That things not really built for this, is it? was one of the comments we overheard before our YJ walked up Hamburger Hill (with a little prodding) on the Rubicon Trail. As the YJ reached the top of the climb our buddy replied, Nope, and the diffs are open too!
If you caught the last issue we picked up a free (at the time) Jeep and showed how to get it ready to cross the Rubicon trail and the minimum modifications we would make. Driving a near-stock Jeep certainly has its advantages, fatter pocket book, better road manners, and so on. But driving a stock Jeep over a tough trail has disadvantages other than the obvious clearance and traction problems. We were less than 100 yards into the trail when we were quickly attacked by a Rubicon know-it-all gnome who seemed to materialize out of nowhere and decided we wanted a spotter. Thankfully, we ditched him before we felt the need to go hunting. Stock Jeeps on the trail attract unwanted spotters like flies on, uh, dead animals. So once we warded off all of the redundant spotters we found that our YJ with 31s and open diffs worked really well on the Rubicon.
Surprisingly, it was the clearance that was more of an issue than the lack of traction. We hit just about everything on the underside of our Jeep. The transfer case skidplate and the exhaust took the worst beating. The skidplate ended up with several dents and is now bowed in the middle a little. The real bummer was that most of the damage to it occurred in a 10-foot section of the trail where we got stuck twice thanks to our inferior driving skills. Most of the time we could throttle the four-popper a little and the Jeep would skid and grind over whatever was in our path. We attribute this ability to our YJs light overall weight and its somewhat smooth underside.
Right or Wrong
We think we made the right decisions with the parts we chose. The Sun rocker guards proved to be invaluable. We pivoted on them, ground them over rocks and dirt, and slid on them numerous times without harming the body. Keeping the long shock hoops in the front was also a good idea. Without the sway bar the frontend would flex well. The ability to keep the tires on the ground kept the Jeep moving forward even with the open diffs. The winch and accessories were only used once to save ourselves. However, one of Jps ad-sales reps found the only high-speed section of the Rubicon and somehow managed to roll on flat ground. So we used the winch to flip him back over. We wished we had swapped out the regular battery for a dry kind. Our battery ended up spilling a little acid that ate some of the paint on the firewall and battery tray. When we returned from the trip we quickly replaced the leaky battery with an Optima blue-top deep-cycle battery. Even though its a deep-cycle it can be used for starting purposes without harming its life. The blue-top is actually a marine battery so it has extra-stainless terminals that are perfect for making connections if you have a winch and lots of other accessories.