With another Father's Day Weekend (Happy Father's Day!) coming to a close, we just returned home from another trip to the NJ Jeep Invasion in Wildwood NJ. This has to be (IMO) one of the best beaches in NJ and possibly most of the Mid-Atlantic states. It is a huge beach and is very wide. It can easily hold close over 2500 Jeeps, all the vendors and their huge rigs along with an obstacle course, all the spectators and still have plenty of room for swimmers!
The event collects non-perishable food for the local food bank in exchange for a raffle ticket per item. The Vendors donate some pretty cool gifts/prizes and you get to stand around watching other people win cool stuff. This is what happens when you stupidly put both halves of your raffle tickets in the bins, sure you double your odds of having one of your tickets picked but you have no idea that it happened nor any proof it was your ticket so they just move on...
I have not seen any official number but I know they at least hit 2500 Jeeps on the beach. I would really expect that the number was higher judging by the crowds. All in all, the city and event organizers do a pretty great job all weekend with really only one snag and that getting on the beach in the mornings. It took almost 2.5 hours to enter the beach. I think they need to open multiple entrances and have separate lines for those who already checked in on Friday and those that are registering for the first time. Other than this, it was a great time.
I am not sure how many manufacturers were on site but here are the ones that I spent the most time with/talking to:
- Metalcloak - they had their CTI machine onsite and I scored a 710! (more on this later)
- Teraflex - Denis was present with Slimer and quite a bit of new JL products
- Rockslide Engineering - they had one Jeep there with their bumpers, fenders and steps. Never saw anyone at the booth to talk to
- Artec Industires - Had their Jeep onsite and some JL parts to view
- ARB - Had their JL with their new rear bumper but still no sign of the Bondi bumper I want!
- AEV - Had their JL present, one of the ones from SEMA with their prototype bumpers. My wife and I really like the new rear fender. It perfectly lines up with the JL fenders and compliments them very nicely. I thin kI will wait until October (rumored release date) and pick one up.
- Rugged Ridge - always have a big pressence at the show and sell items for charity so I have to give them respect. They also had their JL present with some really cool tube doors ($$$) and their prototype bumpers. They had a pretty nice setup.
- Motobilt - First time I have seen them at the show and they had a great booth with a few Jeeps and their parts racks. Looks like really nice builds.
- Skyjacker - Had a pretty good sale on their lower control arms and two of their JLs present
- Bestop - Was on site with their aluminum half doors and JL top. Still waiting for them to release the TrekTop Pro in Tan for the JL!
- many more I did not spend as much time visiting with the exception of the Beef Jerky guy!
The vendor list was also equally as long but I only hit a few that I am most familiar with:
- Globex Performance - always great to see the guys at the show and they had a big display of their Jeeps including their new Gladiator and a literal ton of 40" tires!
- OK4WD had a huge booth with several of their vendors present and a couple of their Overlanding rigs. I love seeing how they outfit them.
- Quadratec - They had their buggy on display and a table setup with their catalogs but did not here about any Geocans hidden around the place like they have done in the past.
Lastly, the obstacle course was built once again by Raush Creek and it is always a fun time driving on it. I must admit that this was my first time driving it with my JL Rubicon and it was much different than driving it with my old JK. Still really amazed how much of an improvement the JL is over the JK!
I have never done this before and it was a cool experience, I scored a 710 which seems to be about average but I have no idea how stock vs. upgraded affects the numbers nor do I know what real effect my "mixed" build looks like. To give you a comparison, from the Metalcloak literature:
- Metalcloak - 905
- Synergy - 780
- Rock Krawler - 750
- BDS - 735
- Teraflex - 685
- Rubicon Express - 660
- AEV - 640
- Stock JK 540
So based on my Rock Krawler/Teraflex mixed lift, my 710 score seems to be pretty on point. I also only have a 2/5 inch lift with stock control arms so I am not sure what the lifts looked like that produced the numbers above. I plan on doing some more research into the numbers but it was fun to see how my JL stacked up.
I will follow up with a couple galleries in the next posts so you can see some of what it is like in Wildwood.
The Journey is what counts, Adventure Awaits!
