Week in Off-Road: Wrangler park-outside notice, Bronco engine recall, Sierra

The safety desk's lead this week was 26V-363, filed by Stellantis in early June. It covers 2021 to 2025 Wrangler JL, Wrangler 4xe and Gladiator JT. The electric hydraulic power steering pump wiring may overheat and cause a vehicle fire, and the filing says this can happen with the vehicle parked and the ignition off. Owners are advised to park outside and away from structures until the repair is done. Dealers will inspect and replace the wiring and the pump as necessary. Letters were expected in July.

Park-outside advice is rare and the desk treats it as a stop-drive equivalent for storage purposes: if your Jeep is on this list, it does not go in the garage tonight. Check your VIN on the NHTSA site rather than waiting for a letter. The same advice has stood since late 2025 on 25V-741, the Wrangler 4xe high-voltage battery campaign covering 2020 to 2025 JL hybrids, where owners were also told not to charge until the remedy was complete.

Ford's 26V-343, filed at the end of May, is the other big one in progress. It covers 2025 to 2026 Broncos on the U725 platform among other models, where the engine may fail and cause a loss of drive power. The remedy is an engine long block replacement. Interim letters were due in early June with the final remedy anticipated in November. That is a long wait, and the desk will keep tracking it.

Bronco owners on the same platform also have 26V-335, a 2026 label campaign where the tire placard and certification label figures may be wrong, and 26V-299, where 2021 to 2022 hardtop roof panels may separate, with a remedy also anticipated late in the year.

Ford also filed 26V-373 and 26V-375 this week, both re-repairs of earlier F-150 campaigns on 2018 to 2020 trucks on the Raptor platform. And Toyota's 26V-179, the load capacity label campaign on 2024 to 2025 Tacomas, had letters going out in late May. Chevrolet's 26V-114 on the 2025 to 2026 Colorado ZR2 platform is a radio reset so the electronic owner's manual downloads, which is trivial but worth doing.

Maintenance week was the pre-ride inspection, which the desk ran as the first explainer of every summer. The UTV 25-hour cluster of air filter, coolant screen, grease and fastener check is the skeleton of it, and the piece added the belt cover, the CV boots, the brake lines and the radiator hoses as look-at-every-time items. The problems database has entries on CV boot tears, fuel pump failure from sediment and heat, and electrical faults from corroded connectors, all of which a five-minute look-over catches early.

For trucks and SUVs the 5,000-mile skid plate and underbody fastener check got its own piece, with the note that rock strikes bend mounts and shear bolts and that a skid plate hanging by two bolts is worse than no skid plate. Torque values are in your service manual.

The upgrade desk ran recovery gear: the Warn ZEON and VR EVO winches for trucks, the AXON and VRX for UTVs and ATVs, the Factor 55 shackle mounts and the ARB recovery kit. It paired that with the what recovery gear you actually need explainer, whose answer is shorter than most readers expect.

The trails desk marked the Sierra passes opening. The Rubicon, Fordyce Creek and Dusy-Ershim gate with the first snow and open late spring, and the foothills run most of the year. The Rubicon is managed by El Dorado County; the other two are on Forest Service land. Confirm current status and any permit requirement with the managing agency before you go, because a late snow year can keep the high sections closed into July.

A standing note for Polaris and Can-Am readers about powersports campaigns. The desk reports only what it can verify against the NHTSA or CPSC record, and none of the open campaigns in our file at the time of writing apply to the UTV, ATV or dirt bike platforms on the site. That is not a statement that none exist; check the CPSC recall page for your machine, and put your VIN in every few months.

Upcoming: nothing on the events file until the Sand Sports Super Show in Costa Mesa, listed for mid-September. Check the organizer. Next week the safety desk will follow the 26V-343 interim letters, and the maintenance desk turns to oil and storage.