Colorado Daily Driver Build Thread

Yeah definitely! I don't ride a ton of weight normally actually. I like being a little bit more "bare bones" (my excuse for being too poor for RTT lol!)

 

We made a quick extended weekend trip out to Zion with a buddy who flew in from Atlanta. Camped in Watchman Campground in the park for 2 nights. Zion is always an incredible trip, highly recommend for anyone who hasn't been!

In typical fashion, a 20% chance of light rain for 1 hour turned into 3.5 hours of sustained thunderstorms with consistent downpour. I prefer to keep the rain fly off the tent so that we can have the sky windows open all night and see the stars, plus get additional airflow through the tent. My wife asserted that I am owning that decision this time, and if it starts raining bad I'll be putting the rain fly on alone. Sure enough, there I was putting the rain fly on alone, in the rain, in the dark, at 2am. I ate it pretty hard next to the truck as I got down on one of the logs that sets the boundary for the drive in site. This is a mistake I will make again.

The narrows




Campsite at Watchman Campground (and the log I ate it on)






Top of Scout's Overlook


Didn't get the lottery permit for Angel's Landing (again )

 

I got the plug for permits. Message me

 

Dang!! Wish I knew that when we were there still, we have struck out on both trips to Zion in the last two years now :/ Appreciate the offer though!

 

Recently made a move from CO to Atlanta. Very sad to leave the mountains, but a great work opportunity I couldn't turn down brought us down here. Here is a brief description of my towing experience with the truck. I read a lot of threads on here to prepare for the towing experience.

Trailer: UHaul 6x12' enclosed dual axle trailer. Trailer has surge brakes, so no brake controller needed. Used standard 4-pin hookup. Fully loaded, I'd guess we were right around 5k-6k lbs.


Hitch: Bought a Curt 7500 lb hitch with a locking pin.


Scanner: Bought the Carista OBDII bluetooth scanner to monitor trans temps during the drive. Paired with OBD Fusion iOS app and created a custom dashboard to show trans temp, oil temp, engine temp, and some other metrics.


Performance: The truck handled the weight of the trailer super well. It helped having my heavy duty (+660lb) leaf pack and E load tires. I took the rear tires up to 50 psi (normally run them at 40) and I never felt the bump stops over bumps. Overall, I was between 10-12 mpg for the whole trip, probably averaging right around 11. I was driving 70-85 mph for most of the trip as well. I kept the shifter in S4 the whole time to keep trans temps down after reading about 5 and 6 being overdrive gears, so those can contribute to increased trans temps if not watched closely while towing. I was completely impressed with how easily the truck pulled and stopped the weight. Would definitely tow near the towing capacity again, it's fun using this for other "truck" things beyond wheeling, camping, and loading up the bed.

 

my rainfly is always on, but i'll fold it in half if want to look through one of the skylights on my tent.

 

Today is the day. We made the difficult decision to sell our Tacoma since we moved to Atlanta. It doesn't get very much use down here, and while we still intend on doing camping trips and visiting national parks in the region, we can do those things in an older vehicle. The Tacoma was perfect for Colorado - ultra reliable so that even in the backcountry and on wheeling trips we never felt like we would get stranded; insanely capable to take us wherever we wanted to go; and comfortable for long road trips on a regular basis. We planned on it being our forever vehicle, but things changed and it didn't make as much sense anymore.

We will be buying a used GX470 or GX460 in the coming weeks to replace the Taco. I'm sad to see it go, but had to make the smart decision for where we are in our lives currently. I'm sure there will be another day where a new Tacoma makes sense again.