Ryan: I'm Ryan from extremeterrain.com, and in this episode of Throttle Out, we are gonna
dig into a feud that's been raging on the forums for the past 10 years, pretty much
since the JK came out, which is better on the trails?
Either the two-door JK or the four-door JK.
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videos like this one, as well as some other comparison videos that we've done, like a
video comparing East Coast wheeling versus West Coast wheeling.
But in order to get into the two-door versus four-door feud, we have out here a couple
of Jeeps from the fleet, of course, the two-door and four-door JK and are both similarly set
up.
They both have 3-and-a-half-inch JKS lift kits on them.
They're both wearing 35-inch tires.
And the four-door does have a little bit more armor on it, and that's for a good reason.
We're gonna talk a little bit more about that in just a second.
But now, let's get out on the trails and see which one is gonna do better.
So, first things first, and this is going to be the most obvious thing, a four-door
JK is going to have a lot more space in it.
We're bouncing down this trail.
It's a pretty light trail where we've got this thing loaded up, a bunch of camera bags
in the back.
We've got a couple of big full-grown cameramen here.
You can see a guy in the back, guy in the front.
We even have room for a fourth guy and all of our gear in this big four-door JK, and
of course in the two-door, not going to be the case.
Trying to fit all this gear in there and a couple of guys is just not going to work.
Now, trails like these are the type of trails that a lot of you guys are using your Jeep
for.
You're trying to get back and forth from a campsite.
You wanna be able to bring a bunch of gear and a bunch of friends.
Or maybe you just don't have any hardcore wheeling around you so it's more dirt roads
like this.
And in that case, if you wanna have a lot of extra space, the four-door is definitely
gonna be the winner.
So the four-door Jeep obviously wins when you're talking about space and fitting more
people in it.
I don't think that was gonna be a surprise to anybody.
But as you can see by the terrain, we are in a little bit more of a hardcore off-road
situation than we were when we were rolling down that fire trail, and this is where the
two-door is going to be a little bit more beneficial.
It has that nice, compact wheelbase.
You can get around corners a little bit easier, and you're not going to be dragging things
on the ground quite as much as you will with the longer four-door.
With the four-door, you're definitely gonna wanna make sure you have rock sliders and
underbelly skid plates, because, again, you do a lot more dragging due to the longer wheelbase.
This Jeep, just running some factory skid plates, no rock sliders and we're gonna be
able to get over obstacles without dragging quite as much.
Now, that's not to say you don't need armor on your two-door.
Armor is always a good thing.
It's definitely gonna give you some peace of mind and allow you attack obstacles that
you otherwise wouldn't knowing you're not gonna have any sort of damage, but it's not
going to be quite as necessary on the more compact two-door.
So a term you see thrown around a lot is breakover angle, and what that really is is the angle
between the front tire, the lowest point between the tires, and then the rear tire.
And what that leads to in the real world is the ability to go over a hill, to crest a
hill.
With a more compact wheelbase, like we have here on the two-door, you can go over a steeper
hill.
You can crest that hill without dragging the belly of the Jeep on the ground.
With the four-door Jeep, that's not going to work out as well.
As you can see here, you have the longer wheelbase.
That angle between the tire, and the center of the frame, and the front tire is going
to be flatter, meaning that your breakover angle is also going to be flatter.
You're not going to be able to get over as much without dragging the belly, and that's
why we're talking about armor here.
We're talking about rock sliders and underbelly armor, and you're gonna wanna have some more
of that armor on your four-door because you are gonna be dragging a lot more.
What we're talking about here is more about the rock sliders.
I wanted to get through an obstacle here.
Started bringing the big four-door in.
I had to do a three-point turn to kind of get her set up in here.
And now that we're set up, we're definitely gonna be using those rock sliders between
the tree and the rock on the other side of this obstacle.
Something is going to be dragging.
So like I said, we're gonna try this obstacle here with the four-door JK.
It's already been a little bit of work to get it positioned down in here.
I'm gonna go ahead and probably have to do at least one more K-turn to get it spun around.
And like I said, chances are, and it's a pretty good chance, we're gonna end up using those
rock sliders, so let's see what we can do.
It's definitely a little tight in this long wheelbase.
Roll my window down so I can see my line a little bit because I have that tree on the
left-hand side.
Like I said, I had the sliders.
I'm okay using them.
I just wanna make sure I know where everything is.
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All right, so we made it through.
It was eventful, we'll say.
May have cracked not one but two flares.
Definitely rubbed the roof on the tree a little bit.
I hopefully didn't remove any paint.
That's a pretty gnarly obstacle.
It was a lot of fun, and we definitely got to prove our point.
We definitely showed that you need sliders, you need armor when you're trying to maneuver
a big four-door Jeep around some of these sharper corners.
So now we're gonna go ahead and attack the same thing with the two-door.
It is pretty gnarly, so there's a chance that we might end up wishing we had some skid plates.
But we're definitely gonna be in better than we are with that four-door having the shorter
wheelbase in this Jeep, so let's see what happens.
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Man 1: You're looking good right now.
Yeah, slowly.
Ryan: So I could definitely hear it and feel it on the inside of the Jeep.
We did not make contact on the rocker like we did with the four-door, and that was pretty
much the same line all the way down to the body damage on the top.
So that's a pretty good one-to-one, apples-to-apples comparison.
Having that longer wheelbase definitely needed the rockers.
Here, trust me, I would have felt a little more comfortable with rock sliders, but we
didn't need them.
We didn't make contact.
So the next thing we're gonna really illustrate here is underbelly skid plates and the importance
of having them, or when you're in the two-door, how you don't necessarily need them quite
as much.
And really, the thought process behind that is closely related to the breakover angle
that we already talked about, and the fact that you can keep more tires up on the high
stuff, up on the rocks with the two-door more of the time than you can with a much longer
four-door.
So that's what we're gonna illustrate here.
Looking at this obstacle, chances are we're gonna end up using the factory skid plates
that are on the two-door that I'm driving right now.
But with the four-door, we're definitely gonna be glad that we have those aftermarket skid
plates that are gonna be a little bit stronger and give us a little bit more coverage.
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So just came down very solidly on that transmission skid plate here in the two-door.
Luckily, we didn't come down on it until we were about midway down the Jeep, and that
is a testament to having that shorter wheelbase, but we are using those factory skid plates
as they were designed for.
And if we had a much larger, something like an oil pan, transmission skid plate, something
thicker, something with some nice countersunk bolt heads, you know, a really nice piece
like we have on the four-door, I wouldn't be quite as worried about it.
We'd be able to slide over and drag over those obstacles.
So I'm gonna hook to my spotter here.
We're gonna see if we can't get off the belly pan skid plate that's on this Jeep from the
factory, and we'll hop in the four-door and really illustrate how those skid plates slide
over some obstacles.
Like I said before, if the two-door drug, the four-door is definitely gonna drag, but
we have some aftermarket skid plates on this one that's gonna give me a little bit more
peace of mind and obviously slide over without getting hung up quite as much.
They're not showing us anything we don't know here.
We're definitely gonna drag.
But I wanted the obstacle, so here we go.
Oh yeah, that was nice and solid.
It's definitely one of those things where, yeah, I know I'm protected underneath there.
I know I'm not gonna punch to the oil pan.
I know I'm not gonna do damage to the transmission, and all of that is great.
But it's also the peace of mind of knowing that I can attack an obstacle like this in
a long four-door where I know I'm gonna drag, know I'm not gonna do any damage.
So I can just go out there, have fun, watch my spotter, take on the obstacle, and move
onto the next one without ending the day.
So the last obstacle we're gonna hit today is probably the most hardcore obstacle that
we've done all day, and it's really going to illustrate getting eye-centered, using
those belly pan skid plates, and maybe a rock slider or two.
Just, in general, how that longer wheelbase is going to be a little bit tougher when you're
going over these major obstacles, and how you're probably going to wanna have some good
armor in place when you do.
So this obstacle, like I said, probably the most hardcore one that we've hit.
I hit this with my TJ the last time we were here and then tried it with a four-door JK
and it was definitely a little bit more difficult.
So right along the right-hand side here is what we're gonna hit.
I'm gonna hop in the two-door and try it first.
It should make it.
Again, a TJ made it.
This is roughly the same wheelbase.
And then we'll give it a go in the four-door.
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So that was still a little bit sketchy in the two-door, but we were able to make it.
We weren't dragging the bottom of the Jeep over anything.
It was really just difficult because of the loose dirt and the snow on the rocks, but
we were still able to make it.
I think we're definitely gonna do a little bit more dragging and it's gonna be a little
more difficult in the four-door, so let's give it a go.
Now, like I've been saying all day, this thing is armored up.
It's gonna slide over obstacles a little bit easier, which is definitely nice, but I still
think the long wheelbase is just gonna be too much for this obstacle.
It's pretty sheer.
It's pretty steep up at the top.
But hey, let's give it a go and see what happens.
I can already tell you I am way more into this tree than I was in the two-door.
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I definitely felt that.
I'm sure you guys heard that when we came down really hard on what looks like the rock
slider here, and that is a prime example of two-door versus four-door in a hardcore wheeling
example like this.
The two-door did not have the same issue as the four-door.
It's a longer wheelbase, you're gonna get hung up more.
Make sure you have your armor in place before trying something like this.
All right, so we got hung up pretty hard on that rock slider.
We're gonna go ahead and back off this obstacle here.
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Well, when you're going up an obstacle like that, the real danger comes in when you start
spinning tires and you can get yourself sideways and end up toppling back down the obstacle,
which is certainly something we didn't wanna do.
We probably could have stacked some rocks.
I could have tried a different line.
We could have hooked up a winch line.
There are always ways to give you a better shot, but what this video is all about is
really illustrating the differences between your two-door and the four-door, and I think
that right there did it.
We came down hard on those rockers because this thing has a longer wheelbase.
The two-door made it through without a problem.
So that's gonna do it for this video.
I think we did a really good job of pointing out the big differences between the two-door
and the four-door JK.
And if you're doing some more hardcore wheeling, I would say that the two-door is going to
take it.
It makes it over those obstacles that much easier than that four-door is going to.
If you have the proper armor and the proper gear on your four-door, you can slide over
those obstacles, where you're gonna clear them a lot easier in a two-door JK.
With that being said, if you're just running those fire trails, you're getting back and
forth to the campsite, you need to carry a lot of gear and have a lot of people, obviously,
the four-door is gonna take it.
So in the end, it's really up to you.
It just depends on how you're gonna be using your Jeep.
And the most important thing is that you're in a Jeep, you're off-road, and you're having
a blast.
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