[Marek K]

I've written several posts in this thread about dispersed "car" camping here in the Colorado Front Range with our new Trailhawk. I'd also mentioned at the beginning that one of the reasons we got the vehicle was to get to backpacking trailheads not accessible by normal cars. At our age, we're in no shape to backpack miles any more to get to alpine terrain; but there are still some destinations that can be reached by a mile or two of backpacking, but you have to drive some pretty rough road or trails first.

We did our first such short backpacking trip a couple days ago. After overnighting in Winter Park, we drove up the Rollins Pass Road to the Continental Divide (following a century-old railroad grade across the Divide).

I'll spare you-all the backpacking part, except...small un-named lake just downhill from King Lake...

...and stick to the drive up Rollins Pass.

Aspens were just turning. It was gorgeous.

Road was pretty smooth at first.

Until it wasn't.

Definitely not just "a bit rough," but OK for "regular cars with good clearance" any more, as a hiking guide from 2013 put it.

Here's the old Gunsight Notch railway trestle:

And here's what it was like on the road above timberline at about 11,500 ft. elevation (3,500 m for you rest-of-the-worlders):

No way we would have made it up there with our Jetta. This is one of the main reasons why we got the Trailhawk.

 

[Marek K]

Sounds about right. This is maybe 1/4 experience and 3/4 summarizing other threads on the topic, but here is what I have found so far.

that all sound right, except for this part:

4WD Lock: The computer will automatically switch to 4WD when it detects wheels slipping

That sounds like Auto Mode. 4WD Lock would mean exactly that -- all four wheels are driven all the time. There may be (or is) some shifting between axles and wheels, but all four are going.

 

[Marek K]

Duplicate post.

 

[JasoninDLH]

I've written several posts in this thread about dispersed "car" camping here in the Colorado Front Range with our new Trailhawk. I'd also mentioned at the beginning that one of the reasons we got the vehicle was to get to backpacking trailheads not accessible by normal cars. At our age, we're in no shape to backpack miles any more to get to alpine terrain; but there are still some destinations that can be reached by a mile or two of backpacking, but you have to drive some pretty rough road or trails first.

We did our first such short backpacking trip a couple days ago. After overnighting in Winter Park, we drove up the Rollins Pass Road to the Continental Divide (following a century-old railroad grade across the Divide).

I'll spare you-all the backpacking part, except...small un-named lake just downhill from King Lake...
View attachment 2396352328
...and stick to the drive up Rollins Pass.

Aspens were just turning. It was gorgeous.
View attachment 2396352330
Road was pretty smooth at first.
View attachment 2396352329
Until it wasn't.
View attachment 2396352331
View attachment 2396352332
View attachment 2396352333
Definitely not just "a bit rough," but OK for "regular cars with good clearance" any more, as a hiking guide from 2013 put it.

Here's the old Gunsight Notch railway trestle:
View attachment 2396352334
And here's what it was like on the road above timberline at about 11,500 ft. elevation (3,500 m for you rest-of-the-worlders):
View attachment 2396352335
View attachment 2396352336
View attachment 2396352337
No way we would have made it up there with our Jetta. This is one of the main reasons why we got the Trailhawk.

That looks awesome!

 

[Marek K]

That looks awesome!

Yeah, it was. Backpacking at 11.500 ft. on steep trails with a 35 lb. pack at my age sucks, though.

Wife was not thrilled with the road -- white knuckles and sweaty palms...though the Trailhawk didn't bottom out once, and never lost traction...

 

[zzyzx]

Great views up there. I have been exploring trails on the west side of Colorado for the past couple months. I am seeing a lot of Wranglers, some assorted pickup trucks and OHVs, a few Subarus, and even a couple front wheel drive sedans. I have yet to see another Renegade on the trail. Hopefully this thread inspires people to get out there.

 

[JasoninDLH]

Yeah, it was. Backpacking at 11.500 ft. on steep trails with a 35 lb. pack at my age sucks, though.

Wife was not thrilled with the road -- white knuckles and sweaty palms...though the Trailhawk didn't bottom out once, and never lost traction...

Backpacking at that altitude would be tough for anyone! I, most certainly, would have only made it a block before falling on my face.

My wife is too scared to drive up a little hill in our cul de sac with me. 🤣

 

[Marek K]

even a couple front wheel drive sedans.

Yeah. Hell, I used to take my 1982 Supra up on off-roads in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the 1980s. Very, very carefully...

Like I said, an eight-year-old backpacking guide says the Rollins Pass Road could be negotiated with sedans with normal clearance. That certainly wasn't the case now.

Wonder if the deterioration is because this particular road isn't negotiable all the way across the pass and down the other side now, because of a tunnel collapse just on the other side? Or maybe the Forest Service just doesn't have the manpower to maintain these roads these days...?

Anyway, again, this is why we bought the Trailhawk. It's just disturbing that you can't trust road and trail descriptions any more...because I know there are trails I need to keep away from...

 

[camperdelight]

I'm about to show my age....my first PC had 64k of ram. That's k and in kilobytes (not a measurement used much anymore..) no hard drive and used a tape drive (as in cassette) until I could afford an external floppy disk drive that was HUGE. And I still have a disk holder full of floppies, including Windows 3.11 and DOS 6. The young-uns can refer to Google.....

Back to today's world (and topic)....I plugged my USB micro drive into the slot in front of the console because the radio can access it, the one inside my console is for charging only. I'm not sure the current Renegades are like that.

That’s definitely old school!! 🤣🤣🤣👍

 

[Marek K]

I plugged my USB micro drive into the slot in front of the console because the radio can access it, the one inside my console is for charging only. I'm not sure the current Renegades are like that.

I think I observed this before, but my 2021 Trailhawk seems to have a slightly different USB port arrangement. One port is next to the "cigarette lighter" 12v port in front of the gearshift. That's where I plug my cell phone into, mainly just to charge it on trips; the phone then gets tucked into the tray or into the cupholders.

My second USB port is behind the center console, facing the rear seats. That's where I plug my USB micro drive with all my music -- almost all of which consists of CDs ripped into MP3 or WMA files.

Which brings up a question... I've got the music organized by artist folders, with album sub-folders. If I only have one album by an artist, that's its own folder.

Problem is, the system will play the tracks/files in each lowest-level folder just fine, in order. But when the folder is finished, it stops playing and shows a notification that "mute" is on.

In other words, it doesn't automatically move to the next (sub-)folder/album. I then have to manually navigate to the next album, which requires a lot of taking my eyes off the road.

I've looked for any system settings that would fix this, but haven't found anything...

My 2009 VW GLI has an RNS-510 audio system, that has a 40MB hard drive where I keep the music. It just happily runs through all the folders in order.

 

[puddlesplasher]

I believe there was a similar topic and you had to rename all the songs by consecutive numbers to get them playing one after the other.

For long winded and time consuming.

 

[Marek K]

I believe there was a similar topic and you had to rename all the songs by consecutive numbers to get them playing one after the other.

For long winded and time consuming.

Yeah. I do number the songs/tracks/files on each album, to make sure they play in order. Becuase that's important if you're OCD. (I never shuffle-play.)

But I need the albums (i.e., the folders) to play one after the other, and not just come to screeching muted stop. They certainly show up in order in the listing. Each album/folder just stops when it's finished...

 

[puddlesplasher]

It's quite strange with Jeep. I had no issues in a Mondeo and a Vectra and they were by now a lot older than a new Jeep.

 

[Marek K]

It's quite strange with Jeep. I had no issues in a Mondeo and a Vectra and they were by now a lot older than a new Jeep.

Nor with my 2009 VW GLI, with the RNS-510 nav system that's got a 40 MB hard-disk drive. Old technology. But the system is intended for playing music files, and that may be the issue.

I've noticed that when I play MP3 music files on my computer, it does the same thing -- plays the pieces in a folder through one after another, but then doesn't advance to the next folder.

The trick may be to somehow set up a playlist that includes all the folders. I think playlists are set up on the USB drive, and then the Uconnect system would play them in sequence. And hopefully allow me to direct-access albums/folders and tracks... I've never used playlists. Is that how they work?

 

[Marek K]

Meantime, I've purchased another piece of emergency equipment. Or rather tool. A tire repair kit that will plug punctured tires.

I do have a full-size spare, so I'm at least somewhat prepared for offroad emergencies in that regard. I'm not sure, though, how practical it would be to try to plug a tire if the spare gets punctured also.

Of course, tire repair only works if the puncture is in the tread, and for that matter not too near the sidewall. Wouldn't work at all if the sidewall got punctured by, say, an offroad rock...

 

[Marek K]

I've touched on my issue with playing MP3 files with Usafle (U.S. Air Force Law Enforcement...?) in another thread. He wrote,

I can plug my USB drive into the Jeep's AUX port and have no issues playing MP3 or FLAC audio files at all in any shuffle order I see fit with this headunit. 🤪

OK, I need to check again, but I think there's a setting in my Uconnect 4C NAV for shuffle play. That would be random playing of all the tracks on the drive, right? No matter which folder they're in?

Because I organize my MP3 music files with each album being a folder, with a bunch of track files (individual pieces) in it. And often I have multiple album folders subordinate to artist folders. So often several levels of folders and files.

I don't want random songs from all over the drive. I want each piece (song) in an album to play in order (because a lot of albums are meant to be listened to that way). Then I want the player to automatically go to the next album by that artist. Then to the next artist, and so on.

And If I want to jump to a different album or artist, I want to be able to do that quickly and easily.

But this system will only let me sequentially play the files/tracks in one folder/album. Then it stops. If I touch Fast Forward, it just goes back to the first track again on that same album.

And if I want to go to another album, I need to go back to the highest root directory, and navigate back down to what I want to play. That's extremely annoying, and distracting when driving.

I've noticed it's much the same with Windows Media Player on my desktop. But with WMP, I think I should be able to set up a playlist that will play everything in order. But i don't see any way of setting up a playlist on the Uconnect 4C NAV...

 

[Usafle]

Congrats - you nailed the username correctly! I've been using that since my A.F. days back in the 90s. Yup, I'm that old.

The headunit I have will do a correct shuffle play - but, as you know, my H.U. is not stock/UConnect.

I've touched on my issue with playing MP3 files with Usafle (U.S. Air Force Law Enforcement...?) in another thread.
OK, I need to check again, but I think there's a setting in my Uconnect 4C NAV for shuffle play. That would be random playing of all the tracks on the drive, right? No matter which folder they're in?

 

[Marek K]

Congrats - you nailed the username correctly! I've been using that since my A.F. days back in the 90s. Yup, I'm that old.

Hey, 1990s military is not old... here's me in 1978...

The headunit I have will do a correct shuffle play - but, as you know, my H.U. is not stock/UConnect.

Like I said, what I want to do is not shuffle play... Unless our definitions of shuffle play are different...?

 

[Usafle]

Yup, got confused. I can select specific folders on my USB drive to play from. For instance, I have my music organized into Artist / Album folders on the thumb drive EG: Queen / Greatest Hits I / Hot Space etc...etc...

Since the new headunit I purchased is primarly an overgrown android tablet; I play my music via the Poweramp app.

 

[Marek K]

Yup, got confused. I can select specific folders on my USB drive to play from. For instance, I have my music organized into Artist / Album folders on the thumb drive EG: Queen / Greatest Hits I / Hot Space etc...etc...

Since the new headunit I purchased is primarly an overgrown android tablet; I play my music via the Poweramp app.

Yeah, sounds like you organize your music just like I do.

Like I said, the Uconnect 4C NAV will play all the tracks/songs (i.e., MP3 files) on one album (folder) through from first to last. Then it stops.

I really don't want to be connecting my smart phone to play music.

What I've been using is a tiny 64GB USB drive like this, plugged into the USB2 port behind the center console facing the back seat.

I've also been experimenting with various MP3 players like this, that plug into the USB2 port; in the hopes that they'll control the playback:

But none have worked any better. Waste of money so far...