METALCLOAK VIDEO: We Took an INEOS Grenadier Through the Rubicon Trail… Here’s the Damage
Scott Becker gives the MetalCloak INEOS Grenadier a complete post Rubicon Trail inspection, covering the front skid plate, steering stabilizer clearance, UnderCloak, Gas Tank and Differential Skid Plates, control arms, factory rear skid, Rock Sliders, factory bumpers, steps, wheels, tires, shocks, and rear tow hooks. The Grenadier completed the trail successfully, with the steel protection taking substantial scrapes and hits, while the factory bumpers proved less suited to serious rock crawling.
Complete Transcript w/ Images:
[00:00] Hey, Scott Becker here with MetalCloak. You know a lot of people are asking how'd the Grenadier do on the Rubicon Trail? Well, we're gonna do a quick walk around and show you the kind of damage that we got and the UnderCloak and how it fared on the Rubicon Trail. Come on through.
[00:14] So first off, we've got the front skid plate. We did definitely hit it. I spent a lot of time trying to navigate away from this area because you do have the plastic radiator right underneath here. But we did hit it for sure.
[00:25] As we walk under, you can see I just caught this bracket right here for the steering stabilizer. However, our steering stabilizer is pushed way up out of the way compared to the stock height, so we had no issues with the steering stabilizer.
[00:38] As we come through, this skid plate was absolutely instrumental. I mean, I hit this on pretty much everything. You can even see this bolt right here. Take a look at this one. Right there, this bolt is literally shaved off from hitting it so many times. It's pretty low on the ground when you're running on 33's on the trail.
[00:58] Looks like we got some bracket right here. The control arm for sure. This control arm definitely hit this. The passenger side control arm definitely hit that.
[01:11] Coming up, we've got the factory mounts right here on the control arm. Definitely hit that.
[01:17] The skid plates, the UnderCloak. You can see the flat section right here that we've literally just slid on almost every rock because it's just not tall enough to fit over the top a lot of this stuff. You can see it just kind of shaved off the coloring on there as it slid through.
[01:32] There's some definitely hard hits on there too, but definitely just sliding over everything, and that's why we use steel because steel is a lot harder than, say, aluminum and it slides off the rocks a lot easier. You can see on the sides of the UnderCloak over here, we've definitely got some scrapes and scuffs.
[01:51] We go back to that Gas Tank Skid Plate. This thing took some hits for sure. All the way through here.
[01:59] How about some of the factory parts right here? Hit the boot here, popped the clip off and got a little rip in the boot. Otherwise than that, it made it okay.
[02:09] We got the control arms over here. This bracket took a nice hit.
[02:13] Control arms, this differential skid plate in the back definitely took a hit. We've got some good scuffs and scrapes on that.
[02:23] This control arm over here, definitely.
[02:26] A lot of people were wondering what was gonna happen with the factory skid behind here with the muffler. You know, we have the brace plate in here and we nailed this thing a bunch of times. But look at what, considering how many times this got hit on rocks, it's in pretty phenomenal shape. It worked really well.
[02:43] So let's walk around the outside real quick and take a look. Definitely hit the factory bumper here. We got some scuffs and scrapes.
[02:53] These Rock Sliders. I was on these Rock Sliders probably 90% of the time on the trail. It just seemed like everything was a little narrower than the Grenadier and I was always tilted over at an angle sliding across these things. So tons of use on these rock sliders. I shaved off an inch of metal on these things practically.
[03:26] How about the width? It's definitely a little bit wider. I caught just the sticker on the door here, but I hit the outside step here.
[03:34] And actually, if you take a look at the back step, you can see how I just barely scuffed that. Now that could just be driver error, but I'll tell you the trail is really tight for these wide vehicles. The Grenadier fits through just barely all around.
[03:51] And we're back to the front. You know, the front bumper, actually, we got a couple little hits on it, not too much. A couple scrapes and scuffs, but still looks pretty good. A little dent right here on the bumper, but held up pretty well.
[04:02] Then we'll go down this Rock Slider here again, and just, you can take a look at the hits on this thing as it goes through. Again, it felt like I was on these things about 90% of the trail.
[04:19] The Milestar tires with the Nomad wheels definitely took some serious abuse out there. We've got scrapes all the way around those things. They are not beadlocks. About 33" tires. They're a metric tire. They did fantastic on the trail. Hooked up really well.
[04:34] Rocksport Black Shocks did great, keeping me from swaying back and forth. But you can tell when you take a look at this. I mean, we were flexing this thing out as much as you possibly could. It was flexing to the max.
[04:45] Anyways... We definitely caught, we took off the trailer hitch because that was a definite hang-up point. But we did also catch, you can see where we caught the trailer hooks right there, the tow hooks.
[04:57] And that about wraps it up. If you take a look at what this looks like now, it definitely, the factory bumpers, probably not your best off-road option. There's a lot of options out there. I would probably not recommend trying to take your factory bumpers through the Rubicon Trail.
[05:13] Anyways, that's kind of a quick wrap-up of how the Grenadier did. It did great on the trail. We had a great time out there.
[05:21] And yeah, MetalCloak made it through the Rubicon Trail with the Grenadier.
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