So more than a few years ago now Jason and I had a Jeep Wrangler. While fun and “interactive” to drive it was unfortunately otherwise a giant pile of crap and the most disappointing vehicle I’ve ever owned. We swore we wouldn’t get another. But… there’s just no other vehicle made the same way as a Jeep! We had been debating a Wrangler or a small truck or something else entirely until Jason remembered that hey…. Jeep makes a little truck, the Gladiator. So it’s got the same ruggedness and damage resistance as the Wrangler but with a little truck bed for our shenanigans? Sounds like we need one!
We chose the Mojave trim level because it comes with badass shocks meant for more desert running than rock crawling. Since we do a lot of desert running this meant we wouldn’t have to modify the stock suspension anytime soon. It also has a rear locker and heavy duty reinforced Dana 44 axles from the factory. Perfect! We negotiated a bed liner into the purchase deal because the bed was super scratched up. In true Jeep fashion she didn’t last a week before we started modifying things. The interior was easy, I added grab handles to the roll cage, rubber floor mats, a cell phone mount, and a footrest for Jason’s left foot because he thought it was uncomfortable. All those mods took maybe a half hour. The outside…. was a little harder.
We started with a new bumper for more clearance, the ability to mount the awesome fog lights we already owned, and a place for a winch!
The Gladiator comes stock with little rock rails along the sides so we didn’t bother buying new ones and the rear bumper is pretty good also. We did buy a little “skidplate” for the trailer hitch because that’s what everyone hits when taking these things offroad because it’s got a longer rear overhang. Easy.
We bought this rig to be lightweight and easy to take out on adventures, which meant that we really didn’t want to build another fancy camper for it like we did for our Colorado. So, we’re back to a roof top tent. Now we need a way to carry said tent. We decided on a shorter bed rack so that the tent would still be below the roof line for better aerodynamics (well, as much aero as you can get on a Jeep…).
One thing that’s always annoying on long road trips is how everything in the bed gets bashed around and worn down due to the vibrations of the vehicle moving around offroad. To mitigate that we bought a set of molle panels that bolt to the bed sides so everything can be fully secured and hopefully not move around.
Jason has always wanted a set of Method Racing gold rims but we’ve never been able to justify getting a set until now. So he finally got his “dream” wheels and the exact tires that he wanted after weeks of thorough research!
After owning a few different roof top tents we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted. We needed it to be small enough to not overhang the end of the Jeep bed and we wanted a hard shell tent because they’re much easier to set up than the ones we’ve had in the past with a soft cover that has to be zipped around. We settled on an iKamper. They’re one of the best tents you can buy with a list of well thought out features and premium materials. It took a while to ship and we had to meet a full size semi truck in the grocery store parking lot to get it, but we finally got it home and bolted to the rack!
Well, she’s all set up to go camping in the woods! Now we need to find all of our camping gear and get it all loaded for our next adventure!