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Not the snow vehicle I expected

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Kurlon

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On snow covered roads, it just will not get any bite. Pressures are 35psi all the way around, slightly down from what the sticker calls for, same as I've done with pretty much every vehicle I've owned. Bare ice, I can feel the studs digging in, any slush or real snow and it just floats. I had one morning a week or so prior that the road was bare ice, my prior vehicle wouldn't touch it, in that case 4Lo locked it chugged right up. That was the scenario I got it in hopes of conquering. On the interstate the past two days in the storms I put in about 8 hours of total drive time, and at no time did it feel planted. (8 hours of bad defroster design in that storm did NOT help my mood.) This afternoon I came home to our road sporting a hardpack base, inch of fresh on top from the last of the storm and my driveway wasn't cleared so about 8" to a foot of semi wet snow there, with a bit of a berm from the plow at the entrance. As noted before my road is a bastard because of the grade when leaving, coming in it's downhill, my driveway is paved and flat, no ice at the entrance, usually not an issue as I've got gravity on my side. Drove down the hill in 2WD, turned in and it stopped with the front wheels past the berm, rear hanging out in the road and that was it. Only lifted the throttle as the ass started rotating as I didn't want to get it stuck aiming down the hill, would have to have cleared out a LOT more berm to have been able to back it out if I had. 4Lo fully locked and it would not even rock. If I had been in 4Hi at the start it might have held momentum and gotten past the berm, maybe? Once I snowblowed in front of the rig and cleared out in front of the tires, with some effort it pulled itself onto the driveway using 4Lo locked up. Snowblower ate the berm remains without issue so it wasn't superdense snow it was fighting.

I used to run the prior generation Hakkas on a Suzuki Vitara, unstudded. It almost didn't have enough motor to brake the tires loose on anything other than wet glare ice if you did a full clutch drop, and would tractor through snow like a champ until it got up to the bumper, then it was game over as it didn't have enough weight to keep from floating. Been a fan of proper dedicated snows ever since. The LT3s on this rig have slightly more grip than the KO2s, unless we're talking bare ice in which case the studs absolutely work, but any amount of loose snow and I swear I'm driving on slicks.

I'm sure in an offroad situation, aired down the KO2s or LT3s would be different animals, but I wouldn't expect a foot or less of snow to defeat the rig at stock pressures with dedicated studded snows. This is a situation that I wouldn't have even thought about in an 06 Highlander Hybrid AWD with Blizzaks, stock pressures, nose in, maintain throttle and do the snowblowing after the new year. The only thing that would throw a wrench in the works would be if my driveway was covered in ice under the snow so the Blizzaks couldn't dig to pavement but that wasn't the case today and the LT3s absolutely would not dig down.

For comparison, my wife's Nissan Versa Note with Michelin X-Ices made it up and out without issue afterwards. (Driveway snowblowed at that point, road still not freshly plowed.)
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Adventure.AS

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Narrow tires (pizza cutters) are better for snow with a hard surface underneath. You don’t want to float like you would on sand (so you shouldn’t air down) you want to cut down through the snow.
 

Arterius2

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@Kurlon
other than having 4 wheels spinning, I don’t see how vehicles could play that big of a role in snow performance. Especially deep snow. It’s mostly just in the tires.

With that said, 4LO does turn off a lot of unnecessary computer gizmo shenanigans that wasn’t needed for deep snow.
 
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Kurlon

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@Kurlon
other than having 4 wheels spinning, I don’t see how vehicles could play that big of a role in snow performance. Especially deep snow. It’s mostly just in the tires.
I do think my getting stock rubi sized 285 snows are absolutely working against me, I'm pinning a lot of the issue on that. I've also gotten spoiled by 'modern' TC (2006) that can make an 'AWD' vehicle that doesn't even have a mechanical connection between the front and rear open diffs (FWD with a separate electric rear) behave like a far better machine than the open diff, 2wd till I remember to pull the lever and stab a toggle Jeep. The Jeep doesn't seem to even try to do brake induced diff locking, or really any TC intervention until you're way into the stupid zone of wheel spin already, which in hindsight I should expect given it's offroad target.

So at the moment, my experience says the Rubicon, for snow is shit except for certain specific, extreme scenarios at which point in tonka truck fully locked 4Lo mode with studs it'll go gangbusters. In comparison my prior machine 90% of the time was a less effort, easier drive in snow, but would stop from overly aggressive TC in situations where it should be able to go further. You wouldn't get stuck, you just wouldn't be able to progress any deeper into whatever, it flat out wouldn't let you enter those 10% situations.

I've gone from looking forward to storms to drive in* to being very pissed at my apparent poor vehicle choice/setup and am not happy about it. I've gone from a vehicle that I wouldn't hesitate to let my wife drive in the worst snow storms you can think of to no way in hell will I let her drive this rig in winter, period.

*Blizzard Protocol - Drive to and pickup some friends, pick a restaurant and raid it durning hellacious storms. The Highlander's TC meant no fun that involved wheelspin, so no drifting, no cookies, nada, but I'd get to build up the karma bank sometimes pulling people up our road, out of ditches, etc, and as everyone else would be making french toast (What else do you do with all that milk/eggs/water people panic buy every time a storm is forecast?) at home waiting for the apocalypse to finally start based on the doom and gloom the news would be spewing we'd end up with the best service anywhere with a practically empty restaurant.
 

Compression-Ignition

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On snow covered roads, it just will not get any bite. Pressures are 35psi all the way around, slightly down from what the sticker calls for, same as I've done with pretty much every vehicle I've owned. Bare ice, I can feel the studs digging in, any slush or real snow and it just floats. I had one morning a week or so prior that the road was bare ice, my prior vehicle wouldn't touch it, in that case 4Lo locked it chugged right up. That was the scenario I got it in hopes of conquering. On the interstate the past two days in the storms I put in about 8 hours of total drive time, and at no time did it feel planted. (8 hours of bad defroster design in that storm did NOT help my mood.) This afternoon I came home to our road sporting a hardpack base, inch of fresh on top from the last of the storm and my driveway wasn't cleared so about 8" to a foot of semi wet snow there, with a bit of a berm from the plow at the entrance. As noted before my road is a bastard because of the grade when leaving, coming in it's downhill, my driveway is paved and flat, no ice at the entrance, usually not an issue as I've got gravity on my side. Drove down the hill in 2WD, turned in and it stopped with the front wheels past the berm, rear hanging out in the road and that was it. Only lifted the throttle as the ass started rotating as I didn't want to get it stuck aiming down the hill, would have to have cleared out a LOT more berm to have been able to back it out if I had. 4Lo fully locked and it would not even rock. If I had been in 4Hi at the start it might have held momentum and gotten past the berm, maybe? Once I snowblowed in front of the rig and cleared out in front of the tires, with some effort it pulled itself onto the driveway using 4Lo locked up. Snowblower ate the berm remains without issue so it wasn't superdense snow it was fighting.

I used to run the prior generation Hakkas on a Suzuki Vitara, unstudded. It almost didn't have enough motor to brake the tires loose on anything other than wet glare ice if you did a full clutch drop, and would tractor through snow like a champ until it got up to the bumper, then it was game over as it didn't have enough weight to keep from floating. Been a fan of proper dedicated snows ever since. The LT3s on this rig have slightly more grip than the KO2s, unless we're talking bare ice in which case the studs absolutely work, but any amount of loose snow and I swear I'm driving on slicks.

I'm sure in an offroad situation, aired down the KO2s or LT3s would be different animals, but I wouldn't expect a foot or less of snow to defeat the rig at stock pressures with dedicated studded snows. This is a situation that I wouldn't have even thought about in an 06 Highlander Hybrid AWD with Blizzaks, stock pressures, nose in, maintain throttle and do the snowblowing after the new year. The only thing that would throw a wrench in the works would be if my driveway was covered in ice under the snow so the Blizzaks couldn't dig to pavement but that wasn't the case today and the LT3s absolutely would not dig down.

For comparison, my wife's Nissan Versa Note with Michelin X-Ices made it up and out without issue afterwards. (Driveway snowblowed at that point, road still not freshly plowed.)
I do think my getting stock rubi sized 285 snows are absolutely working against me, I'm pinning a lot of the issue on that. I've also gotten spoiled by 'modern' TC (2006) that can make an 'AWD' vehicle that doesn't even have a mechanical connection between the front and rear open diffs (FWD with a separate electric rear) behave like a far better machine than the open diff, 2wd till I remember to pull the lever and stab a toggle Jeep. The Jeep doesn't seem to even try to do brake induced diff locking, or really any TC intervention until you're way into the stupid zone of wheel spin already, which in hindsight I should expect given it's offroad target.

So at the moment, my experience says the Rubicon, for snow is shit except for certain specific, extreme scenarios at which point in tonka truck fully locked 4Lo mode with studs it'll go gangbusters. In comparison my prior machine 90% of the time was a less effort, easier drive in snow, but would stop from overly aggressive TC in situations where it should be able to go further. You wouldn't get stuck, you just wouldn't be able to progress any deeper into whatever, it flat out wouldn't let you enter those 10% situations.

I've gone from looking forward to storms to drive in* to being very pissed at my apparent poor vehicle choice/setup and am not happy about it. I've gone from a vehicle that I wouldn't hesitate to let my wife drive in the worst snow storms you can think of to no way in hell will I let her drive this rig in winter, period.

*Blizzard Protocol - Drive to and pickup some friends, pick a restaurant and raid it during hellacious storms. The Highlander's TC meant no fun that involved wheelspin, so no drifting, no cookies, nada, but I'd get to build up the karma bank sometimes pulling people up our road, out of ditches, etc, and as everyone else would be making french toast (What else do you do with all that milk/eggs/water people panic buy every time a storm is forecast?) at home waiting for the apocalypse to finally start based on the doom and gloom the news would be spewing we'd end up with the best service anywhere with a practically empty restaurant.
Thank you very much for the addendum. And I'm not being a smartass here either. What you just laid out is something I explained to my wife before our purchase. The Wrangler Rubicon is not a jump in it and be lazy vehicle. It is very capable to be sure, but it requires one too pay a little closer attention to utilize that capability, in fact to prepare for certain on or off road conditions. If a person understands this and has the required driving skills to match, they will be ready to tackle more driving challenges than the vast majority of folks driving any other factory delivered 4x4.
 

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Old Jedi

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My wife and I just went up to Mt Lemmon outside of Tucson, AZ and at 8,000+ feet 4Hi did awesome driving up 10+ degree snow covered back streets and we experienced no issues at all. We only had one bit of excitement when coming down a very steep street we encountered ice and slowly slid about 100 feet heading towards the main road and traffic. We stopped before having any issues with other vehicles. We had a blast in the snow and I think my wife was getting tired of me finding any snow to drive through. The Rubicon was awesome and now I want to do some real snow wheeling.

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You got me eatin' my heart out! My helleyella just went into D1 build status, estimated shipping 8 Jan (if that holds). I hope there is still some snow up there when I take delivery. I went with the Sahara specifically for the Selec-Trac, thinking it would be best for snow-covered roads. Anxious to find out.
 

mdallas

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You got me eatin' my heart out! My helleyella just went into D1 build status, estimated shipping 8 Jan (if that holds). I hope there is still some snow up there when I take delivery. I went with the Sahara specifically for the Selec-Trac, thinking it would be best for snow-covered roads. Anxious to find out.
I have the Sahara Selec trac for the northern New England winters and it is AWESOME! I also have the D44 with the limited slip in the back.
 
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_olllllllo_

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You got me eatin' my heart out! My helleyella just went into D1 build status, estimated shipping 8 Jan (if that holds). I hope there is still some snow up there when I take delivery. I went with the Sahara specifically for the Selec-Trac, thinking it would be best for snow-covered roads. Anxious to find out.
With how cold and wet our winter has been so far I would be shocked if we didn’t get more by the time yours comes in. I ordered on May 3, 2019 and got caught be the 3 week shutdown. Now that being said I wonder if the workers came back refreshed and focused because my Rubicon has been amazing and no issues to speak of.
 

LLANERO

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Not much snow actually, plowed dirt road, maybe 5 inches in my driveway. The issue is my road is a STEEP grade, and it's private so no sand/salt, and no opportunity to get a running start. Part of the issue is coming from prior vehicles I'm used to loosing all traction/drive the moment a wheel spins and that's not the case here, a little spin is OK as long as I keep it in check. Been a long time since I had to drive like that so I was immediately lifting and killing my momentum. As noted, I got a chance to play in some snow and the old habits are starting to return.

The Sahara's full time 4WD would be an improvement in general conditions, narrower tires would help too. I still think the Rubi's ability to go full locked is going to be a win when my road ices up. I really want the Euro/Middle East Rubi setup that has the Sahara's transfer case so I can have my rig PLUS the full time 4wd option.
I wouldn't use lockers in snow and/or ice.
They limit your ability to steer.
 

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Shamus13

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I have a 2018 JLU Rubicon and live in Downeast Maine. We get a lovely combo of rain, ice and snow. Our last storm was 8in of snow followed by 1/2" of ice. A mess. This is the 1st vehicle in 15yrs that I have NOT put studded snow tires on. I'm running stock Rubicon tires.

It is unfair to compare an AWD to a RWD with 4x4. The AWD is always checking for ways to maximize traction but not the best off-road.
Yes, the Rubicon has a limited slip but it's not the same one available in the Sport / Sahara's. The Rubicon relies on brakes to bring wheel slip into check. A Rubicon is designed for off road so on road will suffer.

While the Sahara would have been better for you... this doesn't help you now.

I'll give you suggestions that helped me.
1) The Rubicon traction control is always a split second late. If you know you will lose momentum then put in 4x4 low / high before you start up hill. Annoying yes but better than getting buried half way up your driveway. It will limit your maneuverability so remember to disengage

2) I would lower your PSI to 32lbs. More flex but caution more body roll at high speed.

3) I know it's going to spin. It's a constant adjustment of throttle / steering / controlled fishtail to get up stuff sometimes. You will get a feel for it and it will become easier.

4) the defrost sucks. Ice builds up wipers become useless. I put tape on the center vent section. This pushes air to the sides. You might have to poke a hole in the tape to allow some air to the center. It's trial and error but I got it dialed in and no longer have an icing problem.

Good Luck.
 
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higbyz

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I have the Sahara Selec trac for the northern New England winters and it is AWESOME! I also have the D44 with the limited slip in the back.
We have two jeeps . Mine has selec-trac and lsd, my wife's has neither. Our previous vehicles were a 2018 Audi Allroad and a 2017 Subaru Outback 6 cyl. Both of our previous wagons are better snow vehicles than the jeeps. The only thing the jeep has over the Subie and Audi is clearance. Driving on a snowy road in a Jeep is nowhere near as secure as in the aforementioned cars. What can I say , thats the way it is.
 

BRuby

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Yeah the Rubicon is really designed for slow rock crawling and articulation vs AWD driving in wet or snow. But with chains and the rear locked it eats up snow and grips solid. Without it spins even fully locked once the tread groove gets packed. We often go 4H with traction ESC off when a bit of spin is desired. As ESC on cuts way too much power for our liking.

For wet our full time symmetrical AWD Subie is hard to beat 50/50 with stick. Super fun low COG vehicle for wet and slick ice. Has a nice rally car feel. But for deep snow traction our Rubi wins hands down. Def if the setup you have is not giving you what you need - then get something that does.

And yes plug up most the center heat vents to push more air to the sides. Really helps distribute airflow much more evenly to de-fog and de-ice.

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Uhdinator

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I don't get it? Some saying their jeep is sliding around corners in the rain, and now it sucks in the snow.

I've Been driving 2Dr wranglers with MT tires in Maine winters since 1989. I've never slid around a corner in rain, never use 4WD in the rain, and never had a problem or been hesitant to have to drive in a storm.

1st jeep open diffs, 2nd jeep LSD in rear, 3rd Jeep open diffs/BDL wth 12" wide MT tires at 30 psi.
Put it in 4H and turn off TC before attempting to plow thru a pile of snow. Don't lock the rear if you want to turn.
BLD will work fine and keep both tires churning and not cut power.
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