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Need Advice on Mountain Road Driving

7K views 31 replies 16 participants last post by  acilate 
#1 ·
I have a 2014 Overland with the V6 and ORAII that I need to drive up a very steep mountain road. The road is paved the entire way, but has some of the steepest switch-backs I have ever seen. I have driven the road before in my old 2001 Grand Cherokee but it had a V8 engine.

My question is, should I use 4-wheel low when going up and down this road or is that bad for the drive train or axles going up a steep, paved road with extremely sharp turns? You can see the top of the road if you cut and paste these coordinates into Google Earth:

39 12 17.62 N 121 49 11.53 W

At one point, the road gains 250' elevation in just over 750' horizontal. With no guard rails and a 1,000'+ fall into the valley, you don't get to make two mistakes on a road like this! :eek:
 
#3 ·
What about putting the transmission in Sport mode and using the paddle shifters to keep the transmission in the lowest gears?
 
#5 ·
I would agree with SLLJC put in sport mode and use paddle shifters if needed. If you need on one steep place you can put into low but going up all the way at low gear with those sharp turns does not seem to be a good option.

By the way the road seems to be a fun to drive road but little scary since it is in the middle of no where.
What is at the top? looks like there are two high towers which you can access with a lift.
 
#6 · (Edited)
Dont put it into 4wd Lo. That gear is just for a very short time and in places where there is no traction, in other words a last ditch effort. If you put 4 lo on paved road like that you can VERY easily lose control or burn your engine out. Turns in 4lo also tend to make some pretty bad noises from the drive train. I would keep it in regular 4wd and put it into 1st or 2nd gear depending on how high the revs are. You can shift into 2nd half way up the hill. Your wk2's v6 makes more power, like 50 hp more, than your old wjs v8 btw. I have driven up some scary roads in the mountains and I know how you feel man. Good Luck!
 
#8 ·
+1 Never use 4 wheel low on paved roads. There is probably a warning about it in the Owner's Manual

As far as which gear to use, you'll have to decide that as you go. I don't know the road, but if you see an old VW Beetle passing you, you probably over thought this trip. :)


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#7 ·
I started getting vertigo looking at the Google Earth views of that place. Awesome! Please post some pictures if you survive! All kidding aside, SLLJG has the right idea. Control is the name of the game. 4wd Lo is for traction problems. You shouldn't have to deal with those on a paved road. Speed is what you want to control, especially on the way back down.
 
#9 ·
I drive from Portland to San Diego once a year or so and I've driven past that turnoff many, many times. I'll have to check it out!!! I've driven the other way, highway 20 west of Williams towards Ft. Bragg, but never to the east.

I agree with others. Don't use low unless you're on a low traction surface.

Tony
 
#11 ·
You can see the Sutter Buttes very easily from HWY 5 almost anywhere between Red Bluff and Sacramento, but unfortunately, the road is private and very securely locked. I go up there since there is a communications site at the top and I am the Chief Engineer of two of the FM stations with transmitters there. It's definitely a "white knuckle" drive!

For a fun off-road drive, try Shasta Bally west of Redding, which is open to the public during the summer months. You gain 5,000' of elevation in just 7 miles of 'washboard' dirt/rock road and end up a com site 6,200' AMSL. That would be a good candidate for the "Rock" setting!
 
#10 ·
You will be fine. It is a paved road so no need for 4-lo. Just drive slow and don't get mesmerized by the view while driving. If you want to enjoy the view, stop the Jeep first. :)

And post pictures please!!

Cheers,
-A
 
#14 ·
#15 ·
Wow it is narrower than I imagined. I see that the thing I guessed as a lift is a tram.

It will easily make to the top in auto mode. But since the road is narrow and sharp turns you may want to keep a little more control on it using the paddle shifters.

It is not that steep, in europe people drive 1.4L-1.6L 4 cyl to mountains. Those are 90-100hp cars. The key is to keep it in the correct gear. Don`t worry to rev it up little bit 3-4k`s.
 
#16 ·
If on asphalt absolutely no need for 4WD Low. Just take thee car out of ECO mode. Why sport? You don't have to be in sport mode to control gears manually.

And you should not be afraid of trigonometry. You have the horizontal distance over which it gains the said elevation. You can calculate the grade but that is the overall angle as if everything would be driven in a straight line. Chances are that the road will snake around and it is not going to be that steep.

At any rate, having just driven 4000 miles in some of our country's most beautiful mountains, I can reassure you that there is nothing that the 3.6 L V6 will not conquer. F course pulling your 30 foot camper behind the Jeep up that road might be tricky in itself and you'll be left wanting for power but if you just have a loaded Jeep, you'll be fine.
 
#18 ·
If on asphalt absolutely no need for 4WD Low. Just take thee car out of ECO mode. Why sport? You don't have to be in sport mode to control gears manually.

<snip>

At any rate, having just driven 4000 miles in some of our country's most beautiful mountains, I can reassure you that there is nothing that the 3.6 L V6 will not conquer. F course pulling your 30 foot camper behind the Jeep up that road might be tricky in itself and you'll be left wanting for power but if you just have a loaded Jeep, you'll be fine.
I feel reassured! Also, I got to thinking that Sport mode is supposed to transfer more of the power to the rear axle to give more of a "rear wheel drive" feeling. I believe Auto mode is a 60/40 split which should be better for traction.

It would be a drag to encounter another vehicle going the other way! My first time up the road with my 2001 V8 GJC Limited, there was no place to park at the top and I had to back down about 100 yards to turn around. Steep drops on both sides of the road...my neck was sore for a week!</snip>
 
#17 ·
Nice video. 1800+ elevation gain from the starting point. The road looks steep, but nothing your Jeep can't handle especially it is all paved. I have taken my Jeeps on a much steeper dirt road and they did fine. Just make sure no one is coming the opposite direction when you are on that road. LOL.

Here is a time lapse video of me driving down from Mt. Evans few weeks ago. Not scary at all. Watch in HD for better quality. :)

Driving down from Mt. Evans, Colorado (14265 feet) Timelapse - YouTube

Cheers,
-A
 
#19 ·
I can't help but thinking about the guys who cut that road, paved it, and erected that tower.
 
#20 ·
Here is how they built one of the towers:

Siller - Sutter Buttes Tower Project - YouTube

I know a lot of the guys in the video. Interesting fact...the first helicopter in the video that carries the concrete is the very same chopper that was used to carry Richard Nixon back and forth to the White House!
 
#21 ·
That road is no big deal. I saw only one turn that was extra scary, the rest seemed to have run off. Keep your eyes on the inside line, towards the hillsides, this will avoid any problems you might have with target fixation (if you you fixate on anything at all, you end up hitting the hillside -- no big deal).

Going up hill will not be a problem, but you will want to keep it in a low gear going down hill. You don't need a Jeep for this road, you can use pretty much any car.

It's steep, and there's tight switch backs, but they aren't dramatically worse than what you get on the road up to Mt. Palomar ( http://goo.gl/maps/SOgqR ) (which is a normal "highway") or Mt. Baldy ( http://goo.gl/maps/ibQs5 ) , both here in So. Cal.

It's no "Black Bear Road" ( http://goo.gl/maps/3BFzx ), that's for sure.
 
#23 ·
I finally drove the road today and the Jeep performed perfectly! I ran in Auto mode and 1st gear and the RPM's around 3,000 all the way up and down and had no problems. The 3.6 L V6 had plenty of power to make it up the steepest, tightest turns all the way to the top. The drive up was a bit scary, but going down was a piece of cake!

The pictures are taken from about 2,000' above the valley floor on the tram that gets you to the top where the comm site is located. In the close-up, the Rocky Road Outfitters rack is visible.
 

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#24 ·
Glad you made it. I was going to add before you did the drive not to sweat it too much.

There's a drive I love in SW Colorado headed to Moab. Through paradox canyon. At the end there's a switch back about 3 miles long with 180s all the way up. Very steep grade (36% I believe). I made the drive many times in my 98 ford contour. 4cyl, front wheel drive. Granted its a much lighter car. But slow and stead no problem.

Coincidentally my 95 zj (after I got rid of the dirty cont (our) had a little difficulty. Not with the drive but fuel. If I had less than 1/3 tank going up I had to turn around every 15 min to prevent stalling. Figured I was loosing fuel suction.
 
#25 ·
Looking forward to taking a EPA trip out there in the spring/early summer once I get the ecodiesel. All f my friends still in telluride swear by their subarus. HA! Funny story. At red mountain pass his car shuts off the turbo because the O2 sensors are detecting low oxygen. Had to drove the car to dealer to turn it back on. Seems exact opposite of what you want.
 
#27 · (Edited)
Looking forward to taking a EPA trip out there in the spring/early summer once I get the ecodiesel. All f my friends still in telluride swear by their subarus. HA! Funny story. At red mountain pass his car shuts off the turbo because the O2 sensors are detecting low oxygen. Had to drove the car to dealer to turn it back on. Seems exact opposite of what you want.
This statement is NOT correct. The turbo is a mechanical device that cannot be turned off on its own, separately. If the car could be driven to the dealership, then nothing was shut off - not the engine, not the turbo. The turbo's operation is dependent on the engine's hot exhaust. If the engine works, the turbo does. And if the turbo fails, the engine fails in the next 10 seconds, having sucked all the debris (if the blades get destroyed) or the engine will feel massively underpowered, if it is a turbo oil leak/coolant leak issue.

I also doubt the CEL (Check Engine Light) for the O2 sensor - but then again, on Subaru, people's experience with O2 sensors falls into 2 categories: those that always have problems and those that drive 200,000 miles on the same O2 sensor, beating the crap out of the car and modding the engine to within 100 rpm of its death, and then get rid of the car, with a perfectly functioning O2 sensor inside.

I've driven my modded Subaru at high altitudes and never had an issue. There's nothing but joy driving it, knowing that most everybody else's non-forced induction engine is astmathic. I mean, that's when the guy with his 6.4 L V8 Corvette gets owned by a turbo 2.5 H4 (modded, I admit).
 
#29 ·
Indeed it is! An old extinct (I hope!) volcano that rises out of the very flat, near sea level land up to nearly 2,200'. What makes it look so stark is that the areas nearby are so flat, that much of it is used for rice paddies. There are some rolling hills you can see in the pictures, but the terrain is generally flat from the Sacramento Delta all the way up to Redding. And then, this big, jagged mountain just sticks up in the middle of it! Really quite a rush driving up and down the private access road to the radio site at the summit.
 
#28 ·
F1anatic:


My apologies. I should have explained that my expertise regarding subarus includes the hand full of times I drove them (and they're excellent and fun to drive). And my expertise on turbos included only those attached to 16,000 hp medium speed diesel plants on ships. Which can infact be disabled and the engine still operate. Though not very efficiently.

I am neither a mechanic not a Subaru owner and had to take my compadres word on the issue. Which came about as such.

Driving over red mountain pass in a snow storm in December, the check engine light came on and we lost a dramatic amount of horse power.

The car made it back. And a few days later he drove it to the dealership some 2 hours away.

I inquired eventual weeks later what ha occurred and he explained something regarding the o2 sensor and turbo and that it wasn't the first time it had happened.

I suppose my mind filled in the blanks incorrectly. It wasn't meant to be a dog on subarus (I'm quite a big fan) nor intentionally misleading. Regardless, he's got it worked out. I only meant to convey that several times when that particular car had been over 11,000 ft he's had problems that caused him to lose hp when he needed it most.

To all at JG, I'm sorry if this seemed sensationalized or inaccurate.
B
 
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