10 Things I HATE About My Jeep Gladiator Truck

What's going on? Everyone, welcome back to the channel and welcome back to another video. I've had the Jeep Gladiator for a little over a month. I've almost put two thousand miles on it and I'm very excited to start this build and start modifying it. I use it even more and take it on more off-road trips, however, it's time to talk about some

things

I don't like. Overall, it's an awesome Jeep and a cool

truck

, but it definitely has some downsides, let's start first. We started talking about the

gladiator

and the

things

I don't like. Let me introduce myself.

I'm Ben from JK Gear and Gadgets. If you're new to the channel, thanks for watching, make sure you subscribe, but I've been on YouTube. videos for about two years starting with building my jku it has come a long way since then unfortunately I started out of channel halfway through the build but this has come a long way but a year ago we bought the Jeep LJ 2005. About a month ago we received the

gladiator

, so it's still pretty much available, yes it's thirty five, some mods, nothing crazy, but there are a few things I've noticed I don't like that I want to do. this video since the Jeep is still pretty new and honestly I've seen a few videos of people making videos of the things I don't like about the gladiator, honestly I think those videos are pretty cheesy what people were talking about you know ?

The Sward or Overland models have chrome trim, people talk about the taillights, how bulky they are, let's look at some real life reviews of the Jeep Gladiator and the things I don't like about it, first thing will be the steering, so, what I do? What I have noticed is that at highway speeds of 60, 70, and 80 miles per hour, the steering feels a little loose. What I mean by that is if we're not paying 100% attention to the road, I mean we should be, but naturally the Jeep. It feels a little loose and wants to travel in the left and right lane, that is mainly due to the solid front axle and suspension design.

It is so important? I don't think so, especially coming from driving others.

jeep

s I've had a lot of

jeep

s in my life Joe driving this down the street and the old LJ this feels like a dream however someone coming from a normal car or

truck

with independent front suspension will notice a bit of trouble with the steering, it's not a problem, I don't know how to explain it, it's definitely leaking fuel now, in some next videos I'll add a set of adjustable lower control arms, maybe add a little more wheel Let's see if we can adjust the steering, but there is definitely a downside to having a Jeep with a solid front axle, so everyone knows that solid front axles are stronger off road, they have their pros and cons, but the truck definitely feels a little loose on the road .

Highway speeds, is it that important? No, but it's definitely something that should be addressed by someone interested in this truck who isn't necessarily a Jeep owner. Now I'll say one thing: I'm not looking at this as a truck. I see it as an off-road Jeep. Personally I see it as a Jeep truck. I love this, it's awesome, but you know from the start that the steering could definitely be an issue for someone not used to a Jeep. number two, storage and space, the gladiator is designed very similar to the JL, which is the new Wrangler, with a very similar interior, the back doesn't have as much storage and the front doesn't either, so there's definitely a lot of opportunity in the aftermarket to add more storage and space. right off the bat for a midsize truck it's definitely lacking in storage the center console area is small we have the two cup holders there's nothing else there really no coin tray it's a little disappointing the center console has two layers we have one layer in there and another container down there, but it's still a little small.

My biggest complaint is: up here, so let's jump in the Jeep and up here, this thing is small, it's almost useless. I mean, you can see it compared to the size of my hand. They're not putting much in here, you've probably noticed by now, but so far I'm testing the high quality kit on this truck. Is incredible. Stay tuned for a full review video and I'll have another awesome discount code for you. Stay tuned now, what do we have here? The passenger seat is still very small. The glove box down here, once again, even smaller. Look, the thing is small, so up here there clearly isn't much room.

Fortunately, after the market starts to arrive, I went ahead and added a distressed handle bag right here. Honestly, it's pretty nice to have an extra storage compartment here on the front. The overall storage and space here in the front is almost a bit disappointing compared to other midsize trucks on the market. Now let's jump back. here we are ignoring the bed right now we will get to that back here it is very similar to other bosses there is enough room for children some smaller adults sure an adult will have a little problem with leg room back here but it is Just like any other GP, now there are a few things that disappointed me a little.

Everyone online was saying how great it was that we had this storage down here. Yes, it can be locked. Yes, it's a great idea, but it gets crowded. real quick so I have an air compressor under here a tow strap and a fire extinguisher and it's already full so yeah it needs to have a lockable storage tray under our back seat. It fills up very quickly, we can also fold the seats, but they don't fall down completely, so back here you can't really put much back here, from what I've noticed, when you put something back there and fold the seat, there really is no room , so you can't put the straps down there. but unfortunately there is not as much space as most other vans.

Jeep incorporated something very cool so on the back seats there are straps for the Molly panels so I bought a set of distressed storage bags designed for the Jeep JT and the Jeep JL they attach directly to the back of the seat and once again , it is a very interesting aftermarket item to increase our storage in our truck. Now in the future I will add a molybdenum top shelf in there so we can once again get more. storage bags to hold all our trash now here on the bed we have ample storage space we can throw our camping gear w

hate

ver we want if we go to a hardware store and buy all the wood we want what I did was add a storage rack of platform solutions Molly like you say, I mounted my rotor packs, a gas can here, we can mount other items there, so of course we have a bed, which is a lot more space compared to a Wrangler, the living room General storage is definitely adequate.

However, in this truck, compared to other midsize trucks on the market, storage space is definitely lacking. I'll probably catch some shit next time, but someone has to say it. Fuel efficient motorcycles are ruining my video, but that's what we need a motorcycle to deal with next. Fuel economy is horrible on this truck. I knew that before I bought it, but I didn't really want to think about it. Everyone says, "Oh, you'll get 16 to 20." miles per gallon, maybe no bones downhill with the wind at your back before you even put the 35 on, so I was lucky to get 15 to 16 miles per gallon and now at 35 I'm sitting around 15, so which is a very large edema.

Cristobal is already a truck and we get the benefits of a horrible shaped Jeep, so I didn't know what to expect. I knew I wouldn't get good gas mileage, but getting around 15 mpg is pretty bad once we upgrade. tire size even more. I'm very afraid of what's going to happen now. Most people who plan to buy a Jeep probably don't care about the fuel economy or the fuel economy or how much it costs to drive, but someone I have to say, the fuel economy on this is just horrible. Getting 14 or 15 miles per gallon is not fun, especially since my 2010 4 door Jeep Wrangler with 40 and 1 ton axles I'm getting like 13 miles per gallon, what's that like? this gets 14 or 15.

I don't get it, it definitely has adequate power, but getting 15 miles per gallon just sucks. One of the best things about the Jeep is that we can use it for trucking activities. Now we have a box and we can tow, we have our little four pin connector and we also have our 7 pin connector, we have a good trailer hitch, what are we missing? If we mean by this, do you think Jeep would offer a trailer brake controller? No, that's another big thing that I'm a little disappointed because I'm not mad that mine didn't come with it.

I don't really plan on towing anything big and if I did I would have no problem adding an aftermarket trailer brake controller, however I am really surprised that Jeep didn't even offer it from the factory as an option. I don't know why, I don't know if they plan to do it in next year's model, but I definitely find that kind of strange, it's something that I think is a downfall. The Jeep Gladiator there are people towing 6,000 trailers with these without trailer brakes. I don't really understand it, so while I may not need it and you may not need it, it's definitely a downfall for the gladiator to at least not have it as an option.

Next is a topic that is widely known, not only is it prevalent on the gladiator, it's also on the new Jael Wranglers, the auto start/stop system, this button here, I'm sure people say, oh, you can turn it off or disable it. , however you have to do it. every time you come in and turn your truck on, so let's go ahead and turn it off. I really hope it goes out right now. I'm in Drive, I put the brake on it, it doesn't do it all the time. time you calculate the load on your engine, if you have air conditioning on other electrical accessories and if the engine needs to keep running, this is a feature that is supposed to save gas and I don't know, it sucks.

My big problem is, on the one hand, it's hard for the starter motor over time and the biggest thing in my problem is the engine oil pressure, so right now, as you can see in the I/O, we have 31 psi. Let's say I don't think it's going to work right now. turns off but the problem is that when you go into that auto stop function at a stoplight our engine psi will drop to zero which means since the engines are off we don't get any oil flow into the engine , of course, once we quit. brake and we give it a little gas, the engine starts again and we slowly begin to gain oil pressure.

The problem is the fact that we are going from zero oil flow in the engine to turning it on and going, that's horrible. I would think they would add. maybe some kind of electric oil pump, but it's the same as starting your Jeep right in the morning and just getting in, driving and going 60 miles per hour. I don't see how that's good for the engine, going from zero oil flow to just go, go, go, go, can't be good for its longevity, sure it could be a way to boost those fuel economy numbers a little. Yool, but I think in the long run it will be horrible for the engine, so you have two options, one every time you get in the Jeep, deactivate it by pressing the button or with an aftermarket tuner that allows us to deactivate it completely, so stay tuned , we'll make some aftermarket adjustments and show you how to disable that feature.

With other things, I don't really want to talk about the following because I know a lot of people won't understand it and I don't want to talk too much about suspension geometry, especially when it comes to trucks, because I personally do. I don't know much when it comes to towing and payload capacities, however I do know a lot about off-roading and as far as axle resistance suspension design and geometry, this will lead to that, so the suspension rear of the gladiator was designed in a very comparative way. of the RAM four-link suspension with coil springs, so bear with me guys, I'll try to explain this as easy as possible.

What we have here are our rear control arms, we have two, we have a lower one and an upper one, now the distance between these two. It's called our link split, we have our link split here on the frame as well as the axle behind, now I'm not sure how that works as far as towing and payload capacity, however for off road use and with larger size tires, we use I really want to make sure that we have good link spacing on the axle, what that means is that the distance between the top and bottom mount needs to be very suitable for our tire size.

Now the axle spacing on the gladiator I measured is around sixinches. Personally I think it's really low, the problem is once we start adding larger size tires, as the tire rotates more pressure is put on those link stays and transferred to the frame, now the general rule of thumb when it's about larger tires and upgrades for On off road you want about a quarter of the link spacing on the axle of your tire size so when you go up to 40s a quarter of that would be 10 you would want 10 inches of link spacing on the axle, the problem arises once. you start throwing 37s or 40s at the gladiator.

I don't think the actual side link spacing is going to be enough so I foresee this being an issue in the future once people start using 37s and 40s that will create a lot of stress on the axle links or those supports that we'll talk about in a future video, especially you know, comparing it to the JK. I'll show you real quick what I'm talking about so we have our top link bracket there and the bottom one, whereas on the truck, yeah, the bottom part is out of the way, but even the top one is there, so I definitely foresee this being a problem in the future, yes, it works or is really nice and changing those numbers is actually a disaster. with our suspension geometry, our anti gear, all those things we'll talk about in the future, but that's what you guys could probably see. why I didn't want to talk about this because it's a can of worms and when it comes to towing and hauling, I'm not sure you know the design theory behind that, but for off-roading, six inches of wheelbase isn't much. especially once you start putting bigger tires on, you can probably see what I didn't want to talk about, but someone had to mention it.

I really hope we start hearing more about this topic in the future and hopefully some aftermarket companies will. Come out with some kits to increase the clearance of our axles. This video is starting to get boring. I know I know, so let's bring it to life with everyone's favorite gladiator theme. They are all-terrain socks. Oh, it's not designed to look off-road. at that break and go point, the wheelbase is too long, look at the rear overhang, yes that's all true, yes that's the downside of a gladiator, it sure isn't designed for off road use, yes no Can be used off road, yes. after a lift kit and bigger tires it will be better, however the longer the wheelbase, the braking angle and departure angle are definitely a big disadvantage for this Jeep and that is where it comes into play .

Both, is it the best off-road Jeep? No, is it the best truck? No, but is it a great Jeep truck? Yeah, after knowing we're going, maybe a three-inch lift, even a two-inch lift. Listen to 35 or 37s, this thing will work decently. the trails there is no denying that I already took it from stock, it worked pretty well I still have to wait to try the 35. I guess it will work pretty well, but honestly, it is the best off-road truck, no and when. You see those comments online, people say the breakover angle goes down and you'll never see the trails, yes the wheelbase and all that is definitely a flaw but it's the end of the world, however if you get this truck hit some gnarly trails I wouldn't recommend it because yes it sucks at offroading, you can build it ok but it will always be one of the flaws of offroading and the last two things are very simple.

I know someone else already made a video on YouTube. of this to show you one of the big design flaws, so let me turn on the accessories when we go through the screen, let's ruin it, let's start when we go through the screen right here, see how it says number to vehicle information I'm going to press up we go down to one now let me press down we go up both and of course ignore that okay we're going to go down again it's going to three down four up so these buttons are actually backwards it's extremely annoying I thought I'd get used to it.

I haven't been to the dealership yet maybe they can flash it or change these controls but right off the bat I want to say this is a new truck and having them backwards is extremely Annoying going down it's going up no big deal but it's definitely pretty annoying. Another very annoying thing is that all the security features on this, so what does this really have. I think what it's called forward collision warning. It's very, very, very sensitive. There have been Many times, out of nowhere, out of nowhere, it does BBD and slams on the brakes, it's crazy and I've talked to people online about this type of Jeep work and they're like, oh if only it would go off. than you would have in a collision, no, there are many times where there is a car over there slowing down at a traffic light, my Jeep thinks it's going to hit it, it slams on the brakes, personally, I think it's a little unsafe and soon I'm pretty.

I'm sure we'll see some kind of update or something about it because it happened to me, it happened to other people and there's something wrong with it. I'm not sure what it is, it doesn't happen all the time, but it's unexpected and random, it stops you dead in your tracks. I don't like that at all. I was actually driving to work. There is a line where we have to check our IDs and there is the guard who stands there and scans. your ID and it's probably standing, let's say it would be here, it's probably standing here.

I walk up to him to give him my ID and the Jeep thinks I'm going to hit the guy standing here so he hits the brakes and the guys are like oh what's going on and it's so embarrassing because the guy probably thought I hit the brakes. when it's not true, the Jeep thought he was going to hit the guy. I say, buddy, I'm not going to hit him. I know how to drive, so what is that head-on collision called? Ford collision. Something that warns. I don't know, it's so annoying it sucks and honestly it needs to be recalibrated or something.

And you guys bought a Jeep, do you know what I'm talking about? about fixing it please it's very annoying but that's all that's that those are the things I don't think about the gladiator so as you can see they are very finicky and almost almost all of them can be solved with some aftermarket so if you're thinking about buy a gladiator i definitely recommend it it's a great truck yeah they're expensive here we go there's another one that's expensive but expensive is relative to everyone some people might think it's impossible to own it some people might go out and buy 12 of them you know so, um, that's not really Who am I to say this is expensive or not everyone makes different, everyone gets different paychecks, so it's a great truck, it's a great Jeep and I think in the future it can be a good opportunity. -road team, so stay tuned for more videos where we start updating this cool, nothing crazy but definitely tasteful tomorrow we will have new tires, unfortunately these are not the tires that stayed there forever, they are the 35 that I stole the LJ on there and the LJ is really rocky and the Rubicon wheels and tires on this so as always guys thumbs up for this video and hit the comments and tell me what you don't like about the gladiator so I'm excited. to hear everyone talk trash about the gladiator, there's already been a lot of trash talk online, but honestly, it's a fun Jeep to drive, it's very roomy for the whole family, no, it will never be anything like this Jeep, but it is a great platform for over landing, camping, a little trail riding and maybe some technical offroading, stay tuned for more videos guys peace.