out and somehow afterwards is able to buy it or something like that. There’s a story behind it, I remember that.

 

– Yeah.

 

– And it wasn’t him. I mean, it was whoever originally owned it. So I’m not saying that he was committing any kind of fraud. It was whoever originally owned it. – And I can’t remember their name, but the couple that was in that blue CJ. – What a beautiful rig.

 

– Oh, yeah. – That was a beautiful CJ. – Well, it’s cool. Similar to like when we were out there at Moab with Chuck and his CJ, seeing that little CJ just kind of mountain goatin’ up everything.

 

It’s like, I’ve seen that move before. It’s just so cool. – I spoke with him briefly. I asked him, I forget how he got on the lockers, but he said he had aux lockers in that. And I said, yeah, I said, I like the aux lockers. I just don’t like the idea of having to route that cable. And he told me something that I didn’t know previously. They have electric actuators for the aux lockers now. I don’t know if it’s aux or if it’s somebody else that makes them. So it’s electrical for him, but it attaches to the cable for the aux. And it has a manual override. So you can literally get out and engage and disengage them. – Yeah, aux is air, electric and manual. – Yeah, they’ve had the electric for years and years and years. It’s still the exact same locker. It’s just how it, it’s essentially the actuator. And they’ve also had that manual override. You’ve been able to buy that for, I don’t know, at least 15 years that I know of. So it’s actually really convenient. And they are a strong locker. It’s just, and routing the cables isn’t the worst thing in the world. You just want to really be cognizant of how much suspension travel you have so that they don’t bind. – They don’t engage and disengage. – As you flex, yeah.

 

Well, anyway, I was really impressed by that. I thought that was really cool. I’m pretty sure I’m still going to go with ARB. But I have a good question for you guys. I asked this on the Discord, and I bet you Henderson knows the answer to this question very easily. – Not likely. – What, why does Jeep allow you, like on the Rubicon, why does Jeep only allow you to engage the rear locker or the front and rear? Not each one of them individually?

 

– Warranty purposes. – It’s, A, it’s warranty purposes, B, it’s, most people are using the factory setup. When you engage the front locker,

 

steering gets a little weird. And for a new Jeep owner, because you got to remember 90% of the people who buy those are new Jeep owners. For a new Jeep owner, that’s a really odd feeling.

 

And they could get into trouble. It’s the same reason that they only allow you to do it before low.

 

You know, there’s defeats, but it’s liability and it’s warranty concerns and it’s putting somebody,

 

giving that type of control to somebody. It’s like giving an eight year old a 22 and teaching them how to shoot or just stepping them right up to that good old fashioned 308 and saying, have fun. – So, okay, liability, I understand that, but several of the aftermarket things, if you, you know, if your Jeep didn’t come with lockers and you want to install lockers and use a similar switch panel or even the factory switch panel, I think it’s Z automotive has a kit that actually allows you to put in the factory switch panels, both sides and– – Right, but again, now you’re modifying it. So they’re not stuck to the same rules as, you know, the OE. – Well, that’s what I found out when I was researching it is that they work exactly the same way as the Gladiator one does, that you can do rear or front and rear. And I was confused by the aftermarket doing that. Maybe it’s a liability concern for them, but there is no good reason to not be able to drive around in front locker. I mean, I could see how sometimes you might want to drag your ass around something. – Yeah, well, and that’s the funny part. It’s like me in my Jeep and in Frankenberg,

 

I’m usually in front wheel drive only, or if I’m off road, I tend to turn the front locker on way before I turn the rear locker on because I can see the obstacle, right? I know that the obstacle is coming. I know that if I have just the front locker on, I’ll be able to get myself up onto that obstacle and then pull my rear end over. And if my rear end is open, I have a much tighter turning radius than I do if my rear end is locked. So I would say when I’m off road, and it doesn’t matter if I’m in Frankenberg or my Roxor or whatever,

 

probably 90% of the time I use my front locker

 

compared to my rear. My rear almost never ever gets turned on. – Interesting. – You can use a taser to make it so that you can do either, or I think you can even put the rear lockers in and four high with the taser, not that you need it. – Yeah, but when you drive old shit like me, you can’t use a taser because it doesn’t work.

 

– Well, yeah. But you can also in the JK, I don’t know about the JL, but the JK, I know you can go right into the relays too and just wire and switch right to the relay. – Well, you don’t even have to wire switch into the relay. What I used to do, and I’ve done it for a bunch of customers, you know, JK, the relays are up on the driver front fender. – Yep. – For the lockers. – Driver or passenger?

 

– Well, they switched it. It was driver for a few years and then they moved to passenger. But we used to switch the relays. We used to take the locker feed and switch it.

 

And the best part is when you’re just switching the feed, the one that tells the locker to turn on and off, it still registers on the dash, which locker is actually engaged. So you could turn the front locker on first

 

and then the rear.

 

But I just find it way more convenient because if you drive around, once you have the ability to lock front or rear,

 

you’ll notice that if you just lock the front, your turning radius is way tighter. And then when you really step up your game and throw an Atlas in it, you’ll notice that you almost never even use the rear axle. Like when I’m on the heavy trails in Moab, my rear axle is usually dead, right? Like I don’t even engage it. I just drive around in front wheel drive. Like it’s a Honda Civic in the snow.

 

Because the front end pulls the rear end wherever it wants to go.

 

That’s why my Dana 35 hasn’t exploded yet.

 

In fact, some of the guys on this have done a trail called Metal Masher. And some of them have even done it with me. But there’s a trail in Moab called Metal Masher. And it’s a decent trail. It has something for everyone.

 

I want to say it was in 2018.

 

We were on that trail.

 

And Kenny Hawk, he had a six by six wrecker. And we had a really good group of people.

 

I broke my rear driveshaft on the very first obstacle. Because it was when I first got the new stroker. And I decided to put on a little show and I donated my rear driveshaft into three pieces. And I did the entire trail in front wheel drive. And even got to pull other people over some obstacles just in front wheel drive.

 

– Must be close enough to show, huh?

 

– Yep, it’s 901. – Yeah, but he started at 920. – Yeah.

 

– Who needs to get his prep schedule right? – 820, so he’s only been on 40 minutes. – You feel like you’ve been gypped 20 minutes? – Yeah.

 

– 20 bucks, 20 minutes, whatever. – We had good 20 minute conversation without Tony. So that’s good.

 

– So Greg, it’s interesting. I find that when I’m engaging my front locker on my JK,

 

I can’t turn as quick as I can if I leave my front open. – That’s 100%, you’re 100% right.

 

So you can’t turn as quick, but if you could turn off the rear axle, then you could turn much quicker again. Because the rear axle, remember when your rear locker is on, it is 100% of the time pushing the vehicle perfectly straight ahead. – Right. – So it’s actually counterintuitive to have both on because if your front’s on and your rear’s on, the rear is always trying to push the vehicle perfectly straight. And the front is trying to skype for traction. If you can turn the rear off and turn the front on, you’ll notice that it will still turn real easy because it’s not fighting the rear axle anymore. – Very interesting, because I was always hesitant to worry about it because I’ll just click my rear on to push me up an obstacle, the opposite of you pulling up, but very seldom do I use the front because if I lock both on my Rubicon, then I lose my turning radius. – Right. No, I understand 100%. It was trial and error. When I first started doing it, I did the same thing. I’d always turn the rear on.

 

And then you get to these ledges or even trail guiding, you watch other people and their struggles. And if they don’t have a front locker, a lot of the times it’s very hard for them to get up a ledger, up an obstacle. But as soon as they engage the front locker, it’s almost like, yeah, they can crawl it. No more squeaking tires, no more tearing up the trail, just gentle movement.

 

But the same is true. If you disengage the rear locker, you can still get up on that obstacle. And then as soon as the weight transfer happens, the front end pulls the rear end over anyway.

 

And what I really learned that is when I got my Atlas.

 

Once I started wheeling with an Atlas and having that ability to turn on and off the axles at will,

 

just from normal driving,

 

I started to get very comfortable just driving around in front high or front low and just dragging the rear end wherever I wanna go.

 

And then you’re also not fighting the load, the suspension load that happens when you gas it or decelerate it.

 

So if only your front end is on and you gas it, the whole vehicle actually sucks down to the earth. – Hmm.

 

– Where if your rear axles on and you gas it, the whole vehicle tries to lift. – Yeah. – So you kinda get the best of both worlds because as it’s digging, as the front end is pulling, it sucks the vehicle down, which gives you a lower center of gravity, hugs whatever you’re holding better and pulls you right over. And you actually end up with more traction than you would if you had rear wheel drive going because rear wheel drive would be lifting the vehicle.

 

– I like sucking. I like sucking. – Oh my God. Don’t even tell me about that, it’s been so long.

 

But no, yeah, once you play with it a little bit, if you can disable your rear locker and just run a front and play with it and see what it feels like, you might be really surprised because your turning radius improves and the obstacles that you can do, you know, think of anything with a steep incline or ledges. Once you get up on them,

 

the coolest part is, you know, as soon as the front end rests the breakover point

 

and starts to come, you know, the front end will kinda sink down. And if you engage just the front axle, it’ll actually pull the whole weight of the vehicle over that edge.

 

I’ve seen it in really aggressive spots. Like there’s a trail, there’s an obstacle called Cindy’s thumb, which is very vertical and very ledgy. But when you get up to the top and you start to get that breakover,

 

I’ve seen videos even of me gassing it at that point. And both front tires will actually come off the ground as it pulls the vehicle over the hill. Like no traction at all because the rear end isn’t touching anymore. Now I wouldn’t recommend most people drive like that because, you know, that’s one of those trying to get it done and you shouldn’t really do that or advocate for that. But it’s pretty amazing what happens if you just run front wheel drive for a little bit, just to play with it. You’ll either love it or hate it. – With an S-Pod, I could wire it so that I could unwire the switch on my dash and my Rubicon and wire it to my S-Pod and have a switch for front and a switch for rear, right? – Yep, yeah, S-Pod will let you do it however you want.

 

– Cool.

 

– Even, you know, in the Rock’s Ork, cause I use an S-Pod and I wired the lockers just like ARB recommends or Yukon recommends. So, you know, where one is the…

 

One won’t come on with the other, right? So usually if you get a pair of lockers from ARB or Yukon,

 

there’s three switches. One switch is the safety switch and then, you know, it’s rear lock or front lock.

 

I always flip them so that I can turn them on however I want, whenever I want. I basically eliminate the safety portion of it. And like in the Rock’s Ork, if I showed you the gauge cluster with the S-Pod, it is, it’s compressor, front locker, rear locker. I don’t do it the other way because I use the front way more than I use the rear.

 

Downfall is in the Rock’s Ork, I don’t have an Atlas yet. – So at the beginning of the show, Tony said he wants to do ARB lockers. What are your opinion of it, of air lockers versus electronic?

 

Eaton versus ARB? – It really depends on the axle. So some, there’s nothing wrong with the Eaton’s, you know, I’ll say that right up front.

 

Some of them may be weaker, but, you know, when they started JK, they were the ones that were doing it and the reason that they were doing it, and this is 2006, 2007, but when they started doing it in the JK, the reason that they chose

 

that particular electric locker was because it had the smallest fail ratio in those axles. So when Jeep did it, they tested everybody. They tested, even back to the TJ. So, you know, three, when they were testing TJ, they tested every locker under the sun. They tested ARB, they tested Yukon, they tested Eaton, they tested everybody who made one.

 

And surprisingly, the one that ended up winning the contract for the TJ was this really weird named company who made an air locker, but it only used the, the TJ Rubicon lockers only needed five PSI to actually– – I know, it’s weird, and try to find one of those pumps. – Well, they did it on purpose.

 

So you can get a regulator and then you can use a regular pump and regulate down to five PSI. But sort of one of the reasons behind that, that they wanted it to actuate so low,

 

and the location of the locker pumps, if you remember, was on the skid plate right under the driver. – Well, it’s exposed to all the elements, all the mud. It’s a mess. – Yeah, but there’s a reason. – Why? – So the reason it’s on the skid plate right underneath the driver is if you have an issue, if your electronics fail or you break a wire or whatever, you can actually get under there and unplug one of those vapor lines, and then you can unplug your windshield wiper line because they’re the same size. You can plug it in and put it in your mouth and blow into it with five pounds of air and engage your lockers to make it out off the trail. – You have to have continual pressure on it? – Yeah, but it’s five PSI, and you can make that just with your tongue in your mouth, just pushing. So you can engage your lockers with your mouth in a TJ.

 

JK, they went to– – I use blood pressure bulbs of mine right now to actually– – Somebody’s using a penis pump, they won’t admit to it. I wanna know who you are. – That’s not mine. That’s not mine.

 

(laughing) – But yeah, then there’s,

 

so with the JK, when they came out with the JK, they went through the whole thing again. So they tested every locker imaginable.

 

The axles were different. So the JK rear axle, they call it a 44, and everybody’s heard me say it before, it’s not a 44, it’s bigger.

 

It’s essentially the largest 44 that’s ever been built. But when they were designing those axles, they did the whole process again. So they reached out to Eaton and ARB and Yukon and everybody under the sun who made a locker, and they tested them. The criteria was that they wanted electric. They didn’t want air because it adds one more system that could fail. So they went with electric. And in the JK, they were very particular that it had to be 12 volt. Most of the systems in the JK are weird. The radio uses 6.73 volts. And if you put more to it or less, it kills everything. But the lockers, they were very particular that they were 12 volt. That way, if you did rip your wiring harness, and they made sure it was only two wires, but if you rip your wiring harness on an obstacle, you could just run a jumper from the battery to your locker and still lock it and drive. – Interesting.

 

– So now when you’re talking aftermarket, the Eaton’s good.

 

ARB is still essentially the top dog, right? They’re top of the food chain.

 

The Yukon ZipLocker is an ARB. So, and the reason that I say that and the way I say it that way,

 

when the patent ran up on the previous design ARB,

 

Yukon started making it. So it is a carbon copy of the previous generation ARB.

 

And they’re both, I mean, honestly, they’re both great lockers. If you can save a couple hundred bucks by buying one or the other, go for it. They’re both great. In fact, the Roxor uses,

 

in the Roxor, I have Yukon and Frankenbrute, I have ARB. You know, I’ve used both.

 

I like electric lockers.

 

For the convenience and the simplicity

 

and not having to have the third system. But I also like the third system because in a pinch, you can air up your tires. It might take 35 minutes to air up a tire, but you can do it.

 

Or if you have an air tank, you know, and you let it run long enough, you can charge an air tank and you can run air tools.

 

My downfall is, is I keep power tanks with me everywhere. So I pretty much never use that redundant system. But if I was going to drive from the, you know, Canada down to the tip of South America, I’d want both systems.

 

– Oh yeah. I mean, so I’ve got electric lockers, but I’ve got an ARB pump and a power tank. I mean, the redundancy is valuable. – Right. – Redundancy is not bad. I mean, until it makes your Jeep too heavy to move around. – Well, and, you know, look at some of those locker pumps. Like the Yukon locker pump for the zip lockers, it’s literally this big, right? It’s twice the size of a pack of cigarettes. So it’s not very large. It doesn’t weigh very much. It’ll run the lockers. It’ll pump up an air tire. And the ARB also makes small ones, but they also make a lot of money selling the big ones. – Yeah. Well, that twin is so nice.

 

– Right.

 

– Going back a little bit on using front lockers if you know anything about physics from the front tires start to pull after you go over a ledge,

 

the pressure pulling the rear tires puts more pressure on the front tires and they get better traction to pull you up. – Yep. 100%.

 

I mean, think of it. I mean, for the guys that are in Texas, you guys don’t understand this, but for everybody else who lives anywhere that… – We’ll talk slow. – Yeah. For anyone else who’s ever driven in snow.

 

So anywhere on the North side of our country, if you’ve driven in snow,

 

you’ll know you can be in the gnarliest four wheel drive in the world. And that asshole in the Honda Civic still can drive faster than you on the road because he’s front wheel drive and his rear tires act like rudders. – Yep.

 

– So, I mean, we see it here in Michigan all the time, especially in winter, the first couple of good snows we get, it seems like everybody forgot how to drive. And every asshole out there in their big four wheel drive truck thinks that they’re invincible and they’re always the first ones in the ditch and the first ones wrecked because they think the four wheel drive overcompensates for them. But then there’s still the Yahoo in the Civic or the Accord or whatever that flies by him doing 90 in the fast lane. – Four wheel drive in the winter, four wheel drive in the winter just means you got four tires spinning and sliding. – Right, I mean, unless you know how to drive, but it’s very comical.

 

When there’s hills and other stuff, the guys in the front wheel drives just go right up them like they don’t exist. And the guys with rear wheel drive or four wheel drive end up spinning and sliding all over the place because they don’t carry their momentum. The front wheel drive car doesn’t need the momentum. The front of your vehicle is also the heaviest part of the vehicle. So it has, you know, because the engine’s up there. So it has more weight over those tires. And if you make those the drive tires, they naturally get more traction than the rear tires do. – It’s absolutely comical. When you, like you say, in the wintertime when first bad snowstorm, there’s been years, I’ll count hundreds of vehicles and the ditch going down the highway. – Yeah, I couldn’t imagine what it looks like being a truck driver because you’re on the road all the time. So you’re so used to it. And then that first good snow, you just watch a whole bunch of idiocy happen.

 

– Yeah, so this last winter, it was crazy. It was like every– – And I need to stop wearing blue shirts because holy shit, this thing makes me look fat.

 

– Well, at least you didn’t ask. So are you saying that if you’re in a four wheel drive and you have the ability to lock the front,

 

make it a four wheel drive or an Atlas where you could just engage the front axle, that you’d be able to drive better in the snow?

 

– Absolutely. Well, not locked. No, I wouldn’t lock it if I was in the snow. – Okay. So just front one drive.

 

– Yeah, you want the differential to be able to do its job in the snow. Otherwise you end up sliding even more. So the differential, when you’re going around in a corner, you want those tires to be able to turn at a different rate. When you’re turning, you want them to turn at a different rate. If you lock them on snowy and icy roads, you will have a problem. – Yeah, the inside wheel is gonna push you off the left, off the outside edge of the corner. – Yep. Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s really fun. I’ve, I don’t know if I have any videos of it, but both lockers on four wheel drive high,

 

you parked in a parking lot, you turn your wheel and you floor it, and you don’t go anywhere. You just spin around like a cyclone. And you can literally get going just like an RC. You can go so fast that it’ll just flip over naturally.

 

So you gotta be careful with it. And I mean, it reminds you of being on the merry-go-round as a kid and your buddies are all spinning it and saying, “Fuck you.”

 

But yeah, you don’t want your lockers in the snow. They do not help you in snow.

 

– But if you could put it in just straight four front wheel drive, absolutely it would drive better. – Yep. Yeah, I do it all the time. I put it just in front wheel drive and drive around all the time in the snow. And then I’ll use, if I want to make a really fun corner, I use my e-brake to engage the slide. – Yeah. Until you spin it into the intersection and then pull the side two tires off your vehicle. Did that many a time? – No, I have punches and beadlocks, both inner and outer beadlocks. I can slam the curb at 50, it doesn’t care. – Well, I was doing it in the Pontiac Le Mans with 13 inch wheels. I don’t think they made beadlocks for those, but that was how we learned how to coner steer. – We got no inner timing, just pull the e-brake every chance you got. – Yep. Either you righted it or you ended up on the edge of the road with the two wheels that dropped off the road. Usually you’d rip the wheel or the tire right off the wheel.

 

– Well, a lot of it too is just not being stupid. Like I drove around all those stuck four wheel drive trucks and mini vans back in an ice storm in like 2011 or 2012, going up a hill in my Camaro that had a big choppy race cam and 315 drag radials. And all I did was rest my boot on the throttle. So it set at about a thousand RPMs and just take my time rather than start to go up the hill and when it started losing traction, give it more throttle. – Well, as I always like to say, the Zoom room, the Zoom meeting continues on even after the show wraps up. And that’s what we’re doing right now is wrapping up this episode of our most recent round table. Now last week, I forgot to tell you the question for our GTOP giveaway. If you don’t know what I’m talking about on the GTOP giveaway, I have a set of GTOPs on my Gladiator thanks to GTOPs and they are fantastic. If you haven’t heard already, we all went out to the fourth annual GTOP show event. And I think it was about 97 degrees out there. And we were sitting waiting for quite a long time for the trail to clear and it dawned on me, I wasn’t hot. I mean, yeah, I had the air conditioner on even with the windows down, I just wasn’t hot. It was nice. The air conditioner was doing its job very easily. And I looked up looking through the GTOPs and I didn’t feel any heat. I mean, I’m sure there was some heat but nothing that was bringing my attention to, man, it’s hot in here. My God, where is, why is it so hot from the top? Nope, none of that. So same thing that happened when my wife and I were out at EJS this year, no additional heat. Remember the GTOPs block, 99% of the UVA and UVB radiation. And I think some of that means, is the answer why it doesn’t feel hot. Now it’s up to you. I mean, I remember Todd was checking them out in the Jeep at one of the meetings and it was hot to him, but he had a sunburn.

 

So I’m not saying it’s not hot. I’m just telling you, I didn’t experience any heat coming through them. At any rate, we’re doing a giveaway.

 

So for the last four weeks, you’re supposed to listen to the Zoom meeting, the round table and listen for the question that we ask. And you take that question and your answer and head over to jeeptalkshow.com slash contact, click the little link that takes you to a form that you fill out, fill out the form completely, put in the question that you’re answering and put in your answer. And then really, as soon as next week, we may be selecting a winner for these GTOPs. And again, the GTOPs are, they require your freedom panels. So once you’ve been selected as a winner, we’ll give GTOPs your name, address, phone number, email, and all that stuff. And you and them will arrange getting your freedom tops to them. And there are loners available, so you don’t have to drive your Jeep around the topless. If it’s not big deal, having not having your freedom tops on for a week, 15 days, then you can just take them off and send them in.

 

So, and then they can ship you a box to actually ship them in. Nobody wants your freedom panels to get damaged. I know I was nervous about that one for us. And then I actually had no problems whatsoever. The hardest part was getting the box in the back of the gladiator so I could take it over to FedEx to ship it.

 

So with all that, I’d actually need to ask you the question. So what is my favorite song that Nicky G has sung on his infamous Nicky G segments? What’s my favorite song that Nicky G has sung? I’ve mentioned it several times on several episodes because he hasn’t done it since and it was just a lot of fun. And I really, really enjoyed it. It was silly, but of course it’s Nicky G. So go over to jeeptalkshow.com slash contact. There’s multiple ways that you can find to contact us there, but it’s also the way that you fill out the online form so that you can possibly win a set of,

 

I like to say modified Freedom Panels and turned into G-tops because that’s what they do. I wanna make that clear because you’re not getting a whole new set of Freedom Panels, you get yours modified. And believe me, you’re gonna love it.

 

All right, so I wanna express a heartfelt thank you to our listeners and wanna remind you that we have a great interview coming up this week and it is going to be with Adam and is that right?

 

Let me look at this. No, it’s not, it’s Natalie. Yeah, it’s Natalie with High Lift Off Road and she is also a new guest co-host for our Chick Chat episodes. So that’s coming up this Friday, just a few days from now.

 

So until next time, keep those Jeeps running strong, hit those trails with confidence and remember, it’s not just a vehicle, it’s a way of life. This has been Tony hosting the Jeep Talk Show Round Table episode and we’ll catch you on the next ride.

 

– [Announcer] Broadcasting Sense 2010.

 

– You’re my friend, you’re my new friend.