any more video from this day. This is the most action I seen of a Grenadier on a rocky trail.
I've been trying to find the time to make a post about some of my experiences from first 500-miles of ownership, but since this video got uploaded I guess I can discuss some of the offroad stuff here.
@anand and
@stickshifter I
will engage in some
Monday Morning Quarterbacking, because I was actually driving the vehicle
@Korg Your observation that no rear or front dif locks were activated is correct. They are indeed installed on the vehicle, but were
not engaged. Part of the reason is philosophical: I had just taken delivery and wanted to get an idea of what the limits of the vehicle were. As people have mentioned I also haven't seen too many off rocky off roading videos/reviews, or even any super technical reviews (with the exception of
Robert Pepper's videos which are very indepth and technical), so the outing for me was just as much educational as anything else, e.g trying to find the limitations of the vehicle and myself as a driver.
I have found a few more rocky off-roading videos:
Rock Crawling in Las Vegas
Off Roading in South Africa
Some of Traveling Grenadier's Videos
If I was driving on terrain like that by myself--first I might not have even tried to go up it--but secondly, I also would have tried to engage the lockers well before the obstacle. Since I was on a trail ride with a professional instructor spotting me, I was willing to try things that I wouldn't attempt. There is, admittedly, some level of driving incompetence. In terms of skill, I don't profess to have the most advanced off-roading skills (I consider myself an intermediate and have much more motorsport experience on track than off-road ). However, more importantly in terms of
competence, the moment this video was taken I had about 6-hours total behind the wheel, and was the first time I had ever tried to engage the rear locker.
So,
@stickshifter I wish I had engaged been able to engage the rear-locker after getting stuck, but to the best of my knowledge I don't think it ever came on. The indicator light was blinking but never fully engaged. I tried, probably erroneously, getting the vehicle in neutral and then moving a little back and forth in reverse and drive. Some of this was what I thought the dealer had told me, which was that it was necessary to put the vehicle into neutral to engage the lockers. After reading the forums and watching some videos it seems this not the case. The second time I tried to use it, it did come on pretty much right away, but then it would not disengage (or at least the light wouldn't stop blinking until I turned off the ignition)
I fully agree that:
It is terrain like this that demands that lockers engage and disengage on command, with little drama. You do not always have the luxury of doing some big song and dance to get the lockers to engage/disengage.
However it was my experience that, at least the engagement of rear and front lockers is not a 'no drama' engagement/disengagement. It could be that they need to get broken in, to some degree. The transfer case was very tight when I first got delivery of the vehicle and has gotten easier to shift over time. Or it could also be some level of incompetence/learning curve on my part. There was an obstacle later on where I did successful engage the lockers, but then after disengagement the blinking light did not go away, and around the same time l I got the "steering failure" warning (which really concerned me because the manual says park your Grenadier and have it towed to the dealership). This only went off after power cycling the engine. Suffice to say I'm going to practice using the lockers more on less extreme terrain to try to get a better workflow next time I'm in a similar situation.
I think in the future :
1. engage center dif pretty much anytime I'm on a trail.
2. engage rear locker before I get to an obstacle where I think I might be losing traction.
3. Possibly also engage front locker if I'm not going to have to make any big turns. But again I think a big part of it is just time in the drivers seat and learning how the vehicle reacts in different scenarios.
One ironic/surprising observation is how capable the grenadier is without rear and front lockers. There has been lots of
debate about if it's necessary to option them. I was of the camp that it would be silly to order a grenadier with out front and rear lockers, however I got up
SO MUCH stuff without them. So, it's ultimately a personal decision about how you plan on using your vehicle. With that being said, if I was trying to get the best rock crawler I would have bought a Jeep Rubicon, but also if I had just wanted a really luxurious off roader with lots of modern features like adaptive cruise control and blind spot detection I could be putting in an order for the new Lexus GX Overtrail. I was not one of the people who had owned an old Defender (though I remember a guy at my high school had a 90 series that I always though was very cool), but I got hooked on what Ineos was trying to do with the Grenadier to be enamored/deluded enough to purchase a first-year version vehicle from a brand new car manufacturer. Given all those circumstances I had to actually go out and try to use the Grenadier for what it was intended for and see what it could do (whether built on purpose has truth or is just a marketing gimmick), straight from the dealership with no mods, so I could get a good baseline for what I can expect to put it through (as I hope to be a long-term owner).
I was on the trail with Tundras, Broncos, Jeeps, Landcruisers, Tacomas, and they all had been modified. I could get up many of the same obstacles, but I had to take different lines, go slower/much more carefully, and I don't know yet if I want to start modding the truck--lifting it, putting bigger tires on it--in order get more performance in those scenarios, because honestly I don't know how much rock crawling and extreme off roading I'm going to do in it. The idea was that the trail ride was kind of like a laboratory to get more comfortable with the truck--start intuitively getting a feel for my breakover, departure angles--and learn about what it's capable of (with me as a driver), so in the future when I'm driving by myself I have a better chance for avoiding situations where I might get stuck or damaging the vehicle (which btw
@Pat I'll show you a photo of the underside, it looks great still!
I slightly got up on my rear dif once, but all the other contact was on the sliders)
Finally in the spirit of learning and getting better with our vehicles, I think some people have been posting either here or on a FB group about a training event in April in North Carolina through
OEX. I can also highly recommend Mike and Sarah through
Morrison's Outdoor Adventures. Mike is, in my opinion, a really knowledgable instructor, and fun person to learn from. They are based out of Kentucky, so if people wanted to get a group together somewhere in the South East / Mid Atlantic, I'd be willing to help try to organize it with them. They actually just posted a video of the
event here on Youtube.
For those of you asking for more videos a YouTuber was there
View: https://youtu.be/ufmkGwnYl3s?si=_cZCg3aj6fPT0eF6
It's not all Grenadier content but there is some of that same obstacle in the video. And if I get a chance I have a few Grenadier only videos I can upload as well!
![[ Adam ]](/data/avatars/m/9046/9046040.jpg?1705937698){kind=avatar}
