Manual vs automatic

[jtvt]

Might be too early to make a decision. Anything could happen in a year.

My TJ was manual and I installed a hand throttle because I didn't have three feet. The stop and go traffic sucked and you won't be liking it if you get a left knee/leg injury. The manual function of the newer autos works well.

What scares me is the 5 minute drive to work. You may not even get the rig warmed up thoroughly with that.

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[Ratbert]

And, if you really want to have some fun rowing your own gears, get some cheap old VW or something and see if its yours. If not, sell it.

Or a Miata. The six speed in second+ generation Miatas is pretty damn good and they're a hell of a lot of fun to drive.

 

[Ol’ Timey Manual SWB Guy]

The Willys comes with Dana 44s front and rear….

Yes. I believe that’s correct. But the Willys never came with the HD full-floats or 10mm tubes. And, of course, there have been other trims. Dana Spicer and Mopar both play games with the parts bin, and I’d been trying to keep my technical opinion generic.

The Willys comes with… 4.10s already.

Right, but that’s a midcycle improvement. My Willys manual came with 3.45, which required, ummm, an improvement.

If you won't go bigger than 35's, you're probably fine.

Agree again. Almost certainly fine. Still, the likelihood of shredding the pinion goes down as its size and toughness go up. Also the likelihood of problems go up as your numeric ratio goes up. This is a little bit of an art, IMHO.

Mostly I was just telling the OP to think about diff ratio, not just the number of pedals. All the details are in a hundred other threads.

 

[Liquid Breakfast]

I'm retired and my wife works from home so there's no commuting. She can't drive a stick but I can. We have two Corvettes with sticks. Are they fun to drive? Absolutely! Maybe I'm getting old but I would not want to drive a stick everyday. I guess I'm lazy too.....Aside from the two stick Corvettes, our three Jeeps, 2006 Mustang GT and 2013 Challenger R/T are all automatic.

 

[The Last Cowboy]

If the JK manual was continued in the JL, I'd be driving one. I really liked the 3.6/six speed combo in my JL. The only thing I think that would have made it better would have been a 7th speed. The JLs six speed is not nearly as good, in fact I'd have to say bad. the gearing is wrong for a 3.45 differential gears, the spacing of the ratios is weird. The clutch, as mentioned, is garbage brand new, the shifter mechanism is weird feeling. The ZF based 8 speed automatic is the best on the market. I was skeptical. as I am of most autos, until I drove one. It's a great transmission, shifts almost intuitively, but it just doesn't have that connection that a good manual has. In the JL, the automatic is the transmission of choice.

 

[Red Rubi 22]

Auto! It’s just that good!

 

[alphawolff]

As someone who owns both a manual and an automatic, get the automatic. The manual we got in these JLs is just *really* bad compared to how good the 8-speed is.

 

[Vatdevil]

I will say that the M/T climbs rocks very well. I know the auto is probably "easier" but it's not as hard as some people make it out to be. I have a 2024 Rubi and it's got the 100:1 crawl ratio. Put it in 1st gear and it damn near will climb up a vertical wall. The Jeep does 95% of the the work for me. It's pretty effortless imo.

Killer drivetrain for rock crawling. Gas and brake not required. Auto trans jeeps hate this as they have to ride brakes when behind

 

[wreck99]

Killer drivetrain for rock crawling. Gas and brake not required. Auto trans jeeps hate this as they have to ride brakes when behind

Yeah i love it. It just goes over anything.

 

[Sidewalk]

I'm happy with the manual so far.

If I had to be forced into an auto, I would buy a different vehicle with a manual transmission.

Personally, for a 5 minute commute, I would walk or ride a bicycle. Saying that as a person who has a 15 minute driving commute, but I do it on a bicycle for 25 minutes instead.

 

[GabeBoyTheGreat]

I would like to point out that in the days of the TJ and JK, the MT always outperformed the AT, yet many people still chose to purchase the AT in the TJs and JKs because that was the driving experience that they wanted.

In the JL, the AT does outperform the MT, but at the end of the day, it is going to be personal preference which driving experience you prefer. That is why I chose the MT twice.

 

[Das_Cheese]

It's definitely weird with the JL's manual how accelerating from a stoplight (or whatever), you have to start out slow because how low 1st is, then by the time you get to 3rd, acceleration is plentiful. My old TJ is quick off the line in 1st and 2nd, but 3rd starts to dog a bit. Almost polar opposites. Though I will say highway is great in the JL, not so much in the TJ.

 

[wibornz]

Killer drivetrain for rock crawling. Gas and brake not required. Auto trans jeeps hate this as they have to ride brakes when behind

You mean they are constantly waiting on you to get out of the way.

 

[wibornz]

I will say that the M/T climbs rocks very well. I know the auto is probably "easier" but it's not as hard as some people make it out to be. I have a 2024 Rubi and it's got the 100:1 crawl ratio. Put it in 1st gear and it damn near will climb up a vertical wall. The Jeep does 95% of the the work for me. It's pretty effortless imo.

Okay tell the truth. How many times have you stalled it?

 

[entropy]

Always auto. As somebody who has always gravitated to manual transmissions, you don't want to get the JL manual. Stay away from it. Don't even look at it, and don't even touch it or it might explode on contact.

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