OGT Expedition 2.0: Offroad Shake Down

Having only done overland trips with the tiny Jeep tub trailer, I was not sure how well the much bigger (and much more expensive) OGT Exp 2.0 was going to do off road. I mean, I knew it was going to do fine on 90% of the roads/trails I’d be taking it on, but what about the other 10% I might find my self on due to detours or changing weather conditions? I wanted to get a decent feel for this thing behind the HOPL1TE and see what the two could do together. I wanted to this little shake down run close to home in a location that was not remote. That way if I stuck it too deep into something that really stung, I would not be out in the middle of know where trying to figure out how to get back home.

As such, I hit RAM offroad park which is just several miles down the road from my house. I have been to RAM before with just the HOPL1TE, so I know where things were and what was in store for me. There are not any real rock crawling sections I could attempt with ASP1S in tow, so I set out to test how well it went up and over steep hills, how the break controller functioned and things that nature.

One of the first things I noticed was that I need to manually adjust my brake controller based on the terrain and hills I was going down. Even with the trailer pretty much empty, it was pushing the Jeep down the hills when traction was not the best. By manually dialing up the controller until the trailer brakes would lockup, I was able to use the trailer as sort of an anchor to help slow the decent.

The relatively short trailer tongue made it easy to crest some pretty steep hills. The Max Coupler hitch also helped greatly in those conditions.

Where the short trailer tongue was not an advantage was when going in and out of steep banked ditches. This is even more of an issue for Jeeps with their spare tires mounted to the back. As you can see in the photo above, mine was within inches of contacting the Front Box of the trailer. My spare does sit out further from the Jeep than a stock setup, but there would still not be much room back there with a stock setup. Had the trailer’s spare tire been mounted for this shake down run, the two spares would have made contact much earlier and possibly dented the Front Box. This is something I’m going to have to sort out while I still have the JKUR.

Straight from OGT, the Expedition 2.0 is setup very well to tow behind a Jeep Wrangler JKU or JLU. Towing a trailer like this you have to find the right balance of maneuverability off road and stability on road. Those two things are in direct competition with each other and both are highly influenced by the trailer’s “wheel base”. A trailer’s wheel base is measured from the center of the hitch point (the metal pin on the Max Coupler or the ball in a ball hitch system) to the center of the axle. The shorter the wheel base, the more maneuverable the trailer will be. It will turn tighter, both following your tow vehicle and backing up. Lengthen the wheel base and it turns wider but becomes more stable when being towed behind your vehicle. The way to get the best balance of these two is to have the trailer’s wheel base match the tow vehicle’s wheel base as close as possible. If you can do that, the trailer will track very close to the same as your tow vehicle (the trailer tire tracks should led on your vehicle’s tire tracks during turns).

As I mentioned before, the Expedition 2.0 is setup nicely for a Jeep because the trailer wheel base is within about 2 inches of the Jeep JKU’s.

This shake down run gave me a great idea of what it and the Jeep could do together and let me find out what I was willing to do with them as well. Being able to do this in a low stress environment just down the road from my house was a big plus and I’m glad I took the opportunity to make this little trip.

Everything adds up to being able to camp pretty much where ever you want to!