Before I start, I should tell all of the Picture lovers out there that I have none.....yet, camera got trashed on the trip down, trying to recover the SD Card in the poor thing.
I started on a beautiful Colorado Rocky Mountain Morning, we were headed for a hike in Arapaho National Forest just outside of Empire,CO. Last time I was on this hike I was with a friend who in all his wisdom brought an Audi A4 to make it to the trail head, we never made it that day, so I, in my infinite wisdom want to take my Patriot 5 Spd Manual 4x4 2.4L NON-Trail Rated jeep up what on the map appears to be an unimproved dirt road, not a high clearance trail that would rip through most stock trucks and SUV's, but this is a Jeep...... Right?
My first mistake was probably the amount of weight I was taking up. It wasn't until I got home and flipped open the Manual and saw that Max GVW (gross vehicle weight) was 4520 pounds, and that the max useful load of the Pat is 925 lbs. Thats people, baggage, and fuel. I had 5 people in the Pat, me 6' 4" 200 lbs my bro 180, my friend J 175, and two girls, we'll say they avg. 300 lbs just in case one of them reads this thread
That's, conservatively, 900 lbs. Don't forget the 5 10-15 lb bags we're all carrying for the 11 mile hike up to the summit of Bard Peak. Conservatively I'll say the girls had light bags and maybe we're at 930 lbs. of total cargo, oh yeah, and I had about an 1/8 of a tank of fuel, so probably 10 lbs. Now, it doesn't take a very intelligent person to derive from this equation I'm over loaded, but stlll............. It's a JEEPepper:
The very First turn going up the road "trail" in my words, I kill it, stalled...... great. Ok, evac time, I'll call it a Chinese fire drill without letting anyone back in the car. So everyone's out and my bro is spotting me, it's about a 30% grade with 10-14 in. groves and boulders scattered in quite possibly the worst places possible, any way, lets do it, I put her in 4x4 pop it into 1st and ......... wow, up she went, the Pat made it just fine without an extra 700 lbs. of weight! Thank God, all I needed was to have four of the closest friends of mine giving me hell for an hour and a half back to Denver about how my Jeep couldn't "get it up."
From this point on, the road gets better, worse, and so bad that I had a hard time believing anything but a truck with an 8 in. lift could make it up to the trail head. We'll, let me tell you the best decision I made was going about 4 miles into the forest and parking it about 500 feet from the trail head, because the last leg was by far the worst, and the little Pat defiantly didn't have the clearance, even with just a single person in the car.
So, I HIKE it up to the trail head and guess what, two Ford F-150's with lifts were sitting at the head. To make a long story short, I had the low fuel light turn on as soon as I started the Pat for the way down, kind of pee'd a little when I saw that, because I don't know where the fuel line in the tank actually sucks the fuel out of the tank, and I'm going to be pointed down hill at a 30-45% grade most of the trip down, I'm praying very much to myself that the fuel line is drawn from the front of the tank where the fuel is going to be for the entire ride down. If anyone who is still reading knows where the fuel is drawn from the tank I would like to know, but my guess as of now is it's in the front, because I made it down without running out of fuel.
To conclude my adventure, I will advise anyone who is considering purchasing the MOPAR molded mud flaps (the more expensive ones) to take them off before you do any "off-road" runs, because my flaps currently feel like a cheese grater due to the numerous amount of boulders that caught the inside edge of them after rolling over them with my all terrain tires, they're a good idea, but sound horrible after they catch a boulder or two, and my rear bumper is a bit loose now, probably because the flaps are attached directly to the bumper in the wheel well. Anyway .........
I've learned that five people, 900 and something pounds, a Jeep that without 930 lbs. of weight will have an 8in. clearance can in fact take five large people, bags, and enough fuel to get you up and down a trail that's reserved for higher clearance vehicles, and all of this without bottoming out one time :smiley_thumbs_up: I've concluded that for the money, this Jeep Patriot is capable of doing things not even the people of jeep thought us (the owners) would do to this car.
I've pushed this thing passed it's design limitations, not only in weight, but quite possibly in terrain and even max axle weight and distribution, for this I must give the all mightily and well deserved :notworthy: to the designers of the little, yet capable Jeep Patriot. Now if only they would put a low range/transfer case in the Manual I probably wouldn't have stalled it 3 times going up some of those steeper slopes. It's still a new car, they have time to work out the details.
I started on a beautiful Colorado Rocky Mountain Morning, we were headed for a hike in Arapaho National Forest just outside of Empire,CO. Last time I was on this hike I was with a friend who in all his wisdom brought an Audi A4 to make it to the trail head, we never made it that day, so I, in my infinite wisdom want to take my Patriot 5 Spd Manual 4x4 2.4L NON-Trail Rated jeep up what on the map appears to be an unimproved dirt road, not a high clearance trail that would rip through most stock trucks and SUV's, but this is a Jeep...... Right?
My first mistake was probably the amount of weight I was taking up. It wasn't until I got home and flipped open the Manual and saw that Max GVW (gross vehicle weight) was 4520 pounds, and that the max useful load of the Pat is 925 lbs. Thats people, baggage, and fuel. I had 5 people in the Pat, me 6' 4" 200 lbs my bro 180, my friend J 175, and two girls, we'll say they avg. 300 lbs just in case one of them reads this thread
That's, conservatively, 900 lbs. Don't forget the 5 10-15 lb bags we're all carrying for the 11 mile hike up to the summit of Bard Peak. Conservatively I'll say the girls had light bags and maybe we're at 930 lbs. of total cargo, oh yeah, and I had about an 1/8 of a tank of fuel, so probably 10 lbs. Now, it doesn't take a very intelligent person to derive from this equation I'm over loaded, but stlll............. It's a JEEP
epper:The very First turn going up the road "trail" in my words, I kill it, stalled...... great. Ok, evac time, I'll call it a Chinese fire drill without letting anyone back in the car. So everyone's out and my bro is spotting me, it's about a 30% grade with 10-14 in. groves and boulders scattered in quite possibly the worst places possible, any way, lets do it, I put her in 4x4 pop it into 1st and ......... wow, up she went, the Pat made it just fine without an extra 700 lbs. of weight! Thank God, all I needed was to have four of the closest friends of mine giving me hell for an hour and a half back to Denver about how my Jeep couldn't "get it up."
From this point on, the road gets better, worse, and so bad that I had a hard time believing anything but a truck with an 8 in. lift could make it up to the trail head. We'll, let me tell you the best decision I made was going about 4 miles into the forest and parking it about 500 feet from the trail head, because the last leg was by far the worst, and the little Pat defiantly didn't have the clearance, even with just a single person in the car.
So, I HIKE it up to the trail head and guess what, two Ford F-150's with lifts were sitting at the head. To make a long story short, I had the low fuel light turn on as soon as I started the Pat for the way down, kind of pee'd a little when I saw that, because I don't know where the fuel line in the tank actually sucks the fuel out of the tank, and I'm going to be pointed down hill at a 30-45% grade most of the trip down, I'm praying very much to myself that the fuel line is drawn from the front of the tank where the fuel is going to be for the entire ride down. If anyone who is still reading knows where the fuel is drawn from the tank I would like to know, but my guess as of now is it's in the front, because I made it down without running out of fuel.
To conclude my adventure, I will advise anyone who is considering purchasing the MOPAR molded mud flaps (the more expensive ones) to take them off before you do any "off-road" runs, because my flaps currently feel like a cheese grater due to the numerous amount of boulders that caught the inside edge of them after rolling over them with my all terrain tires, they're a good idea, but sound horrible after they catch a boulder or two, and my rear bumper is a bit loose now, probably because the flaps are attached directly to the bumper in the wheel well. Anyway .........
I've learned that five people, 900 and something pounds, a Jeep that without 930 lbs. of weight will have an 8in. clearance can in fact take five large people, bags, and enough fuel to get you up and down a trail that's reserved for higher clearance vehicles, and all of this without bottoming out one time :smiley_thumbs_up: I've concluded that for the money, this Jeep Patriot is capable of doing things not even the people of jeep thought us (the owners) would do to this car.
I've pushed this thing passed it's design limitations, not only in weight, but quite possibly in terrain and even max axle weight and distribution, for this I must give the all mightily and well deserved :notworthy: to the designers of the little, yet capable Jeep Patriot. Now if only they would put a low range/transfer case in the Manual I probably wouldn't have stalled it 3 times going up some of those steeper slopes. It's still a new car, they have time to work out the details.
