diesel_dave
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Been anxiously waiting for my Forest River R-Pod 180 to show up at the dealership for the last few months. On paper, this trailer is right about at the max of the Wrangler Unlimited's legal tow rating of 3,500 pounds with 350 pounds of tongue weight. The RP-180 with beast mode package has a dry weight of 3327 pounds and around 330 pounds of tongue weight.
I had been stressing out that this would mean the trailer would be a white knuckle nightmare to tow and that I would end up only wanting to tow it with my other truck (2007 Yukon XL). This would have defeated the entire purpose of downsizing from a 24' toy hauler to this much smaller unit: so I could tow a reasonably comfortable camper out to the trails with the Wrangler.
I nervously signed the paperwork, inspected the trailer, and then went out to get it hitched up. For some reason, there really aren't a lot of posts or YouTube videos of people towing with Wranglers. Even fewer with JLs and even fewer with JL 4Xes so I was expecting the worst. I really thought the ass of the Jeep would be basically dragging on the pavement with this much tongue weight based on some of the limited comments I had read about towing with a Wrangler. Well, to my surprise, as I retracted the jack, the back end only dropped maybe 2" or so. I even jumped up and down on the bumper in case it was just bound up, because I thought there was no way that was all it was going to sag. My old trailer on the Yukon would drop it probably 4" before the air suspension would level back out so that the Wrangler only dropped an inch or two was really surprising.
I was running late and needed to drive back home 40 miles so I could unload the trailer at home and get to work, so I decided to take my chances and drive it home without taking all the time to install and adjust the weight distributing parts of the hitch in the dealership parking lot. If it was too unruly, I would just pull over somewhere and do all that so I could get it home.
Well, I pulled out of the dealership lot, adjusted the setting on my Curt Echo bluetooth brake controller until it felt right then pretty much got straight on the freeway.
Let me tell you, power is *not* an issue with the 4Xe. I definitely felt like I could accelerate hard enough that unsecured items in the trailer would be thrown around. So one of my major concerns about moving nearly 9k pounds total GCWR with a 2.0L was put right to bed.
I had arrived at the dealership with around 50% battery left on purpose so I could get a mix of full hybrid performance and later on once the battery was depleted, the performance of just the 2.0L doing everything itself. While there was still battery left, the rig was a rocket and you could very easily maneuver through traffic.
Once the battery was empty after about 10 miles of driving in blended hybrid mode, the computer will still use the electric motor for short blips of "boost", but eventually the HV battery will get low enough during sustained high load driving that it will be nearly 100% on the little 2.0L to keep things going. Even in that state, I never felt like I didn't have enough power. The engine spent most of the time in 7th or 8th gear just chugging along at 2k RPM and never sounded like it was going to blow up or anything.
The transmission did an excellent job at picking the right gear for the situation and not shifting excessively despite there not being a TOW/HAUL mode button.
I used adaptive cruise control in the right lane set to 65 MPH the entire drive home and the highest temps I saw after a bit of a hill climb with 82 degree ambient air temp was 220 coolant, 196 trans, and 222 oil which I was more than happy with. The adaptive cruise worked great even with a trailer, the blind spot monitoring still worked, but didn't reach back behind the camper like it did on my Ram 3500. On flat ground, I was seeing around 17 MPG while there was battery charge left and around 12 MPG once the HV battery was empty. I'll hand calculate these values on the next trip I take to see how close the guess-o-meter actually is to reality.
Even more surprising to me was how the whole rig felt going down the road at 65. Like I said earlier, I was pretty sure it was going to be a two hand, white knuckle experience based on some things I had read about other people towing with the Wrangler. Well, that couldn't be farther from the truth. After a few miles on the freeway was able to almost completely relax and keep everything completely in control with just one hand on the wheel and minor corrections when a truck flew by 20 MPH faster than I was going. I even aimed for a few deep potholes just to see how it behaved and it was all very well damped with no more than one or two very minor oscillations. There was so little sway and pogoing that I am debating whether I will even bother hooking up the WDH and sway bar for my upcoming trip to Washington.
TL;DR: The 2023 Wrangler 4Xe has PLENTY of power and suspension to handle a 3,300 pound travel trailer easily and confidently.
I had been stressing out that this would mean the trailer would be a white knuckle nightmare to tow and that I would end up only wanting to tow it with my other truck (2007 Yukon XL). This would have defeated the entire purpose of downsizing from a 24' toy hauler to this much smaller unit: so I could tow a reasonably comfortable camper out to the trails with the Wrangler.
I nervously signed the paperwork, inspected the trailer, and then went out to get it hitched up. For some reason, there really aren't a lot of posts or YouTube videos of people towing with Wranglers. Even fewer with JLs and even fewer with JL 4Xes so I was expecting the worst. I really thought the ass of the Jeep would be basically dragging on the pavement with this much tongue weight based on some of the limited comments I had read about towing with a Wrangler. Well, to my surprise, as I retracted the jack, the back end only dropped maybe 2" or so. I even jumped up and down on the bumper in case it was just bound up, because I thought there was no way that was all it was going to sag. My old trailer on the Yukon would drop it probably 4" before the air suspension would level back out so that the Wrangler only dropped an inch or two was really surprising.
I was running late and needed to drive back home 40 miles so I could unload the trailer at home and get to work, so I decided to take my chances and drive it home without taking all the time to install and adjust the weight distributing parts of the hitch in the dealership parking lot. If it was too unruly, I would just pull over somewhere and do all that so I could get it home.
Well, I pulled out of the dealership lot, adjusted the setting on my Curt Echo bluetooth brake controller until it felt right then pretty much got straight on the freeway.
Let me tell you, power is *not* an issue with the 4Xe. I definitely felt like I could accelerate hard enough that unsecured items in the trailer would be thrown around. So one of my major concerns about moving nearly 9k pounds total GCWR with a 2.0L was put right to bed.
I had arrived at the dealership with around 50% battery left on purpose so I could get a mix of full hybrid performance and later on once the battery was depleted, the performance of just the 2.0L doing everything itself. While there was still battery left, the rig was a rocket and you could very easily maneuver through traffic.
Once the battery was empty after about 10 miles of driving in blended hybrid mode, the computer will still use the electric motor for short blips of "boost", but eventually the HV battery will get low enough during sustained high load driving that it will be nearly 100% on the little 2.0L to keep things going. Even in that state, I never felt like I didn't have enough power. The engine spent most of the time in 7th or 8th gear just chugging along at 2k RPM and never sounded like it was going to blow up or anything.
The transmission did an excellent job at picking the right gear for the situation and not shifting excessively despite there not being a TOW/HAUL mode button.
I used adaptive cruise control in the right lane set to 65 MPH the entire drive home and the highest temps I saw after a bit of a hill climb with 82 degree ambient air temp was 220 coolant, 196 trans, and 222 oil which I was more than happy with. The adaptive cruise worked great even with a trailer, the blind spot monitoring still worked, but didn't reach back behind the camper like it did on my Ram 3500. On flat ground, I was seeing around 17 MPG while there was battery charge left and around 12 MPG once the HV battery was empty. I'll hand calculate these values on the next trip I take to see how close the guess-o-meter actually is to reality.
Even more surprising to me was how the whole rig felt going down the road at 65. Like I said earlier, I was pretty sure it was going to be a two hand, white knuckle experience based on some things I had read about other people towing with the Wrangler. Well, that couldn't be farther from the truth. After a few miles on the freeway was able to almost completely relax and keep everything completely in control with just one hand on the wheel and minor corrections when a truck flew by 20 MPH faster than I was going. I even aimed for a few deep potholes just to see how it behaved and it was all very well damped with no more than one or two very minor oscillations. There was so little sway and pogoing that I am debating whether I will even bother hooking up the WDH and sway bar for my upcoming trip to Washington.
TL;DR: The 2023 Wrangler 4Xe has PLENTY of power and suspension to handle a 3,300 pound travel trailer easily and confidently.
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