Why JEEP?
Wife and I seem to see more Jeeps as toads than anything else. Is there something special about the Jeep as a toad?
Forum Discussion
1. Light weight. Our 1999 2-door, soft-top Wrangler 4-cyl weighs about 3300 pounds. This is with extra roll bars, off-road bumpers, winch, rock sliders under the doors, and some underbody protection.
2. Truly versatile. Amazingly so, in fact. You can mutate a Jeep - even an old Jeep - into practically any type of vehicle. Gives the word "convertible" an entirely new meaning. You can go from hard top to soft top to no top to half-a-top. You can go from daily driver to oversized rock crawler. Mine has 33" tires and is "lifted" (raised for more clearance) but I also have standard wheels and tires on it; I just swap 'em out when I need to.
3. I tow mine with a $79 Harbor Freight tow bar. The bumper on my Jeep is an offroad bumper securely attached to the frame so I had a shop weld the bar attachments to the front of the bumper. Between the lifted Jeep and the standard ball hitch on the motor home I have a straight shot. We use a brake-buddy.
4. Reasonable fuel mileage. I get about 21mpg in mine. Not great but not terrible either.
5. Narrow width. This is an advantage on mountain trils but it's also, oddly enough, a big advantage as a towed vehicle because it stays within the footprint of our RV.
6. Every state lets us drive on the road with it. Unlike ATVs.
7. Standarized parts. And after-market parts that has to be experienced to be believed.
8. A decent heater. I was tooling around in some sand dunes one cool fall afternoon and met a couple with a "sand rail" who were loading their vehicle onto its trailer and going home. It got too cold for her and she had stopped having fun. I just turned my heater up and poured another cup of coffee from my thermos.
9. The 13-year-old girl in our family thinks it's "cool" and when I pick her up from her middle school she waves at her friends. In the Kia Optima she hides from them. :P
WDR
2. Truly versatile. Amazingly so, in fact. You can mutate a Jeep - even an old Jeep - into practically any type of vehicle. Gives the word "convertible" an entirely new meaning. You can go from hard top to soft top to no top to half-a-top. You can go from daily driver to oversized rock crawler. Mine has 33" tires and is "lifted" (raised for more clearance) but I also have standard wheels and tires on it; I just swap 'em out when I need to.
3. I tow mine with a $79 Harbor Freight tow bar. The bumper on my Jeep is an offroad bumper securely attached to the frame so I had a shop weld the bar attachments to the front of the bumper. Between the lifted Jeep and the standard ball hitch on the motor home I have a straight shot. We use a brake-buddy.
4. Reasonable fuel mileage. I get about 21mpg in mine. Not great but not terrible either.
5. Narrow width. This is an advantage on mountain trils but it's also, oddly enough, a big advantage as a towed vehicle because it stays within the footprint of our RV.
6. Every state lets us drive on the road with it. Unlike ATVs.
7. Standarized parts. And after-market parts that has to be experienced to be believed.
8. A decent heater. I was tooling around in some sand dunes one cool fall afternoon and met a couple with a "sand rail" who were loading their vehicle onto its trailer and going home. It got too cold for her and she had stopped having fun. I just turned my heater up and poured another cup of coffee from my thermos.
9. The 13-year-old girl in our family thinks it's "cool" and when I pick her up from her middle school she waves at her friends. In the Kia Optima she hides from them. :P
WDR
