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Rookie off road experience with Badlands non-sas

Glue Guy

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Hit Gulches off road park in SC last weekend with a buddy. Driving my stock non-sad badlands. I’ve had it off road at a friends place a couple times, but nothing like what we experienced at Gulches.

Pretty intimidating pulling up and seeing a high percentage of custom built jeeps that look more like buggies. “Oh my. What are we doing here…?”

first off. Lot of staring at at us. Not a lot of introductions from others, with one big exception of a great guy who helped us through some things and gave a lot of pointers. People did warm up to us after a bit though. Yeah, mostly Wranglers on the range of the custom scale. A few modded Tacoma’s. Nothing very stock, and definitely no other Broncos. We had a few guys who were obviously following us around to see what happened. Some mildly ummm… skeptical of the Bronco. Some just curious.

we covered the greens /and the blues. Wisely avoided the black diamonds+. We rode the park for almost 6 hours.

a few takeaways. 1) the Bronco is amazingly capable for a stock vehicle. If there was uncertainty about whether we’d be able to handle an obstacle, not once did it disappoint. 2) Very glad I have the steel underbody panels. They now have a shiny silver appearance! 3) I love the 33s, and didn’t get SAS due to the gas mileage impact, but this excursion had me second guessing that. 4) front and rear lockers… what an amazing difference lockers make. Had no idea. Night and day, and the sway bar disconnect at the push of a button. So spoiled with those features!
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thecaptain

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Thx for posting this. I have a non-Sas BL ordered, so I'm always interested whenever someone with the same build posts their real-world experiences.
 

DREWR13

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Hit Gulches off road park in SC last weekend with a buddy. Driving my stock non-sad badlands. I’ve had it off road at a friends place a couple times, but nothing like what we experienced at Gulches.

Pretty intimidating pulling up and seeing a high percentage of custom built jeeps that look more like buggies. “Oh my. What are we doing here…?”

first off. Lot of staring at at us. Not a lot of introductions from others, with one big exception of a great guy who helped us through some things and gave a lot of pointers. People did warm up to us after a bit though. Yeah, mostly Wranglers on the range of the custom scale. A few modded Tacoma’s. Nothing very stock, and definitely no other Broncos. We had a few guys who were obviously following us around to see what happened. Some mildly ummm… skeptical of the Bronco. Some just curious.

we covered the greens /and the blues. Wisely avoided the black diamonds+. We rode the park for almost 6 hours.

a few takeaways. 1) the Bronco is amazingly capable for a stock vehicle. If there was uncertainty about whether we’d be able to handle an obstacle, not once did it disappoint. 2) Very glad I have the steel underbody panels. They now have a shiny silver appearance! 3) I love the 33s, and didn’t get SAS due to the gas mileage impact, but this excursion had me second guessing that. 4) front and rear lockers… what an amazing difference lockers make. Had no idea. Night and day, and the sway bar disconnect at the push of a button. So spoiled with those features!
Awesome to hear. I want to make a trip out to Gulches as well.
 

LostInArizona

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Realistically the sas package tires only buy you an extra inch of clearance under the axle, the rest of the sas height difference (less than an inch) is suspension. At best your entry, exit and break over angles might be 1 degree more, but it's unlikely to be noticable. That said, it's reasonable to assume a non sas should be able to do almost if not everything a sas bronco can do. Most of what you're paying for from nom-sas badlands to sas is just the beadlock capable wheels.

You might, as you experienced, take advantage of those skid plates a bit more, but for the most part it shouldn't make that much of a difference. Where you WILL start to notice a big difference is going to 37s or greater. So if you plan to upgrade, but don't want to go too crazy a 2-3 inch leveling lift and 37s seems like sweet spot from most of what I've seen without stressing your CV axles and tie rods too much. You'll have to remove the crash bars or course.

Personally I will be sticking with the 33s on my non-sas badlands and just getting some extra underbody protection. Although I'm more of a relaxing over-landing kind of guy, not so much rock crawling unless it's unavoidable. In which case I'd generally take the easiest route up lol! No stress for me in my DD! 🤣

I'll buy and tow a buggy for the crazy stuff if I get an itch to follow the hard core rigs up the rocks.
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