Table of contents for October 2020 in Four Wheeler

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR KEY AUTOMOTIVE EXPERTS As we went to press with this edition of RPM, the world was still dealing with the pandemic called COVID-19, aka coronavirus. Like you, we at Four Wheeler had to modify our norm in many ways. We had severe disappointment over the cancellation of the annual Easter Jeep Safari in Moab, and found ourselves doing this thing called “squats” to avoid the Freshman 15 from working at home with 40 loaves of banana bread as our rotating cubicle mate. Automakers were also affected by the lockdown, switching from mass production of vehicles to producing life-saving equipment, like ventilators and PPE equipment. Since life became different, RPM is also temporarily different for the next few issues. Rather than report on the industry’s happenings since there…

“It was green with a tan interior,” James Mallios recalled as he described his first off-road experiences in the passenger seat of his dad’s Series 1 Land Rover Discovery. “Dad went to Land Rover rallies and we would wheel with Land Rover guys all day.” The young James couldn’t get enough of the trails and found even more enjoyment riding along in the Disco’s rear jump seats. Let’s fast-forward to the first four-by he could call his own: a ’98 Ford Ranger. “I couldn’t kill it; the truck would not die!” said James of the stone-stock Ranger he explored the backwoods of eastern West Virginia in during his free time in college. But he wanted something more than the Ranger could offer. Enter a ’14 Ram 1500 and an increase…

There’s an enigmatic allure to Baja California, Mexico. It’s another world—one that is stunning and largely untouched by development, but also one where you’re no longer in the safe, squishy confines of the U.S. and instead in an area where emergency services are not merely minutes away. Baja has somehow survived the onslaught of urbanization and industrialization and remains a paradise for those who make the journey. When most Americans hear “Baja,” their minds jump to thoughts of race trucks. But as every racer knows: Baja has so much more to offer. The thin peninsula stretches down into the Pacific Ocean, offering some of the most incredible and beautiful undeveloped coastlines in the entire world. Baja supports just over three million people—most of which can be found in the northern…

“THIS JEEP WILL NEVER LEAVE MY FAMILY WHILE I’M ALIVE.”-ADRIAN HOLMES “If you’re asking about my first overlander, that’s it,” said Adrian Holmes, referencing his old ’00 GMC Sierra. “The eight-foot bed had enough space for a futon mattress… it fit right between the wheelwells.” The truck had a camper top and a footlocker of gear, and carried Adrian and his wife all over Colorado, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and other remote places. But that’s not the vehicle that kindled his off-road fire. Adrian told a cliffhanger of a story, taking us back to the summer of 1998. The location was northern New Mexico where he worked at Philmont Scout Ranch, a 100,000-acre wilderness area where Boy Scouts go to trek across the backcountry for multiple weeks at…

DRIPPY WRANGLER Q I have ’94 Jeep YJ with a straight-six and an automatic transmission. The automatic has its own cooler and fan on the wheelwell, and I am running an electric fan on the radiator. I did not have any overheating problems with the stock radiator, but the old radiator has sprung several leaks and I am looking to buy a new or rebuilt one. Any recommendations for the best radiator for the money for my application would be greatly appreciated. Are the aluminum ones really worth the extra money? JASON C. VIA EMAIL A We’ve never been huge fans of the plastic tank/aluminum core radiators that seem to be in all newer vehicles these days, and this is likely the same type of radiator that’s under the hood…

LIFTED GLADIATOR Engineers at ICON Vehicle Dynamics have everything you need to lift your ’20-up Jeep Gladiator. The company’s 2.5-inch suspension system is said to increase wheel travel by 33 percent in the front and 23 percent in the rear and is also said to make room for up to 35-inch tires. The system includes dual-rate front coil springs, triple-rate rear coil springs, Compression Damping Control (CDC) Valve shocks, along with front and rear links. ICON says it put its Gladiator suspension system through more than 1,000 miles of off-road testing to verify its robustness. INFO: ICON Vehicle Dynamics, 951/689-4266, iconvehicledynamics.com IMPROVED COOLER It’s said to keep ice for longer than the outgoing model, along with a decrease in weight and an increase in interior volume. The Yeti Roadie 24…

Winter driving is a popular topic, especially among truck enthusiasts. Truck manufacturers like to talk about capability and toughness whenever they can. But it’s one thing to successfully manage a trip to the grocery store in a snowstorm. It’s quite a different challenge to take a road trip over 6,000 miles to the shores of the Arctic Ocean and back again in the dead of winter. Yeah, We Really Did That The 2020 Alcan 5000 Winter Rally left Seattle on February 26, bound for the village of Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada. Tuk, as it’s called, lies about 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle, on the shores of the Beaufort Sea. At 69 degrees, 26 minutes north latitude, Tuk is as far north as you can drive in Canada. Past…

When Nissan launched the not-quite-HD XD in 2016, the company thought it had the right solution; a tweener of trucks that would hit the sweet spot of more-than-a-½-ton but stay clear of the true ¾-ton class. With three cab configurations, two bed lengths, and even an optional Cummins 5.0L turbodiesel V-8 engine, not everyone understood the purpose of the Titan XD. Was it a heavy ½-ton or a less-capable ¾-ton? Nissan had a hard time convincing people in either camp of where the Titan XD fit in. Where the Titan XD did fit in was in the categories of comfort, solid build quality, and value. For the owners that took a chance on the XD, the plus-sized Titan was the perfect truck. Unfortunately, there were not enough of these hand…

Big tires under your 4x4 are cool. Trust us, the bigger the better—assuming you don’t break axleshafts or roll over in a turn. Still, big tires under a 4x4 make it necessary to carry a big honkin’ spare tire just in case you get a flat. Storing that big tire can be a pain in the you-know-what. Generally, there are a few options when it comes to carrying a spare. Most OEMs seem to like to tuck a tire under the back of the 4x4. That’s great until either your spare gets damaged by a rock or you can’t get your spare out from under the truck when you need it. That’s no good. Another option is to put the spare on a roof rack, but that’s bad for two…

TELLURIDE MEMORIES Thanks for bringing back some fond memories with your February editorial (Firing Order, Feb. ’19). I, too, participated in a Telluride Rotary 4x4 Tour back in 1991. It was the summer before my senior year of high school when I saw an advertisement for the event. Since I lived in Montrose, which is not far from the event, I decided I wanted to go. I called up my buddy Todd and he said he was in. With both of us being 18 years old, we barely met the age requirement! When the weekend finally came around we loaded up my stock ’77 FJ40 riding on big-for-the-time 32-inch BFG mudders and hit the road for a weekend of camping and wheeling with “adults.” We were definitely the youngest ones…

“The only reason I got this truck in the first place was to tow my Toyota race truck around,” explained Matt Swithenbank. His thesis statement for the Ford evolved into wanting to have a truck that he could take anywhere and do anything with. Whether the task was hard-core snow wheeling in northern California, towing his trailer, journeying across Utah or the Baja Peninsula, or chasing desert races, the pickup had to be ready. “I originally traded my ’00 4Runner for it when it was only a mostly stock ’94 F-250 IDI turbodiesel with the E40D transmission.” At the time, the truck ran around with a Dana 50 Twin-Traction Beam front suspension, a four-inch lift, and 35-inch tires. “Within the first year of owning the truck I was having issues…

The Ford F-150 Raptor pickup feels like a long-running staple, but there have only been two generations of them. The original was introduced for the ’10 model year, and lasted through the ’14 model year before being replaced by the second-generation model for the ’17 model year. Both are hugely upgraded F-150s with awesome suspension modifications, muscular flared fenders, and big-horsepower engines for bashing around off-road, Baja-style at high speeds. So, what are the differences between the first- and second-generation Ford F-150 Raptors? Plenty. For the sake of clarity, we’ll contrast a ’14 Raptor (the final first-generation model year) with a ’20 Ford F-150 Raptor, the latest second-generation model year. Many of the changes are F-150–specific rather than Raptor-specific, basically meaning that the biggest contributors to Raptor changes between the…

Your 4x4’s brake system is more important than the engine. The engine will make it go, but the brakes are what make it stop. A poorly functioning engine will just make it go slower, but poorly functioning brakes will make it dangerous. No shortcuts are acceptable when you’re dealing with your 4x4’s brake system. Replacing the brake pads, shoes, rotors, and drums is what the typical brake job entails. Swapping out the consumable brake components is a normal ritual that becomes so familiar it is easy to pull out all the tools needed before the job even begins. However, it’s not until the tires come off and you start digging in that you get a good sense of the mess you’re dealing with. There are a number of gremlins that…

It was like swimming upstream into a flood. The flow of new Jeep JT Gladiator parts coming toward us while we walked the aisles of the 2019 SEMA Show was a steady stream of upgrades, accessories, and must-haves for anyone planning a custom ’20 Jeep Gladiator build. There are plenty of great new parts, and to list them all would take far too long, so we’ll save that for later and examine them in specific categories. Here, we have narrowed ’em down to 10 of our favorites. ADVANCE ADAPTERS ATLAS It’s just what the doctor ordered for your ’20 Jeep JT Gladiator. Advance Adapters now offers its Atlas Transfer Case for the new pickup. The gear-driven Atlas is a direct replacement for the factory transfer case, includes a new adapter…

Joining the end of one piece of tubing to another is known as notching, or coping, the tube. It’s all based on angles that are determined by where you are placing the tube. Notches range from a true 90-degree cope (forming a T joint) and on down from there. Note that copes where the small angle is less than about 20 degrees are slightly awkward since the two pieces of tubing approach parallel. There are several ways to notch tubing, and if you want to do much fabrication, you’d better get good at doing one, if not all, of them. Here are some tips and methods we usually use to add a notch, or cope, to steel structural tubing when we build rollcages, bumpers, shock towers, frame crossmembers, roof racks,…