 Hey there, what's happening all you two YouTube boys and girls. Thanks for tuning back into the channel today right here with the Rust Belt Mechanic. So today we've got something extra special for you guys. We've got the new 2020 Jeep Gladiator. Now you guys might be asking, why am I going to be reviewing a sport model? So this model is not the most baseline model that you guys can find, it is actually going to be kind of a midline model. Now 90%, I would say of most Americans are going to be seeing this one, getting this one, buying it, upgrading it, doing everything to it, because this is going to be the one that's going to be in the best price range for you guys. Let's go over and take a look at the window sticker just to see why. Now I know it's going to be kind of hard to see, and yes here I am in the reflection of the mirror, but you guys can see right here at $44,860. This thing is going to be kind of a midline price as you see. The baseline price right here is going to be at $33,545, 4x4 offset, 3.6L V6 with the 8-speed automatic. Now the one thing that I'm definitely not going to be doing for you guys today is grabbing the owner's manual and reading all the tech specs out, say this thing tows 12,400 pounds, or it's got 314 horsepower at 600 foot pounds, no, I'm not going to be doing that for you guys today. You're going to be going through this thing, and I'm going to be giving you my opinions based on the fact that I am a Chrysler technician. You guys want to see these things, how they're going to act, how they're going to perform based on the technical aspect of it. I know not everybody is just a driver and they take their car to the mechanic and just, I don't want to see under the hood, I just want to put fuel in it and go. No, this is going to be for you guys who actually want to see how this thing works and what I think you guys are going to run into down the road is in the way of serviceability. I'm going to go over some of the things on what I think about the styling options, how you guys are going to be able to work on this thing after it gets out of your warranty period. So let's go in and I think we're going to check out the interior first off. Now first things first, in the way of the key fob, you guys are going to have this standard, what would be a Jeep Wrangler key fob for the Gladiator, does say Jeep there on the back, has a switch blade for the door, and it has all your buttons here on the front. The other side to this one is going to be that it's pretty expensive. If you guys lose one of these, don't have a warranty or a, you know, an option to be able to replace these in your wheel, tire, and key package, then you're going to be looking at well over 200 bucks, 300 bucks to be able to get these things replaced. So keep that one in mind. You don't physically actually use the key portion of it to start the vehicle. All you really have to have is this thing in your pocket. It's going to use the sense of the key inside the vehicle, push button start, pretty simple. Now one of the things that I liked absolutely most about this Jeep is it doesn't quite feel like a Jeep when I get into it. The biggest things I hated about Wranglers for the longest time was, I'm a big dude, like I'm not going to lie about it, is the tightness of the cockpit area. The tightness in the leg room, the actual shifter area is pretty tight and I didn't like that I didn't have any forward leg room. I'm six foot four big guy Wranglers just want my thing. Now, if I go to get into this thing, it's going to be quite a bit different. Very nice. I do sit all the way back. I do have the seat all the way back here in this one, but I don't feel as cramped as I did before in a Wrangler. It does have that nice arm position before the Wranglers. They were up slightly higher. So it didn't feel like you had enough arm space as well as the actual visibility area. So the actual driver's position is something I feel that they gave you just a little bit more room in this one. Now, one of the styling bits that I did like that they pulled from the trucks is going to be the storage here in the rear. The 6040 split here, or 6633 split, you're going to be able to lift up the bottom portion. It'll hold itself up and you've got all that storage underneath. Both sides will lift up there. And then the rear headrests, they also fold down for more visibility for the driver or whatnot. They're in the back one button to be able to push to be able to fold those down. Nice and easy. Now another thing here into the passenger compartment, we see that we kept the Wrangler speakers here in the bar above everyone. Both speakers right there. And then we've got LED lights built on to the inside. And then the top, it's going to work like just every single other Wrangler. It's going to have the removal of all the Targas in the front, clamps right there, clamps in the middle. And the two Targas are going to be able to, or I should say freedom tops, should be able to be lifted off. Nice and easy. Now the thing that I do like also is that the rest of the top is very easy to take off. It's going to be a lot lighter thanks to the size of it. And you're not going to require four or five guys to have to take this top off and lay it down and put it someplace else. Now the back seat guys, if you guys were wondering, I'm 6'4 still and I don't fit in the back of it. Wrangler back seats are Wrangler back seats that can give you any more room. You guys aren't going to be winning any awards like the Ram 1500 for the most cab space and the back seat space and leg room. No, it's still Wrangler. Still not much room in the back. The front interior and styling, we don't have to really go into depth about because if you guys have seen a Jeep Wrangler JL, you have seen this interior. All of it is pulled right from the Wrangler. It doesn't have any kind of specialty little devices or anything like that. It's just all from the Wrangler. The other thing that you might see is right here on the actual steering handle, you're going to see it's got the gladiator symbol on the top of that one. So other than that, nothing really fancy. You guys can see also, you do have your standard auxiliary port buttons, which when we go over under the hood, when we get back to the shop, we'll explain how you guys are going to be hooking that one up as an upfitter if you guys want to add on those extra accessories. The thing I do like about this one, optioned as it is, it does have heated seats. It does have heated steering wheel. It is claw, so it's still nice interior. It does have the larger radio. So at the price point, you guys are still getting a lot of those amenities that you really want. That's another reason why I ended up choosing this sport gladiator to be able to do the review on because you guys, when you guys purchase these, you guys have in mind that you guys are going to want to do all kinds of extra add-ons, upfits, lift, wheels, tires, all those kind of fun things that everybody in the Jeep life likes to enjoy. So buying something that is middle of the road like this, where there's not a whole lot of extra things on the outside, you guys are still able to put all of your upfitted goodies on, but you still feel like you get some of those extra amenities, the power locks, power mirrors. You guys are getting the heated seats, heated steering wheel, spray-in bed liner, big plus for this one. Let's actually go over and take a look at the bed. The bed on this is one of the big selling points for me. Nice LED lights and what I really like about it is the utility version of it. This bedside is not super high, like a 1500 that even me as a six-foot-four guy, I'm able to walk up here, reach over, and I'm able to touch the bottom of this palm down on the bottom of the bed. So still accessible for even shorter people, taller people, you guys are gonna have full access to the entire bed on this one. So one of the big pluses to the Gladiator. Well guys, enough of my ramblings, let's get this thing back to the shops where you can get this thing up onto a lift so you guys can see all of the technical aspects, the mechanical things, and we'll even get it up on the lift so you guys can see underneath and how this thing's put together as well as the serviceability of just about everything. Now we're gonna get to the part that you guys really came here to see. We're gonna check out under the hood, see what kind of things I can point out to you guys, and then we're gonna put it up in the air and see what it looks like underneath, give you guys a perspective on what you guys are gonna look for in the mechanical aspect of it and maybe after this thing's out of warranty or you guys are wanting to modify it, what kind of things you guys are gonna be looking for. Now with standard Jeep tradition, you're still gonna have your standard wrangler hood clips here and the hood prop that comes from the top down. Looking in under the hood here, we've got the 3.6 liter standard Chrysler PenaStar engine, which is a good thing. Yes, these things do come with a two liter direct injected turbocharged option, which I have gotten the chance to drive in the standard wranglers and they are pretty peppy, but I'm not sure if I trust the technology in those quite yet, whereas these 3.6 liters, they're pretty tried and true and we just don't have that many issues with them on the newer engines that we have right here. Now this is the upgraded version, the newest 3.6 liter engine that Chrysler's put out, so the only downside that that one has compared to the older 3.6 is EGR. This one does have an EGR cooler, it has an EGR valve, it doesn't just take the straight exhaust gases and pump them through the valve into the intake. No, it's got a cooler to keep those gases cool as well. Everything on here seems pretty simple on the way of serviceability. All your caps are simple to get to, you don't have to take any stupid panels or big plastic facials off to access anything. The only thing that I don't like, which is kind of standard with the wranglers is the air box. To be able to get access to that, you have to take the screws out, as well as the two 10 millimeter bolts for the inlet tube right here because this one just does not give you enough room to get that air filter out. So we've got that one, battery is pretty easy, jump cables, very easy to access all of that, all of your fuse panel right there, super simple to get to. Now for all of you guys who want to utilize those auxiliary buttons inside of the vehicle, Chrysler made it super simple to be able to use those. Right down here in the harness, which comes right out of this tip of mine here, is gonna be a harness that is just taped back with four wires into it. Two of them are gonna be a smaller, like 20 gauge and two of them are gonna be a little bit larger, like 14, 16 gauge wire. It's gonna be two different amperage outputs, four two different styles of outputs. Say if you guys want to put a winch on it, you use the bigger amperage ones or if you guys wanted to put small LED light cubes or something, you guys would use the smaller ones. They make them super easy to access if you guys wanted to put relays in line with it. These are gonna be the activation wires that they will put out 12 volts from all four of those wires when they are selected inside on the dash. Looking in here, if we're looking at the standard serpentine belt and other services, kind of a pain in the butt when it comes to serpentine belts, but not any different from the other 3.6 liters in the Wranglers. You've got the rear words facing alternator, which for saving some kind of room, I guess, it is what it is. It makes it kind of a pain, but servicing the alternator is pretty simple. In the way of 3.6 liter engines, this one is a little bit harder to work on compared to the vans or the rams that just have a ton of extra room. All of this battery and the fuel and all these coolant hoses that kind of wrap over everything, make it a little bit harder when it comes to service down the road. Now that's gonna be a couple of years down the road. We're talking later when you're having intake or you're having to do spark plugs, service like that, you're still gonna be looking at about a two and a half hour service when it comes to spark plugs or anything simple along those lines that you would think would be simple. This side is gonna be pretty easy to access, but this side with the intake plumb, going over that, the EGR valve, the EGR cooler that you guys are gonna have to take off, it's gonna be a little bit harder. So anything that has to do on this side of the engine, just plan on an extra two and a half hours of labor in on that. As far as air conditioning, this vehicle does utilize the new 1234 YF, runs at just over a pound of freon, so not a really large amount, not a really big system because it still is pretty much a standard Wrangler cab. ECM, all these electrical things are pretty easy and accessible. Harness looks like it's really well-routed, coolant tubes aren't in the way of a whole lot, fuel lines, they seem like they're pretty well put out of the way, but still have some access to the normal testing points. Our EVAP system right here has some testing points, I'm sorry, this is the vacuum system to be able to have good testing points to that. Coolant reservoir bottle, easily accessible, looks like it's pretty easy to remove with the brackets that go up to the firewall in that area. The other lines here for the AC kind of run in along here to the front, and it looks like these lines are gonna be going down to your condenser right here, down to the front end. Standard Jeep Wrangler front end, where once you take out these top clips, this whole front grille assembly is just gonna pop out like a standard 2018 Wrangler. Easy for upfits, easy for doing your guys' custom grills, custom front ends. I do like the bumper, they do make a nice little addition there, and I like that they had these all one piece. From this point down, and the bumper all the way across, is one section right there. So for you guys who are wanting to do aftermarket bumpers, all one area, nice and easy to access. And what does that mean? That means there is gonna be a ton of room for bigger wheels and tires. Yeah, these are just the factory standard aluminum ones, but these will get you by for what you're kinda looking at, but what I can see right away is there's gonna be a whole lot of guys throwing forties with not really big lift kits on them. Once you get rid of that front bumper, which seems to be the closest point to the tire, you guys are gonna be able to fit some pretty large tires on here. Now let's move our way to the back section, see how much room that we have here in these rear wheel wells. Just about as much room as we have in the rear of the front wheel well, quite a bit of room. They don't make the issue like GM doesn't make more of the box wheel wells. They are pretty easy, pretty accessible. All of your suspension stuff is well out of the way, so it looks like you guys are gonna be able to get pretty dished wheels inside these. So I have a feeling we're gonna see some big old stance jeeps coming out here really soon. They made it pretty easy for the guys to be able to do that. The biggest thing that I do not like about this jeep is how the top was engineered. I think that this is probably the worst design that this Jeep has to it, or I'm sorry, Gladiator has to it. I think if they would have gone along more with the RAM styling, a little bit more of the boxy edge to the rear of the cab, I think it would have looked a little bit more aggressive and I think it would have followed the body lines a lot better and a lot easier. You see how this rear tail here comes out and it's real boxed off, boxed in. Everything seems to have really nice bold edges, but once you get to that top, it's really kind of a faint turning. It just flows into each other, but I'm not a big fan of that. I think it could have looked a little bit more aggressive. I think it would have changed just the look of it, just that little bit to give it just that extra little bit of oomph to it. I think that's just the softest part of the Jeep right there. Now going in here to the rear of the Jeep, we've got the stuff that I really do like is the tailgate, how they integrated everything into it and left nothing up here onto the removable top. That would have just left a whole lot of extra crap that you guys would have needed to unplug when you guys go to remove that. Your third brake build in here, your rear view camera build into there, nice right there in the middle. I think it would have been a better styling issue if they, or a styling point, if they would have just put it into the rear handle area rather than sticking it in the middle of the Jeep logo. I don't know, not really that big of a fan of that one. The tailgate is a really cool one because I like that it does this. Easy opening tailgate standard, really nice. This one being the upgraded sport model. I like how it has the already done sprayed in bed liner for the price point of this particular Jeep. I think that is a must for the guys who are gonna use this Jeep. It's gonna be a utility truck and a utility Jeep. That's what the guys need it for. LED lights built into the bed right there and everything has got utility in mind. It's got extra access points up here. You'll be able to put hooks or anything. It's got the standard D hooks already built into the lower corners of it and the hooks already right here in the corners in the rear. Seven pin as well as four pin for your trailer hookups, really nice as well as the standard big old Jeep hook to be able to hook on anything you guys need. I also did not like the rear tail lights. They said, oh, it's a Jeep thing. They like how, you know, the Jeep tail lights look but personally look how much these things stick out. How much those things stick out from the corner. I think that is absolutely tacky and was very, very unnecessary. I think that they're gonna be really easily serviceable. You know, that's cool for that one. You guys are gonna have to have, you know, 30 tools to be able to get the tail lights out but I don't like the tail lights. Nope, not at all, not a fan. Fuel door here on the driver's side. I think they did a great job with that. Not putting it into the cab portion of it. They left it on the bed. No buttons or anything stupid inside of there that you're gonna have to do. Just standard push, it pops itself out and there's your cab area. I don't like that one. Nice, easy, simple, flows into the design. Doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. I don't like the guys who, you know, have those big old chrome fuel caps sticking out there. I like that this is all flowed into the bed. All right, enough chitty chatting about this outside stuff, let's get this thing lifted up into the air. These are our nice Hunter machine, let's get it up. All right, so the very first thing that I can see already that's gonna be coming off all of these gladiators is gonna be this front little splitter here on the bottom side. I guess it's supposed to be a protective panel but in all honesty, tiny thin plastic, not gonna protect anything. If it was an actual skid plate, I could see some people leaving it but aside from that, it's still pretty much a Wrangler so they're gonna get rid of that to be able to see some of the cool suspension parts they put onto it. Front end, we're going standard Wrangler here. It looks like we've got a Dana front end inner, standard upper and lower ball joints, no control arms on the outside. We have the standard four-link control arms right here, the standard lower that a Wrangler has as well as the bar style upper. You get a look at there, the bar style uppers. See over here on this side, our standard four-link suspension. So standard for what a Wrangler's used to. Brakes are about the same size. The actual dampener here for the steering looks a little bit more beefed up and that could be due to the issues that the JLs were having having that depth wobble. This steering though, this is some beefy stuff. These steering bars that go across here, the track bars, they are pretty heavy duty. It goes over here to this little bracket and then your upper one, standard ball joint style. And going up here to the top, we've got a standard gearbox up in that area as well as the adjustment screw. Alignments on these things are gonna be pretty easy to do, just a standard Wrangler alignment. Pretty easy, most technicians are gonna love those. Going on to the engine and transmission. The bottom of this 3.6 liter is super easy to get a hold of everything underneath of here. Cranks, chat position sensors, super easy to get to. Starter, pretty simple to get to. Looks like they just got about a coolant line in the way but not too horrible. I don't know what's up with this goofy little tuba horn here that they've got going with the exhaust, probably to keep the back pressure equal on both sides because the passenger side tube is a lot longer and so they're just going straight down, they're gonna have this big old tuba horn looping around to be able to get to that area where then it goes into a single Y pipe right there on the driver's side. In the way of room to work and look at everything, everything here on the bottom side is very open. I can stick my big old pawls pretty much right into just about any area underneath the vehicle here. The motor mounts, they're not standard stiff polyurethane bushings or anything like that. They are gonna be the gel filled style motor mounts on both sides, hopefully keeping the engine noise and vibrations down quite a bit but everything here is super accessible, able to get my hands and arms in just about every area that I would really think about needing to get it into here in the front end. All the suspension parts, they don't do anything stupid along lines of putting bolts into weird areas where, oh, you gotta pull the diff out to be able to get to this bolt or that bolt. Nope, they don't make it anything like that. I see that they've got 12 point bolts here for the backside of the hubs, standard looking hubs to be able to get out. I like that rather than having, you know, press in or anything stupid like that. Standard bolts, nothing E-torques are stupid about that to be able to get the brakes off like a lot of the other Fiat based vehicles that we have, very Wrangler oriented. We can see it's tucked way up in here, up in that area. That is gonna be your electric power steering pump tucked up into that area. Looks like it's gonna be accessible from the top side but all of the accessory belt drive stuff is pretty tight so they left that one electric and all of the power steering lines are actually going here across the front member to the gearbox. Brake lines are well out of the way, brakes are easily serviceable, ball joints look like they'll be easily serviceable just like standard Wrangler stuff. Getting back into our transmission and drive line, the front drive shaft here on the front is gonna use standard U-joints and the rear is going to be a CV joint just like most of the other Wranglers are. And in the way of transmission you've got an eight speed transmission. Doesn't have the plastic pan like a lot of the other eight speeds had with the actual filter built into the pan so we've got a different designed eight speed on the bottom side of it. Still has the cooler mounted to the side with the pretty accessible lines to it. I'm actually kind of impressed that they made those a lot easier to get to than a lot of the other eight speeds. Going back, we've got a well protected fuel tank, all steel encased, even up to the sides of it. Steel all the way up the side so this thing is super well encased, big fuel tank going all the way back. Now we're gonna turn around and go the other direction here and look forward because this drive shaft is something different. Here we've got the CV joint, we've got a carrier bearing, so it's more of a two piece and then this other CV joint here in the front with this tiny, which looks like about one and a half inch diameter on this drive shaft. I see you guys blowing these things out really, really quick. That's probably gonna be one of the quickest things that's gonna be upgraded in the aftermarket world, maybe going to a one piece drive shaft, possibly if they can get enough room but looks like it's hugging this tank pretty good. Transfer case, everything seems really accessible on that one. They put a whole lot of nice guards here underneath. Rot guards is standard here on this version of it. All the service abilities seem super accessible and then all of your cables coming through the floor also really accessible to get to everything that you need to. Exhaust system, big BV to make everything super quiet just like every other one of these newer vehicles. We got a little pre-muffler and a gigantic muffler tucked up in the bed area and then looking back we're gonna go through all this big old fancy new suspension in the rear. Now here in the rear end, it's like the love child between the Wrangler and say like a Ram 1500. Yes, we still kept our Dana rear differential but we went to more of a Dodge Ram style suspension. We've got the four-link suspension. Yes, I knew Wrangler still had that but the geometry of it when where it's mounted looks a lot like a truck. This thing went to a lot beefier suspension parts, the control arms, all steel design, a lot bigger bushings to go along with it. Like I said, reminds you of more of a heavier duty thing like a 1500 truck. The rear shocks are also pretty heavy duty as well. Springs and everything, they're gonna be in standard mounting points just like you would see normally on another Wrangler. They do lift them up a little bit higher to be above the brackets for the control arms. Looking over here to the other side. The other thing I do like is the fact that they made all of your emissions related systems. The canister and the ESIM switch which is also something that is known to go out for Chrysler vehicles, super accessible, easy to get to all of your fuel lines and evaporative lines are right here. They come off super easy as well, easy to get to. Here we are, brakes on the rear, have a look at those. Looks like 10 millimeters to take off the calipers and about 18s to take off the caliper brackets. Also nothing dumb in the way of fasteners there. They give you a lot of brake hose here for a lot of rear suspension travel. It's almost like they want you guys to lift this thing right off the bat. I wonder how many guys will be doing that right away. It's gonna happen. Track bar on this thing mounted really high on the differential off the case. The bracket is welded onto here. It's not bolted on going across. About the standard size bushings that you would see on a normal Wrangler. And then we get into our spare tire. Everything is mounted up underneath of here just like a standard truck would be mounted to be able to get to that spare tire. The access for the spare tire is also through the rear end. It's got a jack that's a screw jack that just lowers that rear spare tire. The other thing that I was more surprised about was the exhaust out here in the rear. One of the things that Chrysler has really kind of wanted to do in a lot of their vehicles was to stylize the exhaust outputs, put these fake dampers and fake exhaust ports into the rear of the vehicle. This one, they said, no thrills, no extra frilly things, and we're just gonna dump it right out here out the back. We're not gonna have any chrome tips or anything stupid like that. You're not even gonna see the dump out on the exhaust. So the exhaust clamps and hangers, very easy to get to. Nothing fancy there if you guys are wanting to change the exhaust in any way. Tons and tons and tons of room to be able to get it out because just like anybody else in America, one of the first things you change is gonna be exhaust. So very easy to get out. It does split right here at the middle. There's a clamp right here in the middle of everything that things will probably be splitting from just behind where all of that exhaust comes to a Y. So for the technical and serviceability of the Gladiator here, I'm gonna have to give this one a nine out of 10. That's just because everything is super easily accessible. You guys are able to get to it, it's super nice. The other parts and everything that it comes with, like I said, it kind of sucks that it's the newer engine that has EGR cooler, all those extra lines to it. And the fact that it is a Wrangler, the engine is a little bit harder to work on, but they make up for it with everything underneath of the vehicle. Really easy to get to everything. All of your modification points that everybody's normally gonna be wanting to do in the way it wheels, tires, suspension. Also gonna be right there easy to get to as well. Lots of manufacturers I see really soon coming out with a whole lot of up-fit options for these. You're gonna be able to do bigger tires, bigger suspension, fit a whole lot of stuff underneath of this really easily. Well boys and girls, that's about all I've got for you today for this review. Hopefully you guys learned something about the actual Jeep Gladiator coming out with it, getting to know some of the technical aspects as well as some of the serviceability of the things that you guys will be looking for down the road. Now, make sure you guys hit the subscribe button as well. I come out with cool, awesome content and I think I'm gonna be coming out with more content on newer vehicles just like this one to give you guys an idea from the technical and from the mechanical aspect just like me to be able to get in and actually work on this vehicle seeing the ins and outs of it and be able to look forward as you guys own these vehicles as well, what you're gonna look for after this thing comes out of warranty. Also turn on that bell notification so you guys get notified when I come out with cool, awesome content. I'm gonna be coming out with a lot more tool content as well here coming up soon. Me and SP Tools have been working together a bunch and I'm gonna be getting a lot more tools to be able to get you guys some of those newer tools to the market, SP Tools is newer here in the States and they're wanting to get their name out there. So I'm getting a hold of quite a few more things. You guys saw the toolbox, you guys saw some of the ratchet wrenches that have come out. So we've got a lot more of those tools coming your way as well as Duramax content all the time. Big, big Duramax stuff coming up. Hopefully we are getting some really big sponsors for some big portions of the build both in the engine bay, some more as well as inside the vehicle, maybe some seat builds too. Make sure you guys stay tuned for that one. Thank you very much for tuning in today. I appreciate it. And as always, you guys stay awesome.