5 minute read
REAL LIFE STORIES FROM THE ROAD
JEEPLIFE : NIGHT & DAY
By Tom Bateman, Creative Director
People would ask me all the time, ‘how’s those SumoSprings for the Jeep?’ Honestly, I didn’t know. I thought they’d probably be really good. A er all I’d seen them in use on trucks, SUVs, vans and ridden in them and knew how good they were. But Jeeps, I couldn’t con dently look at an avid fanatic and tell them, ‘this is an upgrade you need for Jeep right now.’ That had to change. I had to know how SumoSprings for the Jeeps performed.
Enter Robby and his 2019 Jeep Wrangler JL.
SETTING THE SCENE
Robby runs the service department for a Toyota dealership in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Since our marketing department is North Idaho, Adam and I made the 7-hour trek down south to install SumoSprings bump stop replacements on Robby’s Jeep - front and rear - and then take it into the wild for a day. And what a day it was.
There’s some things to consider when playing in the Jeep market. First, the point is to make these things even more capable for off-road adventure, so limiting any kind of travel or articulation in the suspension is out of the question. Next, the existing bump stops on the front are located in a cup, inside the coil. Getting them out and a replacement installed means making more of a determined e ort to li the Jeep, disconnecting the sway bar and drag links, and lowering the axle to get the coils out and the SumoSprings in.
The question I kept asking myself was if this upgrade was going to make enough of a difference to justi the effort. Well, I’ll spoil the ending yes; yes it was worth every single second. And I’m not just saying that as the marketing guy who works for the company. I’m saying that because Robby brought a friend who had the exact same Jeep minus the SumoSprings, and it was utterly miserable in his Jeep compared to the absolute breeze in Robby’s.
SO WHAT DID WE DO?
After installing the front and rear kits, we went to one of Robby’s favorite local spots; an area where we could do some proper overlanding, rock crawling, and test these things out the right way. We lmed the whole thing, and had Robby talking about his experience on camera. To test the upgrade, he le his tires aired up (not what you typically do when rock crawling) and quickly pointed out that, “it’s smoother out here than at 9 psi.” Then I heard a phrase from Robby we’ve been accustomed to hearing (though never for the Jeep) — “It’s just a night and day difference.”
Front SumoSprings
Rear SumoSprings
Robby maps trails, and in fact this was his 20-something-th time on this trail which meant he knew it very well, and knew how fast he usually drove on it. I sat in the passenger seat holding a camera while he told me that, “usually a lot of this I would just crawl over, or down. But right now I don’t really mind giving it some speed. I’m able to go a little faster. I have a lot more con dence in taking some harder drops.”
I then asked him if he could feel the SumoSprings engaging and working with the factory suspension to change the ride quality. The way he explained it was that, “it’s weired because you know when it happens, but it’s not harsh; it’s super soft. I can feel it, but it doesn’t shake me around. Probably the best term is every confidence in the ride.” I knew what he was feeling. I was feeling the same thing. It was pleasant. I was happy to be in his Jeep. I had spent enough time in the friends Jeep to know how bad the ride was without SumoSprings.
As we kept hauling over what was clearly supposed to be a slow crawled, rock-infested dirt clearing, I wanted to know why Robby thought this was a necessary upgrade for his Jeep. Without hesitating he told me that he had “a lot of ability to feel like you’re in more control of how the Jeep’s moving, and operating, and doing it’s own thing. It’s tighter, but softer; well designed!"
I came to find out - and this will be no surprise to anyone in the Jeeplife scene - that Robby had spent thousands of dollars on this thing. Everything you could upgrade, replace, or change had been upgraded, replaced, and changed. This was a serious piece of overlanding equipment. And yet interestingly, he hadn’t touched his bump stops. Robby had mentioned that he’d heard poor reports on the hydraulic bump stop replacements that are common - lots of noise and not a lot of support. He wasn’t interested in that investment. So when we agreed to test the SumoSprings on his Jeep he was already intrigued. There’s no way he - there’s no way either of us - thought they’d be as impressive as this. Robby even confessed that, “my bump stops have been a huge part I overlooked. Like, just all the stuff I have done and I left the bump stops stock. I feel like I probably should have done them a long time ago.”
People still ask me, ‘how’s those SumoSprings for the Jeep?’ But now my answer is easy. I use the same phrase Robby does...
It’s a night and day difference.
