Decision time: 4 Runner, 4 door Wrangler or FJC
- Thread starter The Swiss
- Start date
Milehi explorer
Observer
Excellent choice, I have 25k miles on my 07 Unlimited. I average 17-18mpg in mixed driving and get 20mpg on road trips between CO and IL.
oh, and you can take the top down!
oh, and you can take the top down!
SeaRubi
Explorer
This is kind of a long post, but I thought it would be worth adding to this thread as many will find it looking for comparison information on JK's as they try to decide if it's a fit for them.
Our JK:
-------
2008 Wrangler X Unlimited:
- 6 speed NSG370 manual transmission
- 17" Moab rims, 32" all-terrains
- Heavy duty suspension package (sits same height, clearance as Rubi)
- D44 rear / D30 front with 3.73 gears
- Rear locker (same as rubi)
- Front electronic swaybar disconnect (same as rubi)
On-road:
--------
We just completed a 3,000 mile drive from Seattle to NY, towing a small u-haul trailer, with a 7 year old in the back-seat, wife and I up front, a 75lb dog, and 2 cats stacked inside car carriers. Basically, our entire household inside a Jeep for a cross-country drive.
Hitting 75 up great divide pass in 4th gear and 5000 RPM taught me to enjoy flogging the living crap out of the JK's V6. We returned 13.6mpg doing 70-80 all the way up the divide, towing, and with the gas pedal floored in 4th-6th. For the rest of the trip, we averaged around 15~17, depending on speeds and terrain. On a desert / expo style trip with camping gear and all of us, we averaged 19mpg.
Interior space is incredible. The ability to fold the 60% or 40% flat is a great addition to the JK. We were able to carry a 45qt cooler, the cats, and a bunch of other misc. items in the rear cargo area, all tied down. The 40% section was perfect for my daughter and her booster seat, and the 60% section folded down great for the dog and his bed. On off-road trips we run the same way, leaving the entire rear cargo area available for gear. Over my LJ Rubicon, the JK Unlimited has far more interior space - I'm shocked at how much you can stack and cram into the various nooks and crannies.
Noise with the hard-top was not an issue, at all. We could speak comfortably with our daughter while on the highway, while doing speeds between 70-90. Listening to the radio could be done at normal volumes. The 1/8" mini-stereo jack on the front of the base stereo was nice for plugging in the iPod. Talking on the phone is not an issue at all. I will admit that our X has the mall terrains on it and 3.73 gearing, keeping the revs a bit lower. However, I don't think it would be that much worse with tame muds' like the BFG's that come stock. I'm planning on upgrading at some point to KM2's, purportedly a quiet tire over highways. I admit it's not as quiet as our Jaguar. But who cares? Noise with the hard-top is a non-issue in a JK. Put swampers on a 4-Runner or your Land Rover and get back to me on your interior noise
Comfort: the JK is so much more comfortable and practical over my prior LJ Rubicon. 4-doors, electric windows / electric locks, and an air-conditioner that works very well. Jeep has made great strides with the JK in terms of day-to-day livability. So much so, I have a hard time thinking of it as a Wrangler.
Off-road:
----------
Off-road experiences have been few.
In the rocks I'm disappointed in the 2.7:1 low range of the base model. I expected this. With 3.73 gears and the 6sp manual, 1st/lo isn't nearly low enough. In the middle of a very technical obstacle in huge rocks, where tire placement is key to keeping body panels out of harms way, I found myself slipping the clutch too often to retain control and be able to crawl. The Rubicon's 4:1 with the 6-sp was nearly perfect in retrospect.
In "overland" type terrain, the 2.7:1 really shines. With a loaded vehicle on very rough roads (basically just basalt and lava flows that have been beaten down into a "road") the 2.7:1 made things feel pretty comfortable and cruised along in 5th and 6th gear quite well, making a clutch out to 2nd-4th to get over anything interesting very easy. the extra gearing compensated well for the altitude and extra weight with the jeep loaded down. In 4-Hi the altitude and roughness of the road was a bit much for the V6. Shifting between 1st - 3rd isn't nearly as comfortable as shifting between 4th-6th in lo-range, so I kept it in lo for the most part.
Pretending to be a rally driver on the same rough roads was eye opening. In 4-Hi the electronic stabilization program kept the tail-end planted where it belonged. Chucking the Jeep into loose turns at 50+ mph resulted in very predictable handling. the ABS system worked very well at speed - the V6 seems to wake up when you demand the most of it. Keeping the revs north of 3500 RPM was a lot of fun :roost: I'm convinced I could do some pretty serious damage in an amateur rally race if this thing had a supercharger on the V6.
The swaybar disconnect works well enough, but has an annoying feature that attempts to reconnect it as soon as speeds go above 15mph. On very rough roads this can be annoying - it doesn't appear to reconnect while you're under way when the terrain is bad, but the light keeps blinking. I don't know if this is "bad" for it or not, but we went 3 days with blinking swaybar light and it seemed to re-engage fine once we hit pavement to get back home.
Electronics: I think the traction control system works spectacularly well. In lo-range, the "brake lock differential", as it's marketed, seems to hook-up pretty quickly - certainly enough for slick conditions.
Planned upgrades:
------------------
An Atlas II is high on my list as a first modification. The new 4 speed that features 2:1, 2.7:1, 1:1, and then 5:1 - this would be perfect for an overland style vehicle. With the ability to shift the front and rear axles independently, this would give me the ability to leave the front axle disengaged and to run the rear axle at 2:1 while off-road. For longer distances over rough roads I think this would be perfect. The 5:1 is plenty of oomph to compensate for 3.73 or 4.10 gears when tackling technical obstacles with the locker.
Auxiliary gastank. The loneranger, mnade in Australia, looks like a great unit. I'm not sure about getting one over here, though. They have an 18 gallon tank which would nearly double the range; made to fit the JK unlimited and come with a nice skid plate to protect the tank. These are not being shipped from inside the US, as far as I know. Maybe there will be a domestic option not too far in the future.
Front axle: I'm going to run a few years on the stock D30 front axle. As funds allow, a factory D44 with the rubi locker will be installed in its place. As long as it's under warranty and I have the stock tires, I'm just going to flog it.
All in all, we love the new Jeep and are looking forward to many more trips in it.
Our JK:
-------
2008 Wrangler X Unlimited:
- 6 speed NSG370 manual transmission
- 17" Moab rims, 32" all-terrains
- Heavy duty suspension package (sits same height, clearance as Rubi)
- D44 rear / D30 front with 3.73 gears
- Rear locker (same as rubi)
- Front electronic swaybar disconnect (same as rubi)
On-road:
--------
We just completed a 3,000 mile drive from Seattle to NY, towing a small u-haul trailer, with a 7 year old in the back-seat, wife and I up front, a 75lb dog, and 2 cats stacked inside car carriers. Basically, our entire household inside a Jeep for a cross-country drive.
Hitting 75 up great divide pass in 4th gear and 5000 RPM taught me to enjoy flogging the living crap out of the JK's V6. We returned 13.6mpg doing 70-80 all the way up the divide, towing, and with the gas pedal floored in 4th-6th. For the rest of the trip, we averaged around 15~17, depending on speeds and terrain. On a desert / expo style trip with camping gear and all of us, we averaged 19mpg.
Interior space is incredible. The ability to fold the 60% or 40% flat is a great addition to the JK. We were able to carry a 45qt cooler, the cats, and a bunch of other misc. items in the rear cargo area, all tied down. The 40% section was perfect for my daughter and her booster seat, and the 60% section folded down great for the dog and his bed. On off-road trips we run the same way, leaving the entire rear cargo area available for gear. Over my LJ Rubicon, the JK Unlimited has far more interior space - I'm shocked at how much you can stack and cram into the various nooks and crannies.
Noise with the hard-top was not an issue, at all. We could speak comfortably with our daughter while on the highway, while doing speeds between 70-90. Listening to the radio could be done at normal volumes. The 1/8" mini-stereo jack on the front of the base stereo was nice for plugging in the iPod. Talking on the phone is not an issue at all. I will admit that our X has the mall terrains on it and 3.73 gearing, keeping the revs a bit lower. However, I don't think it would be that much worse with tame muds' like the BFG's that come stock. I'm planning on upgrading at some point to KM2's, purportedly a quiet tire over highways. I admit it's not as quiet as our Jaguar. But who cares? Noise with the hard-top is a non-issue in a JK. Put swampers on a 4-Runner or your Land Rover and get back to me on your interior noise
Comfort: the JK is so much more comfortable and practical over my prior LJ Rubicon. 4-doors, electric windows / electric locks, and an air-conditioner that works very well. Jeep has made great strides with the JK in terms of day-to-day livability. So much so, I have a hard time thinking of it as a Wrangler.
Off-road:
----------
Off-road experiences have been few.
In the rocks I'm disappointed in the 2.7:1 low range of the base model. I expected this. With 3.73 gears and the 6sp manual, 1st/lo isn't nearly low enough. In the middle of a very technical obstacle in huge rocks, where tire placement is key to keeping body panels out of harms way, I found myself slipping the clutch too often to retain control and be able to crawl. The Rubicon's 4:1 with the 6-sp was nearly perfect in retrospect.
In "overland" type terrain, the 2.7:1 really shines. With a loaded vehicle on very rough roads (basically just basalt and lava flows that have been beaten down into a "road") the 2.7:1 made things feel pretty comfortable and cruised along in 5th and 6th gear quite well, making a clutch out to 2nd-4th to get over anything interesting very easy. the extra gearing compensated well for the altitude and extra weight with the jeep loaded down. In 4-Hi the altitude and roughness of the road was a bit much for the V6. Shifting between 1st - 3rd isn't nearly as comfortable as shifting between 4th-6th in lo-range, so I kept it in lo for the most part.
Pretending to be a rally driver on the same rough roads was eye opening. In 4-Hi the electronic stabilization program kept the tail-end planted where it belonged. Chucking the Jeep into loose turns at 50+ mph resulted in very predictable handling. the ABS system worked very well at speed - the V6 seems to wake up when you demand the most of it. Keeping the revs north of 3500 RPM was a lot of fun :roost: I'm convinced I could do some pretty serious damage in an amateur rally race if this thing had a supercharger on the V6.
The swaybar disconnect works well enough, but has an annoying feature that attempts to reconnect it as soon as speeds go above 15mph. On very rough roads this can be annoying - it doesn't appear to reconnect while you're under way when the terrain is bad, but the light keeps blinking. I don't know if this is "bad" for it or not, but we went 3 days with blinking swaybar light and it seemed to re-engage fine once we hit pavement to get back home.
Electronics: I think the traction control system works spectacularly well. In lo-range, the "brake lock differential", as it's marketed, seems to hook-up pretty quickly - certainly enough for slick conditions.
Planned upgrades:
------------------
An Atlas II is high on my list as a first modification. The new 4 speed that features 2:1, 2.7:1, 1:1, and then 5:1 - this would be perfect for an overland style vehicle. With the ability to shift the front and rear axles independently, this would give me the ability to leave the front axle disengaged and to run the rear axle at 2:1 while off-road. For longer distances over rough roads I think this would be perfect. The 5:1 is plenty of oomph to compensate for 3.73 or 4.10 gears when tackling technical obstacles with the locker.
Auxiliary gastank. The loneranger, mnade in Australia, looks like a great unit. I'm not sure about getting one over here, though. They have an 18 gallon tank which would nearly double the range; made to fit the JK unlimited and come with a nice skid plate to protect the tank. These are not being shipped from inside the US, as far as I know. Maybe there will be a domestic option not too far in the future.
Front axle: I'm going to run a few years on the stock D30 front axle. As funds allow, a factory D44 with the rubi locker will be installed in its place. As long as it's under warranty and I have the stock tires, I'm just going to flog it.
All in all, we love the new Jeep and are looking forward to many more trips in it.