This Week In Jeep

It’s All About The EJS Concepts – Seven Concepts Brought To 2022 EJS

As you heard in several of the last episodes, we were gearing up for the big reveal of Jeep’s concept vehicles that were brought to this year’s Easter Jeep Safari in Moab Utah. Going in we had several teasers that Jeep released, giving us glimpses of what we might expect. This year Jeep brought seven custom concepts to one of the biggest Jeep events on the planet. Just like last year, the focus is all-electric, with the Magneto 2.0 taking top honors just like last year’s single-minded coverage of the original Magneto concept.

Jeep claims that the Magneto 2.0 can go from 0 to 60 mph in two seconds flat and that it can rival Tesla‘s $135,990 Model S Plaid sedan in top speed and acceleration.

With a higher-amperage propulsion system, the Magneto 2.0 is able to put out 850 pound-ft of torque and 625 horsepower, maintaining its maximum for about 10 seconds. For comparison, today’s Jeep Wranglers, claim 470 pound-feet of torque and 470 horsepower. The Magneto 2.0 concept is a part of Stellantis’ plan to introduce more electric models in the coming years. Jeep announced last year that by 2025, the company will have electric vehicles in every segment. To this end, Jeep’s parent company is set to invest $35 billion in electrification, software, and other technologies.

So… to make this gigantic investment more appealing to the shareholders, Jeep is directed to focus its usual eye-popping concepts on the electric variety. Yay. 

That said, the seven vehicles that Jeep brought do deserve some attention. 

There was the very militaristic-looking JEEP ’41 CONCEPT.

This Jeep was basically just a Wrangler 4xe, painted in olive drab and some white stenciled markings. It’s got a two-inch lift kit, and 35″ tires wrapped around paint-matched military-style wheels, sporting CJ-inspired center caps. It’s got a tan top, a winch bumper, and pretty much nothing that you can’t get right off the showroom floor right this minute. I think the only thing in question would be the paint color and stenciled graphics package. 

Despite the Grand Cherokee’s history on the trail being lackluster compared to the Wrangler, the Grand’s have held their own over the years as a high-end luxury offroader and expedition wheeler. Jeep’s Grand Cherokee Trailhawk 4xe Concept definitely looks at home in the rough. But a lot of that has to do with the slight lift, rock rails, and the 33″ BFG KM3 Mud Terrains under it as well. The wheels though,…that’s what did it for me on this one. The design of these is a home run, and the only thing they lack from being what I would consider one the best-looking Jeep wheels ever produced is a rock ring. 

“cause if you like the wheels then you shoulda put a ring on ’em” 

…ok I’ll be the first to admit, I’m no Beyonce’ but still. Rock Rings are cool. 

Now the one concept that caught my eye was “BOB”

To me, this is how the rear of the Gladiator SHOULD have been designed.

“Bob obviously comes from the “bobbed” bed on the back. Gone is the gigantic bed overhang the big-bottomed Gladiator is known to have. The only way to get a decent departure angle out of that truck is to slap some 40s under it. This marriage of a four-seater, two-door open-air Wrangler and a Gladiator is perfect. If this truck bed and rear axle geometry are what they would have brought to market, then the sales numbers would likely have been through the roof, and they’d still be working through backorders. 

The rear bed sports the spare tire with a cargo rack over that. The Jeep’s top is a stretched bimini style with the rear tails acting like limb risers almost but in reverse.

This Jeep-like all the other concepts has Mopar provided rock rails and a suite of other offroad goodies like ruggedized bumpers, recovery points, and more. This Jeep is the closest thing to an actual “Concept” out of all the rigs JEep brought. So I’ve got no complaints on this one, Although the louvers on top of the front fenders… I have to say, looks quite pointless, and seems completely out of place.

Another that deserves some attention is the BIRDCAGE CONCEPT.

This one is all JPP. Jeep Performance Parts threw everything at this Wrangler, including a special order color called Eagle Brown. Some of you may remember the Golden Eagle CJs. These were made in all sorts of colors, but one of them was brown, and it looks just like this. I bet this brown and the one from 50 years ago shares a lot of the same color codes. The Birdcage Concept has a 2-inch lift with Fox shocks and a custom front bumper with an integrated skid plate and steel support bars that we assume tie into the frame, fenders, or shock mounts, hard to say. But this is the first glimpse of a possible exo-cage option Jeep may eventually end up making. Who knows.

The fender flares have removable daytime running light covers. The back has aluminum tail lamp guards that protect the lenses from damage. The rig sits on 17-inch, five-spoke Beadlock wheels with 37-inch BFGoodrich KM 3 Mud Terrain Tires. The top of the roll cage has three, 14-inch LED light bars that sit in front of a Rhino-Rack cargo basket which they say can hold up to 600 pounds. Can your roof rack hold three Nicky G’s? 

I didn’t think so.

The last concept Jeep I’ll talk about is the most hideous thing. I mean it’s hard to describe how ugly this Jeep really is. Uh hello…Jeep? Yea, 1993 called, they want their concept ideas back. Imagine if you will, a Jurassic park YJ and a 1991 YJ Renegade had a love child and a DC comics-inspired Gladiator was the surrogate mother.  

However, it’s a marketing genius, and frankly, every Jeep dealership should have one of these eyesores tucked in the back corner. The Jeep Gladiator D-Coder Concept is the other vehicle from Jeep Performance Parts. It loads the black Gladiator pickup with over 35 pieces from the aftermarket division and Mopar. Each one of them is painted in the most hideous Maraschino Red color and has a QR code on it so that people can quickly find a component’s listing in the online catalog. This is that QR Code Gladiator we were trying to figure out the meaning of. Well played Jeep. So this year wasn’t a complete bust. Sure there was plenty to make fun of, and if you read between the lines you’ll see this as I did. Way too much virtue signaling coming from a company that has enough heritage it should know it doesn’t have to. 

Newbie Nuggets with Wendy

What’s that funny sound?

What’s that funny sound? If you have owned your jeep for any length of time this will be a common question as you jeep. Sure the newer jeeps are all nice and snug and tight but as your jeep ages and/or you wheel more, you will have sounds that happen and you have no idea what the heck it is or where it’s coming from.

We have three of those right now in our 2008 JKU. One is a high-pitched metal squeak that goes round and round with the wheel speed and can only be heard on the right side at about 10 mph when we are wheeling on narrow roads with high berms. The sound bounces off the hillside and then we can hear it with our windows down. (I know, roll up the window and turn the radio up!) We do not hear it at high speeds. Bill thinks it’s a possible bearing going out or something to do with the brake rotor or pads, so that’s on the list to try to diagnose soon. (BEFORE IT BECOMES AN ISSUE!) Another one is a constant squeaky rattle toward the back of the jeep. At first, we thought it was the swinging spare tire assembly mounted on the rear bumper so we had the bumper welded to the frame, but we still had the squeaky rattle. Then we thought it could be the  D-Rings. We replaced them with Gear America’s quiet rings with rubber spacers and although they don’t make any sound anymore, the squeaky rattle is still there. Then we thought, maybe the high lift-Jack? It’s loose and could make that metal sound so we removed it, and guess what? We still have the squeaky rattle. We have taken everything out of the jeep – EVERYTHING! In case it was a tool or something inside the jeep. NOPE, we still have the squeaky rattle. This is one of those things that we just live with and Bill says until something fails or breaks we may never know what it is.

Another very annoying sound is a “clunk” like noise that seems to be coming from the “B” pillars. Bill has taken everything off and is convinced there is nothing there that could make the noise we hear. It sounds like a plastic part. The sound goes away if you open the doors. NO, we are not going to run without the doors! Too cold, too hot, too noisy, too dusty LOL. He sprayed silicone spray on all the door seals and tightened the bolts that hold the top on. No luck. Just annoying. Sometimes you just turn up the radio.

Now, the other day we were teaching a new Jeeper and at the beginning of the training course, we have this “articulation” section where the axles flex as the jeep goes through. I am waiting back at the staging area, not in the student’s jeep, and I hear a strange POP. Almost sounded like the tires rubbing on the plastic fender wells, however, it didn’t sound like rubber. Bill also heard it from inside the jeep and felt it was coming from the back of the jeep. As the lesson progressed I could hear it several more times but it was random. Now, this is not our older jeep, this is a new 2021 Sahara that the owner had a “shop that does everything Jeep” add all kinds of upgrades to his jeep.

When Bill finished the course and they returned to our staging area, he got underneath the back end and checked everything out. No rub marks on anything, nothing loose so we continued on down the road to another section for training. We heard it POP a few more times on the dirt fire road when the terrain changed and there was articulation involved so we knew it was suspension-related. When we got to our first obstacle and I was spotting the jeep through, I heard the POP and it was definitely coming from the front end. I stopped them and looked, Guess what I found? The springs were bowed outward and not straight up like normal. I had Bill come and take a look and sure enough, he said these springs are so bowed outward that one of the coils was hitting the front axle “C” near the top ball joint as the suspension compressed and then extended. We asked the student what he actually had done to the jeep and it was a factory  MOPAR  2-1/2” lift with factory parts that the “shop that does everything Jeep” installed but failed to verify IF the springs were incorrect. We felt so bad for these people. This driver spent so much with this “shop” for all his upgrades; he was not a happy camper.

Bill was able to do some quick online checking right on the trail with forums and sure enough, there is a problem with the MOPAR lift kit with the springs bowing outward and rubbing and catching or sometimes inward and then rubbing on the frame. Can you believe that? Apparently, it’s such an issue that Daystar, Teraflex, and others make rubber spring perch replacements to correct the bowing MOPAR spring issue. Go figure! If it’s such a known issue why doesn’t MOPAR get it right? And why didn’t the “shop that does everything Jeep” get it right? But that’s for another episode.

Sometimes the rattle or noise you hear is just simply your jeep telling you that you have an impending issue, like bearings going out, or more likely something has worked its way loose. Many times you can tell by what type of sound is coming from under your Jeep, like plastic, metal, or rubber, and that tells you where to start looking. Other times it’s just a random sound and you have no idea where it’s coming from or what it might be. Start looking for shiny spots where the paint or rust is worn away. This might help narrow the search.

Now, for those not as mechanically inclined and who don’t know what to look for, you may have selected a “shop that does everything Jeep” and you should expect a level of expertise to do the job right. As a newbie, I think these are some of the hard lessons learned as to “who do you trust & who do you spend your hard-earned $$ with?”

In Episode 435 I covered several options on this topic. You have to wheel with others, get some suggestions and check out the shops. Sure with a label like “we do everything jeep” you would expect top-notch service, but check around and see if you can get recommendations from other Jeepers and check the FB pages of local jeepers and others that wheel. They may know who is good and who is not. Or, they at least think they do because that’s where they had their work done and so far, so good. Sometimes it’s just a crapshoot.

I have a feeling this new Jeeper was going to have an interesting discussion with this “shop” and try to get this fixed but he may also decide never to go back to that shop. EVER!

Josh, Tammy  & Tony,  I know you all have had that one rattle you couldn’t figure out, what was it and how long did it take you to figure it out? 

https://www.gearamerica.com/

Giveaway!

MIDLAND USA

MXT275VP4 MICROMOBILE^® BUNDLE

MXT275VP4 MicroMobile® Bundle

Must-Have Stuff Pick-of-the-Week for your Jeep!

GenRight – Vented Power Steering Pulley   $199.99

https://genright.com/products/vented-power-steering-pulley.html

I’ll actually be talking about this pulley in the next tech talk too. But until then, know that this is not just some expensive eye candy… I always chose things for this segment based on function and reputation. And we all know that big tires and tough trails will make your power steering pump work hard and get incredibly hot! Trust me I know, I’ve dang near boiled my power steering fluid! And hot power steering fluid will dramatically shorten the life of the fluid itself, but also the pump, not to mention it’s going to perform like crap. Well, there’s a solution for that. GenRight’s vented power steering pulley has been skillfully CNC machined to have 4 fan blades in the center section of the pulley to continuously push cool air across the power steer pump. This results in a substantially cooler pump that will last longer and perform better. To that end, they machined these pulleys for a 10% overdrive since most of your steering off-road is at low engine speed. This makes the steering more responsive when it matters the most. Available in 6-row Serpentine style only. Designed to fit the factory Jeep TJ (1997 – 2006) or Jeep XJ with the 4.0L engine. Available in Red or Blue anodized color. Race Proven durability at KOH 2020. 100% Made in the USA!

Links Mentioned in this Episode

NEXEN Tires USA https://www.nexentireusa.com/

Trails 411- POWERING Your Adventure https://www.youtube.com/user/backcountrydriver

The 4×4 Radio Network http://4x4radionetwork.com/

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