Dirt Every Day: Tube Sock vs Ultimate Summer Camp
Dirt Every Day‘s Fred Williams travels to Moab to compare his two favorite Jeeps.
Imagine having not one, but two awesome Jeeps to play around with on the trails of Moab. In this video from Dirt Every Day, host Fred Williams compares his two favorite, and very different, Jeeps.
The Jeeps, nicknamed Ultimate Summer Camp and Tube Sock, are indeed different. While both are phenomenal off-road, they both take very different routes to achieve their goals.
Let’s start with powertrains. The Ultimate Summer Camp Jeep features a GM Performance Parts LSA crate engine good for 550 horsepower, backed up to a built 4L80E transmission. The Tube Sock, on the other hand, is powered by a 2.8L Cummins diesel with a manual transmission.
While the body of the Ultimate Summer Camp Jeep looks like a much older model, eagle-eyed viewers will notice that the aluminum and steel body is an amalgamation of several different early Jeeps. The proportions were stretched and tweaked to get things looking “just right,” before it was plopped on a stretched-and-modified Jeep Wrangler frame.
CHECK OUT: What Forum Members Are Saying About These Very Different Jeeps
The Tube Sock looks almost mild by comparison. But several durability modifications have been carried out to keep it going when things get rough. Speaking of durability, both Jeeps feature heavily built axles and transfer cases, with higher-than-normal pinion angles for clearance.
According to Fred, the racier Ultimate Summer Camp Jeep can get sweltering hot inside, with the large V8 producing a ton of heat and sending that into the cabin. By contrast, the Tube Socks’s big diesel four-cylinder runs very cool, and is a much more comfortable place to spend a day.
While the Tube Sock has more in the way of creature comforts, the Ultimate Summer Camp is a little more aggressive off road, although both are tremendously capable.
So, which would you prefer?
