Hit Backroad Trails With Fab Fours Gladiator Overland Racks!

If you’re like some of us here at Fab Fours, the idea of camping with your Jeep comes naturally.

Well, the brand new Overland Rack for the Jeep Gladiator was built with camping comfort in mind, giving you everything needed to carry your camping gear with you and even put up your tent.

Check out this video where CEO Greg Higgs talks about this awesome accessory for the Gladiator and explains its many features, as well as some cool ideas for putting your Gladiator and Overland Rack to great use!

 

Well, overlanding is nothing new, people have been doing it for a long time, particularly in other countries where there’s actually long expanses where you have no amenities and really just want to get out into the bush.

But the concept holds true.

You know, I’m an outdoorsman, I was an Eagle Scout camping my whole life growing up and then my total passion became rock crawling and off-road.

So technically, I’m a little late to the game even, to do this as my own hobby, probably because I like to do a little bit harder trails than your traditional overland rig.

But the balance, now we got kids, taking them camping.

it’s pretty fun, you can see the appeal.

And it’s one of those things where there’s no destination to it, it’s a never-ending journey of updating that rig with all the little tips and tricks, things that make it just perfect for you and your family out there on the trail.

I was recently out near Ouray Colorado, close to Ouray, and it was a whole overlanding thing and to see some of the kits that these guys brought out there was pretty awesome.

I mean, we rolled over in a toy hauler, sleeping with the generator on, but I had to be a little envious of the little shanty town set up with all sorts of cooking and showers and tents and awnings and carpets, pretty rad.&

This is the simple balance of a rig that’s ready to go any time you are, simple tent on top of Fab Fours accessories.

So, you get a Gladiator, it became the perfect foundation.

So we too are now bit by the bug and this is something we’re going to do a lot more of this year.

Not just making videos and products but actually getting out there because it’s awesome.

You know, I love it out west, Colorado, Utah, these rigs will be going out there.

We’re gonna start joining in on some of these adventures because it’s just a fun thing to do.

In the video, you could see just how easy it was to use all this system.

Note, this whole bed lended itself to corner protection, you know, from the first time people saw Gladiators, there’s risk of that huge overhang.

Well, that’s what you get with a bed.

What did you want? A 2 1/2-foot bed on the back? That’d be JL length.

You’re going to get some of that departure angle.

Well, the Rubicon rear’s a really well-built bumper and it actually had protection down below that was tied up into the frame.

We took a cue from that and didn’t really want to rely on any of that structure because some of the non-Rubicons might not have that.

We reinforced, built our own bracket getting to the frame so you can completely support the weight of the vehicle from this corner.

But we didn’t stop there.

So I thought the stock bumper was so nice, I told my team we’d better go no-holds-barred on this rear, otherwise there’s just no reason for people to change it.

Well, we did.

Getting these big corners in with integrated steps and slider tubes, well you can see in the video, you’ve gotta have somewhere to walk around this rig when you’re trying to get on top.

Whether there’s a tent or just gear; maybe you’ve got coolers up there, chairs, all the other paraphernalia you would take if say you had a trailer with your tent on it.

Having access to the top of a rack is not easy.

You know on a pickup truck, it’s typically standing on the tire or only what you can reach from the tailgate.

I had no problem, even having not tested it before, completely standing on our fender systems.

>One of the beauties of having this overskin, the first one for that is future options.

You know, you could grind this down, weld on something to hold a bottle jack, like there’s just things that can be done with this in the future.

But it’s also just a stomp pad, so it’s one of those things, you could have this piece just bed-lined if you wanted more traction to it.

Or if you need to repaint it, it’s easy; you’re not pulling the whole fender system off.

But we have plenty of structure here to support the weight and that was very handy getting to the front of the rack system without ever having to get down.

So I think we had this tent up in about 10 minutes and a lot of that was just having access to the full surround of the bed.

I mean, you can safely step fender to bumper to tailgate to bumper to fender making your way around this rig.

The bumper has this bolt-in kinda logo plate navigator logo to it, love that for just splashing some color it.

It will come black and then you have your options for what to change it to.

This is also a separate feature around the D-ring; the purpose of that, we like that trick red tow hook that the Rubicons came with.

I wanted to give you that option so if you wanted to go with a color match or just red, you can do that to the D-ring area.

So you’ve got the center section, the two bolt-in D-ring mounts which are both for shackle and a hook slot, then the wings that are totally reinforced to the frame.

So we’ve got you from all corners, locked in, this thing will take a beating.

Clearly, as soon as the Gladiator hit you had a bed, everybody’s got a thing for a rack.

So how are you gonna utilize all that space and particularly in the overland theme?

So we went with a very modular concept as far as how this thing’s gonna bolt together and future options, knowing that in that community, there’s no way you can guess what’s most important to that customer of ours, what they’re gonna want to carry.

You want mat tracks, you want a hi-lift jack mount, you want shovels, are you just gonna want to bolt an awning to the side of this thing?

It’s really endless.

So, we give as many options as possible right out of the box.

That’s why we have these 4 bolt flanges all over this thing.

It’s a universal pattern, so that even allows us to have future options we can launch, but same for you; it’s very easy to replicate that, bolt anything you want to it.

But furthermore, you have flat surfaces everywhere that are prone for drilling and bolting.

The rack includes three crossbars, but you can continue purchasing crossbars to the extent that you want to deck the top of this.

You know, it’s adding weight, but yet again, you don’t know what you’re gonna put up there and what the span is in-between, so it gives you that option.

You’ll also see there’s bolts on the inside and gussets to each one of the uprights.

That’s ideally for just using a ratchet strap or hook to it, but the more I’ve looked at this, I’ve envisioned cross members, trays, things that I don’t think Fab Fours is gonna initially bring to market soon, but they’re very easy to fabricate, to build whatever you’re gonna want to.

Like, you could even do it out of wood if you had to.

One awesome thing about the way that this is mounted is that it retains that factory rail, which gives you all those options as far as tie-downs and sliding that back and forth.

It’s really cool; normally you would sacrifice and pick one or the other to have those integrated it’s cool.

Gen 1, here’s what you get. You’ve got to add the lights separately, but it’s got a top rack on top of two side bars.

What’s really cool about this is the next generation, so there’ll be a whole subset that only wants to be behind the cab and there’s a lot of advantages to that because you can still pull the tops easy.

These are so lightweight, you can do it yourself these days and it’s basically not giving you a penny of the versatility of the Gladiator itself.

However, as you can see, a rooftop tent pretty much dominates the entire rack, taking away from further storage and you’re limited on some of the tent sizes.

We are also going to have a full-width rack and the cool innovation that we intend to do here is, this exact same top piece will now become the front so all you have to buy is a riser secondary rear, which will be really cool.

In order to have the best part at each way, that was the perfect blend.

Otherwise, if you had intentions to go forward in the future, this would have been taller than the cab.

So this allowed us to have the perfect look when you’re pre-cab, but then, when you go to the front, we’ll make up that height discrepancy in this middle piece, so it’ll be this tall with the jog and that will be the bolting face that allows this to become the front.

It’s gonna be awesome, I can’t wait to have that thing and you can just load the heck out of it.

You know, for doing passes out in Colorado and some of those trails, and even over where we are on the east coast, just hitting the Smokey Mountains, going to the Burning Rocks and some of those places, you’re not gonna be so extreme that you’ve got to worry so much about the weight, which allows you to worry about the comfort and the camping element.

I think it’s pretty awesome that you can just have a rig sitting in your driveway loaded up, ready to go with everything for a weekend, throw the kids in, dog in, hit the trail and just like we did, throw in some camp chairs, pop up the tent, and you’re set for the weekend!

So, are you ready to go Jamping in style in your new Gladiator?

Get the Overland Rack for the 2020 Jeep Gladiator exclusively from Fab Fours and enjoy luxury overland camping like you never have before!

The 2020 Jeep Gladiator Overland Rack

Another Innovative Design for Better Jeeping from Fab Fours!