Interesting chain of events there. I just got back from a week overlanding (Kentucky Adventure Trail) in 20 degree temps. I slept inside on the right while my fridge and gear were on the left. I fit just fine. What was bothering me was having to put the starlink up on the roof to get a good signal. Also I have traction boards, but no place to mount them, same with rotopax.
The gear that "lives" in my sleeping area gets stuffed under the Jeep at night in water proof plastic bins.
I only get 13mpg (37x13.5 tires) and 4.88 gears. I never go past 72mph so I wonder what the MPG hit would be. The Pioneer seems to be pretty low profile.
But now I'm thinking about ditching the solar idea and using a DC-DC charger for the ecoflow. Since I drive most of every day I'm out, charging will be more reliable than trying to use solar. Maybe I don't need a rack if I can solve the star link issue.
Agree, our gear sleeps outside while we sleep in the jeep. We have waterproof totes, so nothing gets wet.
Like you, I also have 37 inch tires, but kept the 4.10 gears and manual transmission so still get great mileage. I swapped the gears in my sons Gladiator to 5.38 a couple of months ago to improved towing, and his mpg declined in the range of your mpg. Since I can do the gear swap myself, it’s not a lot of money, and I’ve thought about the swap in my jeep, but want to keep my mpg at 19.
we use a Bluetti power supply to power things when we are camping and just charge it with the jeep while driving. Like you, I thought about solar on the jeep (we have solar on our motorhome for boondocking), but the Bluetti has done the trick for the jeep so no need. When I was thinking about solar, I was going to use smaller panels and attach them to the inside of the jeep using aimed through the rear windows. I would lose some performance through the window, but it would have been worth testing the performance for low cost.
