Crashnburn80's Supercharged Gladiator Mojave Build

C load in 37s?

Yes!!!! From BFGs site:

 

@memario1214 I'll take 5!

 

Yup, online tire retailers that didnt have the 37" c-rated ko2.....just started listing them about 48hrs ago.

 

And! The official tire weight is lower than the initial estimates. 64.8lbs, vs the stock 63lb 33s. With shaving about 1lb with the new wheels, net gain will be less than 1lb from stock.

 

@crashnburn80 all the online retailers have pulled the listing for the 37 c-rated BFGs. Dunno what gives....

I noticed a current $50 rebate for BFGs, so hopefully the 37s reappear after the promo.

Neverless, the SKU and MSPN are now known.

 

Have you seen the new wheels From Icon, Rebound Pro?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uciCAdLzYrs

 

Finally took the Gladiator out for its first 4 wheeling trip to Gallaghar Head Lake up Fortune Creek trail. A much shorter trail outing than our usual overnight trips, about 11 miles round trip and about 2600ft elevation gain. The JT's altimeter read 5625ft at the lake. The trail is mostly narrow slower going rocky sections ascending all the way up with various small stream crossings. It was a fun trail to break things in on. Didn't take many trail pics for whatever reason. We camped at the lake overnight, definitely missed using my RTT as bed bars have not yet been released for the JT.



On the way out I did puncture the sidewall of my 35x11.5r17 C-load AT3. I've run C-loads for most my 16 years wheeling and never punctured a sidewall. The puncture was beyond the tread protected sidewalls. Hard to say if it is just dumb luck, or the AT3 construction is not as durable as the KO2s. They were aired down to about 14-15 PSI. Interestingly my brothers Wildpeaks had a much larger gash in a similar area of unprotected sidewall, but still managed to hold air. Of course circumstances are different and that doesn't mean the Wildpeak is necessarily more durable.


There was another spot on the same wheel, where I chunked the wheel and the tire has clear abrasion marks on it, but held up in that location fine.


Of course I had a full size spare to swap. Really not an ideal area for a flat though. Nothing was level and we were on a pretty steep part of the trail. I had to backtrack a little ways to find a suitable spot to make the swap. I was still using the OEM jack (which is axle lift, not frame), which would work ok on level ground for 35s but was a bit of a challenge on an uneven slope. We had to dig out from under the tire to get enough clearance to get the new one on. Will definitely need a different solution for 37s.


What was really annoying, is the loss of a single tire caused the TPMS system to go offline. I was expecting an N/A or something from the dash readout on tire pressure for just the passenger front, while continuing to display the other 3, but that wasn't the case.

Some initial thoughts on the Gladiator off road
1) Jeeps "Off Road Pages" accessory gauge panel in the Rubicon/Mojave is extremely useful, providing real time coolant temp, oil temp, trans temp, oil pressure and battery voltage gauges on the infotainment screen as well as the tire pressure page in the center display. In my Tacoma I had used a scangauge or bluetooth phone app with an OBDII device to monitor these temps.
2) The throttle seems to be cleverly remapped in 4low, which thankfully eliminated the warp drive initiation of the supercharger which would be far less than ideal off road. Briefly tried Off Road + in 4low and the throttle is even further remapped to be slower responding (intended for rock crawling). Off Road + in 4high on the Mojave is calibrated for high speed sand.
3) Front trail cam. I liked the idea of this feature, but in use on the trail is isn't as useful as I had hoped. The fish eye view lacks the depth perception of the obstacles on the trail. It is certainly better than nothing at all of course, but while I see a rock or a ledge I cannot judge how big the rock is or how high the ledge drop is. The trail at times was dusty, and the camera washer system was a nice feature. I find this feature is way more useful for parking than trail use though, but even after using it, I'd still opt for it again.
4) On this particular trail, the longer wheel base was more of an asset as the poor break over angle didn't come into play. With the 35s and great approach angle, the truck easily went up where even some other Jeeps had struggled in a group ahead of us. And where some areas caused some off camber tilt for shorter wheelbases, or even 3 wheel scenarios the longer wheel base would keep one axle on level ground at a time greatly reducing the off camber tilt. I hit the undercarriage twice which I would feel better about with the Atec skids installed. Overall I was very pleased with how the truck performed on the trail given its still stock configuration (minus tires).
5) My current compressor is not up to filling the 35s in the heat. It overheated and shut off twice. Definitely need to get that ARB twin installed for the 37s.
6) Biggest learn, these things run very HOT. Jeep engineers had mentioned cooling was a challenge on the Gladiator, which is why it has wider grill slots that the JL. I didn't exactly help things for low speed trail use by stacking a huge intercooler in front of the radiator. Engine oil temp was often around 225 degrees, and coolant not far behind. Ambient temp was low 80s and I did usually have the AC on. I have the upgraded OEM 850w electric fan, but that doesn't seem to come on till coolant reaches about 225 degrees, which it always seemed just shy of triggering the fan cycle. When the fan did come on, it dropped coolant temp by 40 degrees in no time at all, but not so much the oil temp, which dropped maybe 6-10 degrees at best and quickly climbed back up afterward. While not really necessary, I found myself leaving my hood open on breaks to shed some heat. While it was in what seems to be the operating parameters, it was hotter than I would have liked. This wasn't even a hot wheeling trip, we were in the shade, and hill climb though consistent was less than what I normally do in non-shaded hotter areas near Manastash Ridge. So I immediately started thinking of cooling upgrades.

For cooling I already had the Cold Case performance radiator and the Mishimoto performance transmission cooler awaiting install. <-Check out all the tech specs and testing on that page Mishimoto page. The transmission cooling wasn't an issue at all as temps remained reasonable on this trip, but something I will do from previous wheeling experience where trans temps can get up there, though the JL/JT trans cooler appears to be much larger than the 2nd Gen Tacoma trans cooler.

The real hot one though was oil, and oil cooling on the 3.6 is problematic. The oil cooler is integrated with the oil filter neck inside the engines V. Obviously this won't get much airflow, and will remain pretty hot. And because the 3.6 uses a cartridge filter rather than a screw on filter, you cannot use one of the screw on plates to add external oil lines for an external cooler. And since the OEM cooler is this integrated design, it can also not be replaced with an aftermarket unit of different design.

That center stack of plates in-between the heads is the oil cooler, which is covered by the intake or supercharger.


If replacing the factory oil cooler is not an option, and adding one at the oil filter is not an option, the only thing left is a heat reducing performance aluminum heat sink oil pan. And there are not any I could find for the JL/JT 18+ 3.6. While late versions of the JK had the 3.6, the bottom housing was redesigned for the 18+ JL version and oil capacity was reduced, which certainly doesn't help temps. Ugh.

I found Pacific Performance Engineering out of California makes such oil pans, mainly for GM/Ford/Ram, but they just released some Jeep versions for the JK 3.6 and the JL 2.0. I've pinged them to see if they have a JL/JT 3.6 version in development. Of course if so, then the question is if it will fit with the Artec high clearance skid system, as there is not a lot of room below the oil pan and the skid.

Since the ECU is already jailbroken for the HP tuner reflash, another possible option is to programmatically lower the fan engagement point a little, but that doesn't seem to help the oil numbers as much. Though if the engine temps remain lower, it will help the oil temps not get so high in the first place.

There is of course hood louvers/heat reducing hoods. Which have pros and cons, but since the Mojave hood is unique to the Mojave with a unique higher cowl, all other JL/JT hoods are incompatible. And vented aluminum wheel well liners would arguably reduce heat in the engine bay vs plastic liners which are an insulator. Though I don't yet see a need to get that drastic.

I think the Mishimoto performance radiator, coupled with some fan reprograming and hopefully a performance aluminum oil pan should make a nice difference in the operating temps for wheeling.

There are definitely a few new pin strip additions to the truck, but nothing too bad.

 

Interesting, I have no idea why. BFG still lists them on their site with a buy button, but then says no-one has them available. Hopefully this is short term, as I am now down a tire.

Yes I've seen them. Innovative solution if you want a bead retention wheel that is DOT compliant, since bead locks are not. However I'm not a huge fan of having a bunch of potential leak points in my wheel though, and I'm sure it will make finding a tire installer more challenging. I typically air down to the mid-teens and have never lost a bead, so for my use they wouldn't provide any advantage. Those would be beneficial if you are airing further down, but I'm not doing anything that extreme. They are heavy too at 32lbs. Method I believe has some wheels that have a raised ribbed lip in the wheel to better lock the bead, without putting holes in the wheel or complicating the tire install/removal process, though it certainly won't lock it as well as those. For me, I'd prefer paying weight for a rock ring to protect the wheel over weight to better hold a bead. But it all depends on how you plan on using your truck and what is right for you. But I wouldn't recommend a 32lb wheel on a daily driver.

 

At present StopTech does not make performance rotors or pads for the Gladiator. Very few companies make performance stock size rotors, most are just a stock rotor design with surface treatments/slots/drilling which does not improve performance. The rotor internals need to be redesigned for better cooling performance to achieve better braking performance. StopTech is one of the few that do this with their Sport stock sized rotors. I ran them on my Tacoma as documented here.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/brake-upgrade-stoptech-rotors-trd-performance-pads.523829/

I want to replicate that setup on my Gladiator. I contacted StopTech to see if they had these products in development. Their response was that the products are in the “Proposed” state and to check back in a few months. Fingers crossed.

 

I replaced the stock paper filter with AFEs Magnum Flow Pro5R filter PN: 30-80280, which they refer to as an IRF (Inverted replacement filter) design. AFE claims an 86% airflow increase over stock, which is better than the 67% increase for the AFE's panel Pro5r filter replacement. With the intake air opening at the fender side of the air box and not directly below the filter, it would be interesting to see some flow modeling of how effective the IRF design is. I suspect the flow ratings are bench flow tests, not utilizing the air factory box. Maybe I'll ping them to see.

Since the Supercharger is making greater than 50% more power than stock, but still utilizes the factory intake box and factory paper filter, I'm hoping this will free up some more top end power. Because the supercharger uses a custom intake runner and the throttle body location is different than stock, aftermarket intakes are not a plug and play solution. This seems like the next best thing. For dusty trail use, I still use the OEM paper filter as it will do a better job of extreme dust filtration vs a high flow performance filter.



AFE Flow chart comparisons

 

Method discontinued the 313s, my order went unfulfilled. Finding a 313 in 17x8.5 5x5/5x127 +25 is now near impossible. I've located 3 domestically and a bunch in Australia, but so far no Aussie companies are willing to ship internationally. If anyone has friends down under that would be helpful.

 

That is quite the tear, really got to have the full size spare if you lose a tire deep in the trail. Nice thing is the Gladiator will fit a 37 in the stock spare location, no custom fab required.

 

Definitely making its transition from Jeep to rock crawling buggy.

 

This is interesting, a light weight aluminum replica of the OEM Rubicon bumper. However this does come straight off of China Alibaba, where you can order it directly.
https://www.extremeterrain.com/mp-c...-forged-aluminum-front-bumper-j134510-jl.html




Some Gladiator user thoughts posted here.

The reviews on the Extremeterrain site lists the following for weights:
Main Bumper without hooks or outer wings: 14.6lbs
Outer Wings: 3.6lbs each
Skidplate: 6.2lbs
Winch Plate: 22.8lbs
Hooks: 4.6lbs each
Plastic Trim Pieces: 1.6lbs
Winch Delete Plate Top: 1lbs
Misc Brackets and Hardware: 4.6lbs

 

Crash, I see an obvious solution here. Fall trip to Australia, pack light, come back heavy.