New England B.S. Thread

Good point. If I excluded the upfront cost of new tires and used wheels the FJ comes out ahead hands down unless gas is like $8/gal

 

My Mom's in surgery today to finally repair her broken arm, so I'm stuck in a waiting room all morning.

The urge to start modding the truck again is growing. I told myself I was done after the last one...and I'm looking at ARB install instructions for the 2016. (sigh)

Of course, then I realize with the baby and the wife being laid off from her teaching position because Brockton can't manage their city finances, stop dreaming.

 

Doesn't work if your truck already has 175k miles on it...

 

DAG MAN! What happened??? I probably missed it while I was away.

 

If you went the two set route, you'd definitely reduce your annual costs as far as mounting and whatnot. I'm not opposed to having multiple sets (I've got snows and regular, and have 5 sets of wheels between two vehicles) but from a strictly financial sense i don't see swapping tires. I mean if you want more than one set for aesthetic reasons or a beater because you want another car, then I'm all for that.

 

Sounds fun, wish her a good recovery.

And i know the feeling, I told myself I'd leave the FJ alone...that lasted about 4 months.

 

Oh, no, you haven't missed anything. My Mom broke her arm back in 2015. It never healed and she needed surgery to fix it but hit a few health speed bumps which pushed back the surgery. She's having it done today which will hopefully finally fix it.

 

GEEZ. Hope everything is/goes well.

 

At the end of the day what it boils down to is from a purely financial perspective it's more cost efficient for me doing 70-80 miles round trip every day to use the FJ for commuting. It would be nice to keep the miles off of it, or get a few more mpg out of it though.

 

Cab wise I totally agree with you. I do not like the clamshell doors on the Ford, I had an issue on my last Tacoma were my buddy closed the front door on my friends leg getting in the back. Plus in an accident it makes it rather difficult to get someone out of the back. The new chevys I noticed have switched to 4 real doors in their extended cab variation.
The Tundra I think has the most leg room in its double (extended) cab configuration. I just checked out a new Ram 2 weeks ago and it was def tight and I want to say the chevy isn't much better. The full size Ford/Tundra cabs I swear you can get like 10 dead bodies back there... so much space for activities. I'm curious to see the slight refresh on the Tundra for next year. I love that 5.7 but it needs something to get it back into MPG and speed competition with the big 3.
I do not understand Chevy's logic with the 6.0 and 6.2 but I guess the have some powerpoint presentation showing the benefits.

 

@MikeyMcFly , I hope everything goes well for Mom

 

Of course. I don't fault you at all for the thought process. I just ran through this with my friend who didn't want to use his CTS-V for commuting. The math didn't work for him, but I got why he wanted to not drive it.

I still want a beater, something I truly don't care about aesthetically. I think it would be a lot of fun, freeing even.

 

I was looking at used corollas. Then I was like well i'd have to get a 5spd because i'd imagine an auto would suck balls. THen I was like, oo TRD makes front/rear sway bars and strut tower braces for them and the xrs suspension could be swapped onto a normal model for a slight drop and higher spring rate/ better damping. Then I was like well I could use it for commuting and then auto-x in whatever slow stock class the corolla falls into.....

 

I drive approx. 40k miles a year and evaluated long ago what I'd have to do to reduce my driving costs. To save significant money I'd have to drive an absolute shitbox that neer breaks down. Like $1500 max purchase price, 30mpg and less than $500 annual maintenence costs. Seemed pretty unrealistic, so I just buy new vehicles every 5 years. Gas has to be more than $4 a gallon to make a significant difference.

 

Until you add all those pieces and get bumped into another class. Buy a Pontiac Vibe GT. IIRC it's got the XRS motor without the Toyota tax.

EDIT: I still really wanted that $9,999 Versa for some reason. It had ABS and AC as an option. Crank windows and no radio. It was brilliant(ly awful).

 

Guess I'll stick with the truck....

 

Haha, same here. I also want a year round beater so AWD or a cheap 4wd. If I bought a beater, I'd likely end up with a 4 cylinder Jeep Wrangler which sort of defeats the purpose. I'm sure I'd end up modding it also so it'd get worse mileage when I'm done than the truck. So, for now, I'll just run the truck into the ground.

 

I thought you could do minor chassis mods (sway bars) and shocks in the stock classes? I forget honestly, is been a few years since i've raced. Either way it was down the rabbit hole with the "beater" too

 

Run the numbers, like I said unless you're doing an insane amount of miles a month it doesn't make fiscal sense.