During Overland Expo 2021, our friends from Blue Ridge Overland Gear filmed a walk-around tour of Lola, our 2019 Jeep Wrangler JL Rubicon. Check out the video tour of the build, and shout-out to our pals at BROG for the great video.
TrailRax Pak Rax are one of the most innovative and useful additions you can get for a Jeep Wrangler - they afford the opportunity to store cargo and gear on the outside of the rear windows with a modular rack and frame. The opportunities for storage are nearly endless, with options to mount everything from recovery boards to Rotopax water tanks and storage boxes.
Bringing a US-made vehicle to Europe can be an awesome way to explore and travel, but if you plan to register your vehicle in a foreign country, you need to be prepared to make modifications in order to make the vehicle comply with safety laws in that country. Today we’re documenting what it took to modify our 2019 Jeep JL Wrangler to European spec - specifically to pass the Ministry of Transportation (MOT) inspection process in the United Kingdom. I couldn’t possibly hope to capture every modification needed for every vehicle, so this is really aimed at those of you with Jeep JL Wranglers that are US spec.
Alright ladies, let’s have a safe space here to talk about the business. That being the business of peeing in the woods.
We’ve come a long way since the ol’ squat and find a non-poison ivy leaf to wipe with. Thanks to some modern day inventions, peeing in the woods as a lady has never been easier, more sanitary, or more eco-friendly.
Let me preface this whole thing by saying I’m not an expert — there are people who professionally ship vehicles to Europe regularly and are probably better positioned to assist with specific questions about your shipping. But there is also a dire lack of information on this topic on the internet, so I’m trying to fill that void by providing my experience on shipping my 2019 Jeep Wrangler JL overland build to the United Kingdom.
Off-road vehicles take plenty of abuse – our paint has marring and scratches from tree limbs, rocks, and other trail debris; our undercarriage is rusty and scuffed from the unfortunate encounters with rocks; and there’s no part of the Jeep that has avoided a nice crust of mud. For that reason, we invest in body armor, skid plates, and any number of protective accessories to try and limit the damage and costly repairs that accompany off-road driving.
If you have ever gone camping with us, you know that we’re really big on food. Specifically, we’re big on eating well at camp. Not that eating well means we have to eat glutenous, high-calorie meals — eating well refers to our desire to make our camp kitchen an extension of our at home kitchen.
We love to travel - after all, that’s one of the things that we enjoy most about overlanding! A chance to explore new places, meet new people, gather new experiences, and expand our horizons. A few months ago we were approached with an opportunity to temporarily move to the United Kingdom, and we jumped at the chance. Few travel experiences can relate to the broadening that comes with actually living in a foreign country.
Almost two years ago, we had our friends at Bull Run 4x4 install the first lift kit on our Jeep Wrangler JL Rubicon. At the time, we were just starting to dabble with the concept of overlanding, and it was limited to a rooftop tent and the odd weekend trip. We hadn’t upgraded to heavy custom drawer systems, a winch, full auxiliary power system, or any of the other goodies yet, so the Jeep was relatively lightweight (or closer to stock weight).
The more gear we add to the Jeep, the more we loose a precious commodity - visibility. Organizing and taking up all the available space in our overland Jeep usually comes at the cost of reduced visibility, specifically out of the rear view mirror.
Jeeps are not known for their acoustics or audio. Even the upgraded Alpine sound system available in a Jeep Wrangler leaves something to be desired. Yet music is such a key component to all of our adventures. We have a “Jeep Cruise” playlist that has been the soundtrack to hundreds of off-road miles. So it’s a shame knowing that the quality of that audio experience has always been a bit…. lacking.
As you probably have already discovered, there’s not much you cannot buy on amazon.com these days. It is almost a game to see what sort of curveball request you can lookup Amazon and I’ve learned to not be surprised when that oddity can be delivered in 2 days or less.
Adding a 12V auxiliary battery setup to the Jeep was never a question of “should we” - it was always a question of “where should we?” The problem that comes up is that these batteries can be large and bulky, so placement in your overland rig can be tricky. In this post, we’ll walk you step-by-step through installing a 12V power system into a Jeep Wrangler JL using Kick Ass Products USA’s 170ah AGM slim battery and their DCDC charger with MPPT controller. These instructions also outline how to build a module to hold everything that is compatible with the Goose Gear drawers that many of us regard as a “must have” overland accessory. Feel free to modify and adapt these directions for your own setup, and send us a link or some pictures to your build.
We all started somewhere, and that somewhere probably involved hauling bags of ice, a mediocre cooler, and carrying several dozen spare AA batteries in a ziplock bag (…”which of these are the good ones?”). And then you saw it — either at your campsite or on the Internet — you saw someone who pulled out their electric fridge, popped an ice cold beverage, flipped a switch for some extra lighting, and voila. Now here you are… ready to join the big leagues by incorporating an auxiliary electrical system into your vehicle to power your fridge, electronics, camp kitchen, or whatever. The world of 12V in-vehicle power is complex and a little intimidating, so buckle up, grab that ice cold beverage, and let’s dig into how we solved our electrical woes with the help of Kick Ass Products USA.
I don’t enjoy writing critical reviews. I try to see the best in everyone and everything, and that extends to businesses that produce products designed to make my life more enjoyable. Unfortunately, sometimes a product doesn’t live up to the expectations, and it’d be irresponsible for me not to talk about it. So that’s what we’re going to do — break down the good and bad of the PLB-40 battery system from Dometic, and explain why it wasn’t a good fit for us.
We recently added some Goose Gear drawers to our Jeep Wrangler JL overland build, and immediately found need to organizer the organization. The drawers that come from Goose Gear are nice and spacious, but that can be a double edged sword. On the one hand, it means we can cram a lot of goodies in there. But at the same time, it can quickly turn into a mess of junk without good organization inside those drawers. Here are some hacks and DIY tips we’ve used to get our setup clean and tidy.
Anyone who has ever gone car camping learns how much gear is needed to make a trip survivable. And if you want to go from survivable to enjoyable…well that takes more gear. Overlanders, who often traverse rough terrain with additional gear considerations quickly understands every nook and cranny that can be used to pack rat equipment.
Last year I had a chance to meet Brad Self from Hi-Vis Overland at the Blue Ridge Overland Gear Rooftop Tent Rally. Brad and I instantly bonded, and it wasn’t over our shared love of overlanding and adventure… but because he has an orange Jeep decked out for adventure. I love seeing other orange Jeeps, and other overland equipped orange Jeeps are one of the rarest breeds.
When I needed a heavy-duty and self-installed roof rack for my 2019 Jeep JL Wrangler, I turned to a Detroit-based company called Maximus-3. The product I got from them turned out to be fantastic, and I’ve been a fan of theirs ever since.
Debating the best performance driving light is like debating politics. Everyone has an opinion, everyone knows their opinion is the correct one, and no one wants to stop talking long enough to consider something else. Knowing that, I’m not going to try and claim these are the best performance lights on the market, nor am I going to try and compare these lights to other options on the market. Instead, I’ll offer a preview of my experience with these lights, as well as some instructions for installing them into a Jeep JL.
We recently joined John from Fury Training Concepts and Dean from East Coast Overland Adventures for a weekend expedition to hunt for fall foliage in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia. The trip, which was limited to 10 vehicles, as organized and sold through Blue Ridge Overland Gear — if you are interested in doing a trip like this, keep an eye on their website for future offerings.
This season, we’ve taken our Jeep to the beach, covered it in ocean spray, galloped through more mud holes than I could ever possibly count, ridden in deep sand and slop, and obtained our fair share of “trail marks” from overgrowth on the trail. The side of the Jeep has a number of deep “pinstripes” down the paint, including one hearty claw mark on the hood from a time I pulled over into a tree to clear the trail.
I am constantly annoyed by “reviews” posted by people who have been using a piece of equipment for about 13 milliseconds. You’re not qualified to review something unless you’ve really put it through it’s paces and seen the good and bad of it. This is not a 13 millisecond review… this is a comprehensive review of the Area BFE Aluminum Hardshell Tent based on several different trips over this summer. I have used (and packed) the tent in multiple heavy rainstorms. I have knocked it on branches and trees along the trail. It’s been up mountains, to the beach, and everything in between. This is my independent review - I paid retail price for my tent and am not being compensated in any way for this review.
