[santanig5]

Howdy,
I owned a YJ Sahara back in the nineties, hard top with full doors and a soft top with canvas split doors. Putting up the soft top was a pain in the butt as I use to have to use special rods to create the door frame and Velcro the canvas around the rods to form it, it never worked well and took forever. I'm glad to see the new soft tops have improved.
I test drove a 2015 JK Unlimited Sahara yesterday, lots of bells and whistles, (I'm an old volunteer firefighter now, so heated seats and remote start are a must) but found the "trench" behind the back seat an issue for transporting my furry child.
I joined this forum looking for ideas and found what I think will work to get past this purchase stopping issue.
I'm looking for a Unlimited with those options and towing package at a minimum.
Any advice for a new potential buyer in North Jersey? Good dealers, bad dealers, features issues etc.?
All appreciated.
Gary

 

[JeeperJake]

welcome to your new Jeeper future!

As an adult with no human companions that would fit in the rear of a JK, I simply removed the seat, giving a very useful space.

Have been dogless since the last one expired of Old Age, and the dithering over whether to reenlist as a dog parent after 30+ years of doing such remains unsettled.

While JKU seems to be attractive, in daily use since 2010 the JK version serves all my needs virtually 100% of the time.

I think there's room back there for fire togs as well as a furry buddy.

 

[AZrat]

Just so you know, I have both heated seats and remote start and have found them to be less than ideal. The heated seats aren't nearly as hot as my wife's car and they take quite a while to heat up. The remote start is limited to basically the same range as the remote door locks. Also, the factory setup won't turn on the heated seats when you use the remote start.

Both of these features have aftermarket counterparts that are cheaper and that people seem to like better than the factory options.

The tow hitch is super easy to add aftermarket as well. I intentionally ordered my new Jeep without that particular $400 option, ordered the parts from quadratec for less than $100 and installed it in the garage in about 1/2 hour.

I'm only mentioning this because you said that these are must have items and I wanted to make sure you were aware that factory equipped isn't necessarily the only way to get that stuff.

 

[santanig5]

Just so you know, I have both heated seats and remote start and have found them to be less than ideal. The heated seats aren't nearly as hot as my wife's car and they take quite a while to heat up. The remote start is limited to basically the same range as the remote door locks. Also, the factory setup won't turn on the heated seats when you use the remote start.

Both of these features have aftermarket counterparts that are cheaper and that people seem to like better than the factory options.

The tow hitch is super easy to add aftermarket as well. I intentionally ordered my new Jeep without that particular $400 option, ordered the parts from quadratec for less than $100 and installed it in the garage in about 1/2 hour.

I'm only mentioning this because you said that these are must have items and I wanted to make sure you were aware that factory equipped isn't necessarily the only way to get that stuff.

AZrat, good information to know, can you point me to the after market seat heaters you mentioned so I can research. I too have installed tow hitches in the past and yes aftermarket remote starters are easy find, but if you have every had one go wrong as I did in my Ford F-150 there is allot of finger pointing, so I thought the factory option would eliminate that, however range could be an issue depending.
GJS

 

[AZrat]

I don't have a recommendation for specific seat heaters, but I know that I was underwhelmed with my factory option, and I've seen several threads here where people have said that "brand x" was a lot better than OEM.

Likewise with the remote start. There are some threads here where guys have installed remote starts that activate from their cell phones that supposedly work well.

I imagine that others will be along to chime in shortly.