I'm 12, what is this?!

Hey everyone,

My name is Tim, and I live in St. Paul, Minnesota. I grew up in the midwest, and have plans to move out to the PNW in relatively short order. My sister moved to Seattle about 7 years ago, and every time I visit, I don't want to leave.

Anyway, to my truck story.

I've always wanted a small, diesel, 4wd, manual truck. Well, this is America, and we don't get the fun stuff. So, having been into cars/trucks my whole life, countless engine swaps and mods later, I'll just build my own tiny diesel pickup.

Initially, I was pretty dead set on a newer Ford Ranger. In hindsight, I was wrong. With an idea of what I wanted, and all vehicles in the midwest being composed primarily of rust, I decided I would make a trip to visit my sister in Seattle to find a truck. I had a ton of airline miles from travelling back and forth to Florida every week for 6 months for work, so I picked up two one-way flights to SEA-TAC.

Once we arrive, my sister picked us up. She was kind enough to let me drop her off at work, and use her car all day. With the car and I plan, we started looking at Rangers in Seattle, Tacoma, and even two in Portland. None of them were what I wanted.

After a couple of days with no luck on the Ranger front, I started to search Craigslist for other trucks that might fit the bill, none of which were named Toyota Tacoma. Seemingly out of nowhere, after a great deal of time shlubbing through CL, my buddy suggested a Toyota. The link he sent me was for a Hilux Surf Diesel up in Vancouver, BC. Holy moly, it was perfect, except one thing. That stupid Canadian title. Having been into all sorts of cars from Europe and Japan, I know about that pesky age rule for importing vehicles to the US. I don't if that applies to cars being imported from our hat, but I wasn't willing to risk paying that much money only to not be able to register it when I got back home. However, the 1st gen Toyota seed had been planted.

I found about 10 different 1st gens all around the area. Oddly enough, only about half of the people I reached out to actually responded, so I was able to test drive 5 of them. Two of them were super hammer, I mean, just abused. One was a single cab, which I didn't really want. I had had a single cab silverado a few years back, and I always struggled for space in the cab. I test drove the single cab, but I ultimately decided against it.

That left two more. A white 2.7 and a black 2.7. The white one was really clean, with about 180k on the clock. I ended up driving it twice. The engine felt good, but the suspension and brakes felt pretty spongy, and it had manual locking front hubs. The black one, even with 240k, felt much better in every way, plus it had auto locking hubs.

Being prepared to buy a truck on this trip, I had cash, which I thought would really help with haggling. As it turns out, this little dealership wasn't super thrilled about it. Maybe it was because I offered them 25% less than asking? When I made the offer, the salesman had to go talk to the owner about it. I'm pretty sure he was gone for 30-40 minutes. When he came back, he told me they would accept my offer. Fantastic.

Paperwork and payment and all that behind me, I drove the truck back to my sisters place to get ready to drive 2500 mi back to Minnesota in a 20 year old truck I just bought, which has 240k miles on it. Nothing like an adventure. The plan was to head south, as far as I could stomach, and then find our way back to MN on some roads yet to be determined. We would be dispersed camping the whole way.

We ended up leaving that night, but we didn't really make it far, only to Vancouver, WA. Really, we just wanted to reduce the next days drive. The next morning we got up pretty early and headed into Portland to find brunch village. I'm not sure if we found it, but we did find an alley full of food trucks, one of which had breakfast burritos the size of a small child. From there we headed south toward Crater Lake. It only took a few hours to get there, but I didn't even take picture there, because there were forest fires pretty close, so you couldn't see anything. Determined not to suffocate in my sleep, we continued south for some time. I have no idea where we were, but we pulled off on some forestry road and found a little pull off and set up camp.



In the morning, we cooked up some breakfast burritos and we were off.



We head down into California, through Avenue of the Giants, which I have pictures of somewhere. We kept driving, and ended up in Sacramento by around lunch time. Being a bit worried about being able to get home on time, I decided that it would be a good time to start heading home. We were pretty far south, and I thought it would take a good 5 days to get back. So, we started northeast across Cali via I80. Somewhere East of Reno we stopped for the night.



The next morning we headed out, through Nevada, up into Salt Lake City. While there we stopped at Trader Joe's to stock up on burrito fixin's. While waiting in line to pay, my buddy realized he forgot to grab something, and kind of quietly exclaimed, "shit!" to himself. Now, I've never been to SLC, but I love that punk movie about it, and the reaction of pretty much everyone in the store, took me aback. I swear to you, every single person in the store turned to the both of us and just scowled. It may have been the most uncomfortable I have ever been. We bought our beans and vegetarian chorizo, and were on our way.

Again, I have pictures somewhere, but the location eludes me, but man the salt flats were something to behold. I mean, I've read a lot about them, and watch the top speed trials, but I'm still just amazed at their expansiveness. It really is incredible.

That night we were able to make it just into Wyoming. We found these bluffs overlooking a small town and a set of rail tracks. That night was a real treat, one I wouldn't understand the rarity of for some time. Off in the distance, as the sun was setting, two wild horses ran across the crest of the bluff immediately adjacent to us. It was pretty neat.



The next day we headed north through the Tetons and into Yellowstone. One of my favorite things about Yellowstone is Beartooth Pass. We head up and around the north side and out through the East gate. Every time I make that drive, I find more things to be amazed with. I'm really in love with mountains. It probably has to do with the fact that I grew up in a part of the country that doesn't have them. Once through the pass, we hopped on I90 and toward the Black Hills. We made it as far as Deadwood and decided to try to find camp. We did, next to a tiny pond, and made up some dinner burritos.



From this point on, the trip was pretty mundane. We made out way up to Dickinson, ND to hang out with a buddy I don't get to see very often. The next day we jumped on 94 and casually cruised into St. Paul.

All in all, the truck performed amazingly. The only issue I had was that it couldn't maintain speed through some of the passes and steeper inclines, although, that's to be expected from a 2.7 with 240k.

Thanks for reading.

 

Welcome to TW!!

 

Awesome.
Welcome to TW!

 

Nice little adventure
Welcome to TW

 

Welcome to TW

 

Welcome to TW!

I think that's the longest post that I have ever actually read every word.

 

Welcome to TW!

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

Thanks everyone. It looks like I forgot to mention that I actually picked it up two years ago. I’ve been a lurker here for some time. I’ve had several subsequent adventures with it, which I will create a thread about later.

I haven’t gotten around to doing the diesel swap, but I do have the motor for said swap. It’ll be from a 1999 VW golf tdi. Larger turbo and injectors will pretty much be the only upgrades to it.

 

Great story and awesome pictures. Welcome to TW!

 

This dude really likes his burritos. Cool trip report!

 

Kinda. It’s the first year of the 1.9 ALH in the mk4 chassis. The mk3 chassis had a 1.9, but it was the 1Z/AAZ/AHU. The ALH relies on more electronics, and makes more power.

I was also able to snag an automatic car, which is beneficial, because they had an 11mm injection pump, vs the 10mm pump the manual cars came with. So, when I do upgrade the turbo and injectors it’ll be able to handle it much better.

I had a 2001 tdi golf a few years ago that I did pretty much the same upgrades that I plan for this, and it was quite fast, considering it was a diesel. In stock form they are about 90hp 155ft-lbs. The turbo and injectors put it at about 180hp 300ft-lbs. And! Even with more power and lead in my right shoe, I still averaged 43mpg with the car.

Given the advanced age and mileage of my 2.7, I think the power of the upgraded tdi motor will be a welcome upgrade. I’m not sure what to expect for mileage, but somehow, the tacoma only weighs about 8-900 lbs more. That’s basically just a golf with passengers and luggage. Can I hope for mid-30? Ha

 

We actually decided to dub it the Burrito Tour 2017. To be honest, after eating only burritos for like a week, I still could have eaten more burritos.

 

Is this going to be your build thread?

 

No, I’ll put together a separate build/adventure thread.

 

nice story and good looking truck! Next should be Taco tour eating only tacos

Welcome to Tacomaworld!

 

Welcome, I look forward to reading about the Taco Tour!