Hurricane Season Jeep Survival Guide: How Deep Can Your Jeep Go in Flood Water?
**Jeep Talk Show: Hurricane Season, High Water Fording & When NOT to Tow with Your Jeep! (w/ Josh)** Jeepers! Tony and Josh are back with another flagship episode of the Jeep Talk Show. With hurricane season upon us, we dive deep into flood preparedness, high water fording techniques, and exactly how deep your Jeep (stock or modified) can safely go through water. We break down official and practical water fording depths for: – YJ Wrangler – TJ Wrangler – XJ Cherokee – JK / JKU – JL / JLU – JT Gladiator Plus, snorkel pros/cons, hydrolock risks, post-water maintenance, and real-world listener stories from high water crossings (some that ended with hydrolocked engines and epic recoveries). Josh also delivers a fiery **”You You”** rant on people dangerously towing massive trailers with stock/modded Wranglers that aren’t built for it. Safety first! **Timestamps:** 00:00 Opening Banter and Hurricane Season Confusion 00:31 Oregon Tsunami, Earthquakes, and Flood Concerns 01:34 Pacific Northwest Flooding and Driving Safety 04:16 Using Your Jeep for Emergency Water Crossings 05:35 Route Planning and Alternative Travel Strategies 06:55 Exploring Alternate Routes for Flooded Roads 07:40 Jeep Water Fording Depths: YJ and TJ Ratings 10:54 Jeep Towing Limits and Safety Advice 14:06 Frustration with Ignorance and YouTube Learning 15:48 High Water Fording Ratings for XJ, JK, JL 19:27 Water Depth Limits, Hydrolock Risks, and Engine Intake 23:46 Snorkel Advantages: Cool Air and Water Protection 27:32 Snorkel Origins and Performance Gains 29:03 Steve O’s High Water Mishap and Hydrolock Lesson 31:01 John Lee on Flash Floods and Safe Driving Practices 32:28 Using Lights and Landmarks to Assess Water Depth 33:05 Rick’s High Water Recovery Experiences 39:56 Kevin’s Jeep Water Crossings and Snorkel Discussion 43:13 Kevin’s Deep Water Crossing with TJ 44:29 Risks of Unmarked Water Crossings and Component Damage 48:07 Nikki Hey’s West Virginia Apology Segment 48:29 West Virginia Listener Joke 48:46 Show Wrap-up and Contact Information 50:07 Final Segment: Lumber Yard Note and Closing Whether you’re prepping for storms in Houston or just love learning Jeep capabilities, this episode is packed with practical advice, laughs, and real Jeep community stories. **Links:** – Visit us: https://jeeptalkshow.com – Contact / Submit stories: https://jeeptalkshow.com/contact – Round Table every Tuesday 7:30 PM Central Drop a comment: Have you ever forded deep water in your Jeep? What happened? 👍 Like if you’re Jeep strong 🛠️ Subscribe & hit the bell for more Jeep Talk every week 📲 Share with your Jeep group! #JeepTalkShow #JeepLife #HurricaneSeason #WaterFording #JeepWrangler #Gladiator #Offroad #FloodPrep #JoshAndAwe #Jeepers Thanks for watching and staying safe out there! See you next week. 🛻💪 Visit our website: https://jeeptalkshow.com/ Watch/Listen on Spotify https://jeeptalkshow.com/spotify Join our Discord Server: https://jeeptalkshow.com/discord Subscribe to our newsletter: https://jeeptalkshow.com/newsletter Help Support the show via Patreon: https://jeeptalkshow.com/patreon
Episode Transcript
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(Music)
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Jeepers, Tony and Josh here with you. And we’re gonna talk about hurricane season. And then we’re gonna have a
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you, you
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I got it. I finally got it right, Josh. That’ll be coming up in this episode of the Jeep talk show, the flagship episode. All right, Josh, hurricane season is coming up. I know that means nothing. That’s right. Everybody’s gonna get a chance to buy one of those new inline six engines. Are we ready? Oh no, not that kind of hurricane season. Oh, I like that. Okay. I didn’t get that. You got that one, Vami. So, but I don’t think that the hurricane season affects you at all. You’re more of a, being in Oregon, you’re more of a tsunami type person, which we’ve had some recent earthquakes. So, has there been a sort of tsunami issue in Oregon for you?
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Oh yeah, no, we get them every so often because of the subduction zone that is off the coast. In fact, there was an earthquake, I think around 3.6 that was measured yesterday or day before it was this week. But it was like six miles off shore and like 30 miles down or something like that. And it was such a small earthquake that, that although it registered, and I think that’s enough for them to be like, okay, do we need to keep an eye on the water levels and stuff like that? But there’s been several tsunami warnings issued for the Oregon coast over the last decade that I can remember just from the recent activity off the West coast. So does it affect me at all? No, I’ve got an entire mountain range between me and the Oregon coast. So I’m pretty safe as far as that goes, but you know, Pacific Northwest, we get a ton of rainfall. I was going to the next question about flooding.
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Yeah, so flooding is definitely common around here. We have, well, Portland is known as River City, as well as Bridgetown, because we have so many rivers and bridges in the metro area. And because of all the rivers and streams and all the runoff in the mountainous region that I live in, you get snow melt, you get a decent amount of rainfall, and those streams and rivers will crest rather quickly, especially if you’re getting more than, let’s say, a couple few inches of rain in an hour or over throughout the course of the day, that happens for, you know, here in the Pacific Northwest, it’ll rain for 14 days straight, you know, I had no thing. So when you get multiple inches of rain per day for days and days at a time, little streams and rivers, well, sometimes they just can’t keep up. And their banks will crest, and we get flooding all the time out in this region. Yeah, we had, I always tell people that the media lies, whether it be local or national, and several times, the local news media here, with all the tropical stuff that we get here in Southeast Texas, they will talk about flooding, turn around, don’t drown, all these things that they say, they get people out there reporting on the water, and I’m sitting here at my house, and I ain’t got no flooding, I have no risk of flooding, but here about– Right, but you get that one reporter who’s over at the corner of the McDonald’s near a plugged up rain drain, and they’re standing in three inches of water, and it is an absolute torrential downpour here, we are stuck in the middle of this lake, and they gotta over-sensationalize everything. Well, you know, somebody actually got fired, I think it was the local ABC station got fired because he was in some water above, like almost up to his short pants, and then after he reported, he stood up, because he was on his knees in the water.
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(Laughing) And he should have made sure the camera was on first. (Laughing) Come on, man. Well, it doesn’t, truth don’t sell the eyeballs, but anyway, what I was gonna say is, is that I can’t remember the name of the hurricane, but we had a hurricane out here, the hurricane didn’t affect us, but it came up the coast, and then we had training rainstorms, that tropical stuff, for days, and literally two streets away, the street was flooded, so it got that close to my house. It has never, I’ve been to this house since 97, it has never got that deep of water in this neighborhood. I mean, certain areas will fall close to the creek and stuff, but over here at my house now. So you may be surprised what you may have to do in your Jeep, now of course, if you’re at your house, and it’s not flooding, then don’t go drive around in it. Sure, it’s fun, but you don’t have to get out and be in that situation, but what if you’re in a flash flood situation, or down here you have a lot of rain, and you’re driving down I-10, and you’re going through an underpass, which they’ve dug 20 or 30 feet down,
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and now you’re trying to get home, you only know how to get home on the highway, or one of the other highways in Houston. Now, what do you do?
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I mean, obviously you stop and you wait for it to go down, but you may be in a situation where it’s raining, and raining, and raining, and the water’s coming up higher, and higher, and higher. I mean, how embarrassing is it to get your Jeep flooded out when you had the ability to go on the median, or up on the side of the overpass, and drive up there that was well above water? You may not be able to go anywhere, but it is your Jeep stuff flooded out.
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You don’t want to be the family that’s on top of your roof getting rescued while you have a Jeep in the driveway. No, you don’t. Say, “Come on, man.” You had the ample opportunity and the means, but you raise an interesting point, Tony, about knowing only one way, and that’s part of emergency preparedness that we’ve talked about for years, and if you’ve got the emergency vehicle sitting in your driveway, and honestly, if you own a Jeep, you own an emergency vehicle. You have a vehicle that is capable of getting you out of an emergency situation, almost regardless of what circumstances are present at the time. But that being said, knowing your area, knowing your surroundings, and having contingency plans, that’s what it’s all about. I mean, I think back to the years of when I was back in 2008 when the recession hit, and gas prices hit five bucks a gallon, and so I bought a motorcycle, because I was driving the Jeep every day for work, and it was costing me over $400 a month. I think one way. It was 40 miles from door to door one way, and it was a minimum of an hour and a half to two hours of traffic in the afternoon. It’s a lot of gas, dude. And so it got to the point where I had to get something else, and a motorcycle just sort of fit the bill. And so I was commuting on a motorcycle for the better part of about a year, year and a half, every single day. And on a motorcycle, especially an air-cooled bike, you learn to keep moving, and that means you find some arterial routes to get yourself from point A to point B. And that might be just an awesome little family outing. One Sunday, you go the route less traveled, and you and the family, you pack up, and maybe you find a couple of different routes to get to Grandma’s house, or to get to the high ground, or whatever it may be, and find yourself some different routes. Maybe talk with the Mrs. the night before, whatever, talk with the family the night before. Figure out, okay, this is our map, this is where we’re at. Look at Google, find out where you’re at, what’s around, and look at some different routes, because you may need to get to the grocery store. You may need to find a different route to get home from work, to rescue the family. All these sorts of things. And if there’s a flooded road, downed trees, downed power lines, you may not be able to take your standard route, and need to find these extra routes to get you to a point where you can save your family, or save yourself. Yeah, and so I’ve gone through, and well, actually, I got Grock to give me the, how deep of water that you can go through with a factory Jeep, depending on the model. So– 20 to 30 inches. Well, actually, the YJ, which is the first Wrangler,
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and it was the 90s, I don’t have the date, the years on here, but the YJ, the official rating is 20 to 24 inches, which is a lot higher than what I thought, especially for the first Wrangler.
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So you can go, now, that’s the official rating, the practical safe depth is 12 to 18 inches. So it means you can go through the deeper water, but you’re probably gonna get water inside the Jeep.
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Right. Which is gonna freak the wife out.
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It’s coming through the door! Yeah.
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It’s one of those things where fording water is a technique unto itself. And it’s akin to any other kind of off-roading situation, whether it be rock crawling, whether it be mud bogging, whether it be trail riding, whatever it may be, there’s a different type of driving parameter that you engage in. Your technique is going to be different. And water fording is very much a technique that needs to be mastered. You can’t just drive like you would normally. You can’t just wheel like you would normally. Crossing a river, you don’t know what’s underneath the water. There could be some uneven rocks, or it could be a giant pit that you’re not aware of, that could swallow the front end of your Jeep and suddenly your intake is underwater when you were just in 18 inches of water before. So lots of unknowns. And so they always say that one of the biggest tips in fording water is to walk it first if you can. If you can walk through the water and check the terrain first, well, generally, it’s gonna be safe for you to ford it with your vehicle. Now, if you get into deep water, it’s like, well, crap, it’s up past my knees and I’m starting to lose footing and I’m starting to get swept away, well, there’s a chance that your Jeep could, unfortunately, get swept away too. You reach a point of flotation, you reach a point where you just suddenly aren’t touching the ground anymore. Well, just the force of the water against the side of the Jeep. And the force of the water can absolutely force you to lose the traction and the grip that your vehicle would otherwise have. Yeah, even if you’re not floating. And if you’re fording broadside, you’re fording broadside, that all that water pressure up against the side of the Jeep, that creates a lot of force that, unfortunately, you need to overcome with traction. And if you don’t have the traction, well, you’re screwed.
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All right, so let’s move on from the YJ to the TJ. And of course, a lot of what you’ve already said, Josh, applies to this. It’s really just a difference in depth. So the TJ is 20 inches for the official rating, not 20 to 24. So the YJ actually has a deeper official rating. The practical safe depth for the TJ is 15 to 20 inches. So that’s quite a bit more for the safety, 12 to 18 for the YJ, 15 to 20 for the TJ. You know what? Everybody’s waiting for this. So let’s take a break on this discussion and switch over to
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you, you
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If you’re ready. If you’ve got something to talk about, Josh.
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Oh yeah, oh yeah, no, absolutely.
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So
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(Music)
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week’s installment of
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you, you
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Oregon is chock full of
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out here. We have so many, it’s not even funny. And I think they’re breeding them in some underground laboratory or something because it seems to be getting thicker and thicker and thicker out here. So look, we all know that Jeeps can tow. They can tow some things and they can tow certain things well enough, but Jeeps are not what I would consider a tow vehicle. And there are people out here who have their four door Jeep and they think that they can tow a large trailer.
[00:11:54:26 – 00:12:53:04]
No, look, for those who don’t know, just because you have a trailer hitch doesn’t mean that you can hook anything up to the trailer hitch that you can hook up to it. And so when I see a four door Wrangler that might have a budget boost on it, he might have some 33s on it. He’s obviously put a little bit of money into it, but just because you’ve done some suspension upgrades, doesn’t mean that your Jeep is a capable tow rig. This guy was towing a 24 foot at least travel trailer, tandem axle travel trailer behind this Jeep. Now the Jeep itself is only about what, 16, 18, maybe 20 feet longer thereabouts. The trailer plus the tongue had to have been close to 30 feet. Way more trailer than what that Jeep should have been towing. And this guy, I don’t think he knew what he was doing because he was probably going way faster than he should have been. Because down the freeway, his Jeep was doing this the entire time. And it is like, he’s gonna cause a wreck. This
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was towing this trailer, a trailer that he should not have ever had behind that Jeep. Down the freeway at speeds way faster than he should have been traveling. This is obviously somebody who doesn’t have any friends. Somebody who didn’t grow up with siblings. Somebody who has never had anybody in their life to smack them upside the head and say, “You dumb
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you shouldn’t, you can’t, you’re not supposed to do that.” So for this week’s
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you, you
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It is all of those who out there who have a Jeep and who think that just because they have a class three tow hitch on the back of their Jeep, they can
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tow any
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thing that they think they want to or can hook up to it. No, you can’t, you
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You’re gonna kill somebody out there trying to do some stupid
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So please for the love of God and all that is holy out there, if you have a Jeep, please be aware of what you’re towing, the restrictions, the length, the weight, and I mean, at least put a couple brain cells together and educate yourself on some proper towing techniques of how to tow, what to tow, when, how, all the techniques and proper instructions and all this stuff that you’re supposed to be doing when you’re hooking up anything to a trailer hitch.
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Excellent. Um, just, I remember John Cleese on “Falty Towers” and he’d be ranting and he would stop and go, it just makes me so angry.
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(Laughing) The rant reminds me of that.
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Well, look, anytime that I’m put in danger because of somebody else’s stupidity or ignorance or something, it gets under my skin a little bit because it so easily could have been avoided. Yeah, I mean, let’s spend some time on YouTube and learning a little bit about towing a trailer or the vehicle that you shouldn’t be using for what you’re trying to do. So, I mean, everybody’s stupid, everybody’s ignorant when they do something, the stupid ignorant thing is not asking a question or researching, especially these days with so much research available at our fingertips and even just from your phone. Well, look, I know a lot of people, they kind of balk or make fun of the YouTube certified, as it were, but to be honest, I would much rather be YouTube certified than being completely ignorant. Exactly. Because at least then you’ve got some level of education. And generally speaking, if you’ve got a little bit of common sense, what you get from YouTube, you can filter out the nonsense, you can gain the golden nuggets out of the education that they’re trying to impart on you, and you can filter out the BS and actually get yourself some valuable information. But to just blindly go about things and say, “Well, this looks like I can hook it up to this and that can work, okay.” I’ve seen somebody do this on a Jeep before, I can do it, yeah. So let’s jump over to our next rig, high water foraging, forwarding rig, the XJ, the Cherokee. So, and this is interesting, this is higher than what I anticipated. So the official rating for an XJ going through water is 20 to 24 inches. So this is the exact same depth of the YJ. Now we move over to the practical safe depth, and it is 15 to 20 inches, just like the TJ. So the XJ has quite a bit of depth available to it for trading through water. Now, this is probably gonna– You gotta think that the TJ and the XJ are not exactly very dissimilar on the front end as far as where the motor is in relation– The drive train is– Yeah, the drive train is essentially identical. Yeah, except for drive shaft links.
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Right, and that’s where you get into a little bit of some interesting things. However, the relation of the engine to the axle where the intake is off of the ground is pretty much about the same, give or take a couple of few inches. But so that means as you enter the water and whatnot, that intake and its relation to the surface of the water is about the same from an XJ to a TJ. Right, but I still find it interesting because you just looking at it, you wouldn’t expect, I mean, it’s a station wagon. And the other one is quite clearly a Wrangler. But if you think about it, the sides of the TJ where the door fits into it, you’ve got about a four inch lip there. That’s always fun trying to get your fat
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and your leg over that lip or forgetting it’s there when you’re getting out. That’s why they call it a tub. Yeah, exactly. So that’s kind of neat because that means you’re less likely to get water in your TJ or YJ compared to your XJ. All right, so let’s jump over to probably a more modern vehicle that most people are running still, which is the JK. And of course this isn’t just the JK, it’s the JK and the JKU. So this is interesting. The JK, the official rating is 19 to 30 inches.
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That’s substantially different.
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30 inches, okay. And the practical is 18 to 24 inches. So significantly more for the JK. Now I applaud the Jeep engineers because they have done a lot more height and clearances and a better approach and departure angle starting with the JK.
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Now this is pretty cool, the JL, JLU. The official rating is 30 to 33.6. You gotta get the 0.6 in there, 33 points. Wow, that’s a half inch. Oh. It’s a half foot. Yeah, and so the practical is up to 34 inches on some Rubicons, 24 to 30 for the practical. So quite a substantial difference. If you are in a modern day Wrangler, then you are driving around with something that you can go through a hell of a lot of water. Very deep water. And I wish I had a line on here for what’s it gonna be when you get water in the vehicle, which isn’t a major deal if you’ve done prepared for it.
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That’s the thing right there. And honestly, these numbers reflect what a stock vehicle is capable of. Now this is stock off the showroom floor without any lift modifications, any suspension modifications, without larger tires, without like a snorkel. Once you start adding in the aftermarket, these numbers start increasing dramatically. And honestly, that’s one of your biggest restrictions. Outside of flotation is going to, and of course, water intrusion is going to be sucking the water in through the intake. And that’s gonna create a condition called hydrolock. Water cannot be compressed like air can, or any other kind of gas. And some fluids can even be compressed, but water can’t be compressed. And so when that gets into your engine and those pistons try and compress that air fuel mixture, well, there’s water in there. And when it can’t compress, well, that’s when you start bending rods and blowing pistons and– It’s hydrolocks 101. You’re basically in a hydraulic. Yeah, so honestly, getting into deep water isn’t necessarily the worst thing. It’s getting into that deep water and sucking it into the engine. That’s when you end up doing severe motor damage. You end up stalling out the engine, if nothing else. And at that point, you’re quote unquote dead in the water. Oh yeah, and you don’t wanna try to restart it either. And by the way, if you’re sitting in the water nice and calm and you stop the engine or the engine stops, that water may not come in through the snorkel. It may be sucked up the tailpipe and that will give you the engine.
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Yeah, because as soon as you lose that engine pressure, there’s no longer positive pressure through the exhaust pushing out the water. It’s going to be now just static pressure and water’s gonna come right back in through because your exhaust isn’t what I would call an airtight system. I mean, sure, it’s relatively sealed, but it’s not airtight. So that water is gonna come in, it’s gonna go through your exhaust, it’s gonna go through your muffler, through the catalytic converter, all the way up. And it could even reach up past the headers if you’re in that deep of water. Right. So we’ll jump over to our final Jeep that we’re gonna be talking about and it’s the JT Gladiator.
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It’s funny, Grock actually says like yours because I was talking to it about this stuff. But anyway– It was trying to keep you happy. That’s right, oh yeah, absolutely. The official rating is 30 to 31.5. That compared to the JL, which is basically the same rig without a bed, was 30 to 33, 33.6. So this is about two inches less than that. So the practical is 24 to 30. So it’s actually about the same arena as the XJ, as some of the other ones.
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But– Why would you think that with as many similarities as there are between the JL and the JT, what would you contribute to the difference in forwarding numbers?
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The only thing that comes to mind is the JT has a bed. And if you’re gonna haul things, you wanna be able to get stuff up in the bed. So it may be overall lower simply because having the bed six feet in the air is not as easy to use it as a truck. That’s the only thing I’m gonna come up with. I think you’re onto something, but I’m gonna elaborate on that in that most trucks will have a forward bias– It has a rake clip. On their front, because as you load that bed, it’s going to balance the truck out. And so you’ve got that forward rake just a little bit. It’s not, we’re not talking 70s hot rod rake here, but it’s enough to drop that front end, that extra inch or two inches to make it a difference in variance between forwarding depth. And all that really is considering is where the intake is in relation to the ground. That intake then is sitting a couple of inches lower. And that’s what is, that water is gonna get up those couple of more inches. Well, that’s what’s gonna suck into the motor. And that’s what’s gonna make you have a no good, very bad day. Yeah. So you mentioned a snorkel earlier, and to me, it seems to be a no brainer that you put a snorkel on a Jeep, even if you don’t do water crossings. Why in the world would you wanna have a situation where you could put a snorkel on the Jeep? And then even if you didn’t do all the work about hooking up the diff breather hoses and the transmission and then you do all that work so that they’re all feeding off the snorkel. Even if you didn’t do that, you mean you could ruin a transmission, you could get a nice pudding, chocolate pudding in your differential. But if it can get you, yeah, if it can get you out of the high water and save your Jeep and your life and doesn’t destroy the engine, why don’t you do it? But there’s a lot of people that hate, absolutely hate snorkels. And they will let you know when you put a snorkel on. They’ll start quoting the same stuff I was mentioning about, oh yeah, you got a snorkel, but what else did you hook up? Did you hook up that? And it’s like, nah, they’re just trying to find a way to tell you you’re an idiot for putting a snorkel on there. Well, I guarantee you, it’s a lot easier to drain the differentials to get the banana pudding out, oh, banana pudding, the chocolate pudding out, or have the transmission rebuilt than it is to replace the engine that you’ve hydro-locked and broken things.
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Engine’s gonna be a lot more expensive. So I don’t know, Josh, are you anti-snorkel?
[00:25:18:18 – 00:28:36:08]
No, absolutely not. But a lot of people are miseducated about snorkels and they think that the only thing that a snorkel is good for is for driving your Jeep through deep water. And in fact, there are several other benefits. There are several other benefits to a snorkel, not the least of which is getting the air moving into your engine a little bit easier, and you’re actually gonna be pulling cooler air than from the stock intake, or even from what they consider a cold air intake. Or one of those aftermarket filter systems where you put the little box in the corner, you’ve got one of those high flow filters and everything like that. Those are all fine and dandy. They will move more air through the system than a stock intake will. However, you’re pulling that air from the engine compartment. I don’t know about you, but the last time you ever ran an engine, go ahead and slap your hand on the side of that block. Let me tell you, is that cool? Just on the hood. Absolutely not. It’s over 200 degrees in there. Even on the hood, right. The air temperature inside your engine compartment is in the hundreds of degrees, okay? And can actually exceed that quite a bit on hot days. Asphalt can be 160, 180 degrees on a hot day. You know, you get all that radiant heat coming up. You’re in stop and go traffic or whatever, even sitting on the trail, you’re in four low, doing two and a half miles an hour going up the logging road, okay? There’s a lot of heat coming up off the ground, nonetheless. So you get that intake up out of the engine compartment, and now you’re pulling in fresh, cool air. Yeah, yeah, okay, it’s ambient air temperature. Let’s say it’s 97 degrees that day. Okay, I’ll take 97 degree air, over 180 degree air out of the engine compartment any day of the week, and the engine was going to love it. So the cooler the air is, the more dense it is. The hotter the air is, the more moisture it contains in it, and the less dense it is. The more density you have in your air, the more efficient the engine’s gonna run, the more power you’re going to make, and the more fun you’re gonna have. So not to mention the safety aspects of water fording that a snorkel is going to give you, it’s going to help you as far as engine efficiency and performance as well. Yeah, no, it’s all like a no-brainer. And by the way, the snorkel was invented in Australia, and it was invented to get the air above all of the dirt and stuff, like if you’re on a trail in the outback, and it’s cleaner air, and then you have the cooler air, all that stuff. So I absolutely recommend putting a snorkel on your Jeep. The XJ has a snorkel, the JT has a snorkel, the TJ, no. But it’s not that expensive, you can self-install, and it’s a great safety thing to have. And absolutely hook up all the lines to everything you got. Hell, run a line into the cab so you can suck off the air, off the snorkel. It might taste funny, but there you go. It’s funny you mentioned it. So on my XJ, I’ve done a cowl induction intake modification. And so when I’m, especially in the startup period, when the idle air control valve is sort of choking the engine a little bit, it’s drawn air restriction through that.
[00:28:37:17 – 00:28:37:17]
And
[00:28:43:15 – 00:29:09:03]
you’re able to hear it inside the cab, almost as if the intake was inside the cab itself. Oh, it’s very loud. But the calendar is a good idea. I like those motor noises, turbo noises, things like that, even though I don’t have a turbo on the Jeep, but yeah, all those motor sounds, love it. That’s a great idea. And it’s higher than the air box too. So it’s not a bad idea. And you’re getting actual cooler air than what’s in the engine compartment.
[00:29:09:03 – 00:29:12:04]
(Music)
[00:29:12:04 – 00:29:18:09]
right, let’s start with Steve O. Steve O, have you ever done any high water treading?
[00:29:19:12 – 00:29:24:01]
Yes, and I lost an engine to it. Oh, that’s right, I forgot about that. Hydro lock.
[00:29:25:18 – 00:29:33:09]
Yeah, was in the badlands and hit a hole way too deep that I did not realize was that deep.
[00:29:34:11 – 00:30:09:27]
I went side by side through towards the tooth and tore through there and dug it up, so. Well, that’s kind of the danger of high water, right? Because you can’t see the bottom, you don’t know how deep it is. Well, part of the– That’s an excuse. Part of the motor is a foot and a half lower than yours. Well, the problem was it was when I was being pulled out that it happened because I was so far on the passenger side, I didn’t want to rip the fender off. So I steered passenger, which made the Jeep move further into the water instead of trying to ride that side of the hill out, which was where the air box is. So it was after I got out that I started having problems.
[00:30:12:07 – 00:30:17:25]
Other than not going into the water that you couldn’t tell how deep it was, would you have done anything different?
[00:30:19:18 – 00:30:21:01]
Yeah, I would have let Dan go first.
[00:30:23:21 – 00:30:59:09]
(Laughing) No, it’s one of those things that was just wasn’t, it did not look as deep as it was and it was just one of those, should have checked first, go around, so. Yeah, walked it, I guess, that’s what you– But even, I did my XJ, we had flooding up here in the past and it’s kind of funny because the roads are blocked off and people were just sitting in the stand and then I just drive right through. But I also make sure that everything around here is curbs. I made sure to get one side up on the curbs, right? So that way I could navigate through a little better just in case, so. But it isn’t necessarily a thing sometimes when we get some pretty good flooding out here.
[00:31:01:20 – 00:31:06:01]
All right, how about you, John Lee, have you been through any high water with your Jeep or any Jeep?
[00:31:07:10 – 00:31:08:25]
Turnaround, don’t drown.
[00:31:10:10 – 00:31:37:28]
I don’t really mess with water. I think that one of the things that we do have here in Central Texas is flash flooding, which I know you’ve got it in other places as well, but that’s one of our biggest things. And sometimes it’s not how deep the water is, how fast it’s moving. And if you can see it, if you can see it currants in there, there’s too much to go in it, right? So, I mean, it doesn’t take much, but like a foot of water, if that, in a high current can start moving you around. So I typically don’t play with it. Like if I come up on something,
[00:31:39:24 – 00:32:06:04]
that’s blocking the way I will try my best to find another way around, if at all possible. If you can’t, that’s where our lights can actually be a big help if it’s at night, to try to use them to see how deep it is, even that can’t be exactly accurate. But yeah, typically I take it slow if I have to go. I take it very slow and don’t try to have a bow wake. (Laughs) About a wave of trying to, just trying to inch my way through there.
[00:32:07:23 – 00:33:10:16]
But yeah, I typically try to avoid it at all costs if I can’t. So I’ve seen so many, I mean, we’ve had school buses swept away here. Oh, sure, yeah. Well, any flat surface, especially a large flat surface, water can push quite a bit, exert quite a bit of pressure. I just thought of it. You were talking about lights and how deep things are. I’ve never gone through any high water in the gladiator since I’ve got the Gatekeeper knuckle pods. I’ve got some lights that are way low. I guess it would probably be, if I was in about a foot of water, I probably could, those lights probably would be underwater. It would be interesting to see if that would make any difference in being able to tell how deep the water is. I usually just look at the median, especially if I’m driving by it every day. And if I see the median and see how far up the water is on the median, I have a good idea of how deep the water is. All right, how about you, Rick? Have you ever gone through high water with your Jeep? You forgot Kevin.
[00:33:11:19 – 00:33:13:05]
No, Rick didn’t go through, he went under.
[00:33:14:21 – 00:33:16:13]
(Laughing) Submarine commander.
[00:33:19:03 – 00:33:47:15]
Yeah, I’ve been in some high water, yeah. High water and high water. Yeah, I went in some high water, yeah. Went to breakfast one day and next thing I know I’m up to my grab handles and water. But yeah, lessons learned, like Steve O’Sed is check it out before you do it, for sure. You know, me, I’m not gonna be the first one down there, that’s for sure, I’ll go a second.
[00:33:48:20 – 00:34:23:13]
Or if it’s one of those situations where you just gotta do, where you feel like you got across, then I’m wading across first and for me it really wasn’t the water that was so bad, it was the cleanup of all the sand and gravel afterwards for probably a month, five weeks afterwards. Every time I would hit a bump, sand and gravel would rain down out of my dash under, on my feet and in the full board and to the point to where finally I just,
[00:34:24:24 – 00:34:57:22]
I decided, well, you know, the only way this is ever gonna stop, I’ve just gotta take this whole thing apart and clean all that out of there and that’s what I did. I stripped it all the way, I stripped the interior all the way down and, you know. Of course I had water and all of my fluids except for my engine oil. I did not have water in my engine oil, which was, you know, kind of interesting. But anybody, you know, anybody wants to see the video, the Adventures of Micro Jeep on YouTube and you can watch the whole thing.
[00:34:58:23 – 00:35:26:25]
I’ve got a couple different videos up there, one of the actual, from my dash. I had my phone mounted on the dash and I wish I’d had, we had just went to another Jeep trip like the week before so I pulled the micro disc out of my dash cam or I would have had a whole lot more video or some really good video, especially the recovery. You know, the recovery with it. You know, I just heard a story,
[00:35:28:06 – 00:36:31:02]
I don’t even remember who I was talking to, but I just heard a story about a guy that, their vehicle got, you know, it was right up to, it was right up to the breather box and if they could have got their vehicle out of the water then they probably would have been okay but their winch was underwater and it would not work underwater. Whatever winch it was that they had underwater. You know, and I’ve got the Harbor Freight Badlands, you know, 12,000, I mean, I credit that winch for saving my Jeep because while I was sitting there literally up to the grab handles underwater, I was thinking the whole time, in my brain I could picture every little pin hole, every little place where water was squirting into to the motor and the transmission and everywhere, you know, and I’m thinking, oh man, this is just sitting here ruining my Jeep and by the time the engine died, when the water got up in the dash, I thought, well, looks like I’m gonna be doing an LS swap a lot sooner than I thought.
[00:36:32:08 – 00:40:03:18]
What’s amazing is how your battery didn’t short out to drive that winch. Now the battery, you know, all of that worked fine, you know, I mean, it was pretty amazing that that Jeep did, you know, everything that we went through that day, you know, we got it up, you know, it was, I wanna say it was 65, 75 yards to get it back to the sand bar where everybody else was on high ground. And once we got it back there, and I’m using my winch and then, you know, there’s another guy that’s using his winch and he’s letting his cable well out as far as it would go. He came as far as he dared to get, you know, he was kind of scared, I don’t know why, but he was kind of scared to get all the way out there. So I let my cable all the way out and we were winching, you know, both of our, you know, we was winching myself to him. And by the time of doing that several times, you know, it run my battery down. And so we got it up there and we pulled the spark plugs, had some, you know, I was pretty new to Jeep and still. So I was learning as, you know, I’m learning the whole, you know, the whole time I’m learning what’s going on. And one of the guys there, one of my good Jeep buddies, he’s like, he’s like, oh, he started pulling spark plugs and then we cycled the starter and squirted water out of one and two. And then we put it all back together, wouldn’t start, wouldn’t start. And then it dawned on us, you know, we pretty much run the battery down from all the winching. So we hooked up to another Jeep, we went there for about 15 minutes. And then when I hit that starter, man, that thing roared. I mean, it shot water like out the, out the exhaust way, you know, just like a cannon out the back of that thing. And it was pretty crazy, but you know, drove the thing home 45 minutes, drove it home from that. And then, and then the little, the little Jeep impressed me so much. I just like, you know, I just can’t get rid of this thing. This is, you know, just, you know, I don’t know, just, I think that, that event probably connected me more to that Jeep than, than, you know, I’d want to admit, but, you know, just kind of got a soft spot now for that Jeep. So. And I don’t think anybody here has a snorkel and you’re doing quite a bit of work to your Jeep. Is a snorkel in the plans? Well, I usually, when that, when all that happened, I had a snorkel. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yep. Had a snorkel. And, and, and probably gave me a little bit of a, you know, false sense of security cause, cause up till then, we’d been doing the high water trail down there in, in Arkansas and I don’t know how many river crossings I’d done by that time. And you know, but the thing was, as I was always following other Jeeps, even though, you know, water, I mean, there’s a couple of times where water got up to the top of my headlights, you know, and, and just pushed right through it. And, you know, everything was okay, but, you know, that, that day I just got, there was a washout that we, we weren’t aware of. And boy, I hit that, that washout and just, just went down in the water and it didn’t pop back up on the other side. Like I was hoping it would. Well, I’m glad you were able to get through there and maintain the Jeep. I’m impressed that you’re able to drive it home because that’s a, that’s a lot of water. All right. Kevin, Kevin’s muted. Hopefully he can jump in here and Kevin, have you gone through some, some high water in your Jeep?
[00:40:04:23 – 00:40:12:04]
I have, I’ve done some crossings and some trail through passes that collect water.
[00:40:14:07 – 00:40:22:20]
The main one that comes to mind is I had a river crossing where when I dropped in, I actually lawn darted my bull bar on my front bumper into the bottom of the crossing.
[00:40:24:00 – 00:40:28:08]
And if anyone isn’t familiar, a bull bar is like a short,
[00:40:30:09 – 00:40:42:07]
what’s the big long ones? The, Stingers? Stingers, yeah. So it’s like a short stinger. It only comes about halfway up my grill and I stuck it into the dirt in the bottom of the crossing
[00:40:43:11 – 00:40:45:07]
and had to push through to get it out.
[00:40:46:18 – 00:41:02:04]
So I would say the water was probably about three, three and a half feet. It was, you know, at my, I’m on 37s on a TJ with a four inch lift and it was at my door seals as I was crossing. So when I stuck the motor in, I stuck it fairly deep.
[00:41:03:27 – 00:41:21:03]
And then the trail came up after I crossed, I took around the band and went through another crossing where water was above the door seal on my side, but luckily my air intake box is on the passenger side and that side was higher. So I didn’t have to deal with any of that.
[00:41:22:07 – 00:41:54:24]
I have been one of the, I’ll say local, cause it’s about three hours away. Or the local parks has a “that has bought more than a few JKs cause people have hit it.” And it’s about a four foot deep hole and people don’t realize it, even though there’s a sign there. And we’ve pulled people out of that, then crossed them motors where the air box was dry when we pulled them out. But when they shut the motor off, water came up the exhaust. So that’s something you do have to worry about.
[00:41:57:17 – 00:42:39:04]
And then something I experienced this past weekend, I went and tubed on the Guadalupe. So I was down in John’s neck of the woods, a little south of him in New Braun’s Fools. And we got about a half inch of rain one night, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but the float from the day before to the day after the rain was a completely different float in the river. So a half inch of rain will make a huge difference on flow like John was talking about earlier, for the current that can make a difference. So that’s something you really got to consider. Like if you’re doing this, like trying to get out of somewhere, a half inch of rain actually does make a huge difference in the flow of water.
[00:42:41:05 – 00:43:14:17]
Well, it’s really not a half inch of rain. It’s all the water, that half inch everywhere it’s falling. And especially if it collects in a lower area. Yeah, it’s the accumulation of that half inch of rain everywhere. Yeah, it’s a good thing for people to keep in mind whenever you’re out running around and you go, well, this doesn’t flood. Well, it can, it just depends on how saturated the ground is and how much it rained various places. Especially those flash floods that can occur. So now what Jeep are you talking about, Kevin? What Jeep did you do this in?
[00:43:15:26 – 00:43:21:05]
I was in my TJ on the stuff that I was doing, which is on a four inch lift on 37s.
[00:43:22:13 – 00:43:25:06]
And so my Jeep sits fairly high,
[00:43:26:24 – 00:43:34:13]
I would say because of the TJ platform, you don’t have to be as tall as I am in a JK or a JL
[00:43:35:13 – 00:43:36:23]
for 37s. Right.
[00:43:37:27 – 00:43:40:13]
And I’m on stock actuals, so they’re still fairly narrow.
[00:43:41:29 – 00:43:50:09]
So I do sit higher to be able to fit that. And when I stuck the bull bar in the dirt, I would say that water was probably
[00:43:52:22 – 00:43:54:08]
about halfway up my hood
[00:43:55:20 – 00:43:59:03]
with me facing down into the water. Scary, that’s scary.
[00:44:00:21 – 00:44:11:12]
So, and when I pulled into it, where I dropped in, like I’d watched a few other people go through and I was like, well, where we’re at, it doesn’t look like that bad. And the banks had all been like barely the,
[00:44:13:09 – 00:44:24:17]
the angle of entrance didn’t look that bad. So where I was at, I was like, well, it’s probably pretty similar. And it was not, it was almost a dead drop. Like I legitimately long darted the front end into the ground.
[00:44:26:21 – 00:44:38:02]
The ground, it dropped out in front of you. That’s the danger of going through water, especially if you don’t have any kind of markers or anything that you can kind of tell. Roger, have you ever done any high water crossing?
[00:44:39:13 – 00:45:03:11]
We did some stuff, I was like four years ago, we were out in Moab when it was the rainy season. And we were down on a white river trail or white rim trail. And there was a couple of spots where the trail had flooded over and the first one we came to where it looked pretty deep, but I hit it a little faster and I should have just basically turned my engine bay red.
[00:45:04:19 – 00:45:24:10]
And then we got to the next one and I decided it would be a better idea to go out there with the stick and poke and broad, see how deep it really was and come to find out out there all the ground so fricking hard that, you know, I always really had to do is just crawl through it. It had been fine, but never got into anything really super, super deep, I guess.
[00:45:26:12 – 00:45:59:01]
Very good. That was probably the only maybe a foot and a half, two feet deep. Yep, very good. Does, do you guys kind of keep up with what your, you’re like your maximum of depth you can be before it’s gonna come into the doors? It sounds like Kevin didn’t care. I think Rick may not care after experiencing it, but I always kind of like to know what the distance between the ground and the bottom of my Jeep is. And I figure if I keep it in water, that is no deeper than that. I shouldn’t worry about getting the carpet wet.
[00:46:00:06 – 00:46:05:24]
Well, I know my door seals are, I would say roughly three feet. They’re about the same height as my waist.
[00:46:06:28 – 00:46:12:07]
So I know that’s, you know, I’m six foot. So roughly my waist.
[00:46:13:09 – 00:46:19:03]
When I was watching the people that were going through it in front of me, they were also in TJs of very similar builds.
[00:46:20:08 – 00:46:51:17]
Where I went into that water and I long darted was just a bad entrance. Everybody else went in and I wasn’t that, I was like 10 feet to the right of where they were dropping in and where I looked in, it looked completely the same above the water. It just wasn’t. Yeah, well, luck of the draw or not, or unlucky luck of the draw. All right, guys. Yeah, soon. All right, guys, thank you a lot. Before we jump out of here, did you have anything you wanted to add about why you shouldn’t go through high water or screw it? Go for it.
[00:46:53:02 – 00:47:00:04]
I would like to say that there are a lot of people that think because they have a tall Jeep or a tall truck, they don’t have to worry about it. And that is untrue.
[00:47:01:05 – 00:47:25:21]
Just because your vehicle is tall or sits high and the water’s not gonna hit the body, doesn’t mean it won’t hit the wheels and tires and not still move with it. False entity. Flow is completely different than running through still water. And I think you’re also, when it comes to going through water, like what I learned that time we were going through it is you’re almost always better off to go through it slow. Go through it slow and not make a wake.
[00:47:26:23 – 00:47:32:12]
Well, the other thing I would add in there is regardless of the, you make it through just fine with no problems,
[00:47:33:18 – 00:48:00:02]
you’re gonna have some things you need to check out after you do so, especially if you didn’t have your axle differential vent tubes high enough, if you have some sort of leaks, whatever like you, you’re gonna need to go ahead and do things like, drain your diff fluid and stuff like that, depending on how deep it was obviously. So even if you make it through it fine, when you do go through water like that, maintenance headaches will follow.
[00:48:01:27 – 00:48:06:26]
Yeah, and I think quite often too, the alternator can go out on you, depending on how much water you
[00:48:07:26 – 00:48:12:23]
From the mind of Nicki G From the mind of Nicki G
[00:48:12:23 – 00:48:21:20]
this is Nicky G and last week I made a joke about West Virginia people and I like to apologize, but I’m not.
[00:48:23:09 – 00:48:30:12]
How was I supposed to know that the only guy with internet access in West Virginia was listening to the show? Go figure.
[00:48:32:05 – 00:48:47:05]
That’s not what I’m calling. I’m calling to tell you that somebody broke into my house. Yeah, they stole a dozen eggs and they left a pot of boiling water. Yeah, police believe it was poachers. All right, boys and girls.
[00:48:48:20 – 00:48:53:13]
I’m laughing. That’s all that matters. I’ll chat to you later. Have a good one. Bye. Tell me I got a
[00:48:53:13 – 00:49:06:03]
All right, Josh, sadly, that’s all the time we have for today. I hope that you guys know about how to contact us. Let us know what you think about Josh being back in the wonderful segment that he’s doing. I’m gonna mess it up.
[00:49:06:03 – 00:49:07:03]
you, you
[00:49:07:03 – 00:49:30:09]
Oh, I got it. Hey, you got it. Hey. People are enjoying that. I told you we’d be getting comments about it. The dog one. Oh, I got some good ones lined up. Yeah, the duck one. I got some good ones lined up for in the future. Yeah, the duck one was well received. It’s sad because it seems like people hate the ducks, which I don’t hate them. We need to bring back the rats. We need to bring back the rats, Tony. Yeah, the you rat
[00:49:30:09 – 00:50:01:12]
type thing. That was hilarious. All right, so just go over to jeeptalkshow.com slash contact to reach out. Let us know what you think about the segment, what you think about Josh being back. Remember, we do a round table every Tuesday, 7.30 p.m. central time. Again, go over to jeeptalkshow.com slash contact. And remember, you can join us again next week for another episode here on our flagship episode. Josh, thanks a lot. Got any parting words for our viewers? Nope, just stay tuned and I will see
[00:50:03:05 – 00:50:05:02]
You’re my friend, you’re my new friend.
[00:50:05:02 – 00:50:11:26]
All right, Josh, let’s get to what everybody is the new viewers here, okay.
[00:50:14:21 – 00:50:30:25]
Sorry, I just pulled into the lumber yard. I need to back this trailer into a spot and then I’m gonna need to go in and check in and get my order pulled and stuff like that. Once I get checked in and they start pulling the order,
[00:50:32:20 – 00:50:41:02]
then I can sit back in the Jeep or in the truck and we can finish a conversation.