Norcal Spotted and BS Thread

Party at TacoEspcials place, lol.

This is fun when you overlay the storm https://pgealerts.alerts.pge.com/outagecenter/

 

Sup.

 

Cement 3rd gen with an Alu-Cab & NV plates? Parked on Main Street Placerville about 8 PM tonight? Maybe some black Ray10s?

Lookin' good!



Too slow to snag a picture...

 

Been awhile since ive been on here, hows everyone doing?

 

Happy New Year!

 

Project complete



Looks like my guess at camber was really close. It'll need some minor adjustments.

The guess at ride height came out within a half an inch of where I wanted it. (I think I'll see how this feels for a minute before I decide if I want to go down from 650# to 600#... I'm even thinking maybe 550# now)

Had to order different length limit straps. They should be here by the end of the week.

But she's on all 4 wheels and drivable. And, let me just say... I love my fuckin truck. Not driving it for over 3 weeks was horrible. My wife and I keep talking about getting me a daily driver, but I don't think I could handle just having this thing parked that much.

 

Ad much as I love driving my truck my daily driver is so much more agile than my truck. It’ll corner so much faster it’s crazy. It’s about as fast as the truck which is not fast.

Same with daily driver #2. Way way faster and more agile than the the truck and daily #1. As a bonus I can lane split with it which makes it even faster.
For example: over the summer I rode to Downieville for camping. Google maps gave an eta of 8:15pm.
It was accurate and I made it at 8:15pm. However, I stopped for gas, a nap, dinner and swimming.

And their mpgs are so much better than the trucks they don’t cost much extra to have.

 

Who cares about fast? I don't.

Mileage... would be nice. But does it really offset, when you add in the cost of ownership of another vehicle... Insurance, registration, maintenance? I think people lie to themselves about how much they actually save.

Putting less miles on the truck is really the only reason for it, it does have 390K on the clock afterall... but it shows no signs of slowing down.

 

She may not get a lot of miles per gallon... But, smiles per gallon? She's got that in spades.

 

390,000! I love hearing that. Mine is only at 275,000. It would be at 335,000 if I didn't own the car or the bike. The bike only partially counts because some of those miles are riding the twisties in the hills, which I would not take the truck on twisty roads for fun. A lot are commuting and a lot are camping though.

Ultimately yes, putting less miles on the truck was why I did it. Also, any project or repair can be done at my leisure because I don't NEED to drive it on Monday to work or whenever. Like I don't know how I would have taken 5 months to build my camper if I needed to drive the truck 5 days a week. Having a daily driver was key.

And yes, only calculating fuel consumption only gives you a small slice of the picture.

Before I bought the car the math worked.

But, did that math work out in the real world?

So, I made some spreadsheets and the short answer is kind of.

All three combined come out to an average of $963/month. (the maintenance and repairs on the truck have been a lot. The car and bike needed very little for repairs and maintenance)

If only owned the truck it would be $906/month (The bulk of the cost is fuel @$5/gallon for 91 octane. I guesstimated an increase in repair costs mostly because it goes through sooooo much more than the car or the bike).

So, that's $60/month additional to have a car and a bike.

If I did not own the truck it would be $578/month but I wouldn't drive nearly as much because the car sucks for camping in. So that cost would be vastly lower and I'd be bored out of my mind and wouldn't have TW in my life.

 

I'd be going from not having any auto payments, to paying a payment for a daily driver. Then adding Insurance, registration, and cost of maintenance.... and gas.

No way that math works out.

Less miles on the truck AND... as you said, not having to finish projects to drive it to work on Monday, are the two reasons for it.




BTW... the registration... holy fuck, that is some stupid shit. My son has a 96 4runner with a salvage title... he just got his renewal notice in the mail for 150 bucks.

150 bucks for a 26 year old vehicle with a salvage title... what the fuck is that nonsense?

 

I was up in Tahoe all last week. Boarding was awesome. Thursday was epic. This has been a great season so far. Here’s some stills from a run.

 

$150 is crazy indeed. My motorcycle is 12 years old with 63,000 miles. It's maybe worth $2000 and it's $130/year.

Not having a payment is very nice. My payment is minimal and I had the money saved up to pay cash but invested it instead and financed the car. Which has worked out pretty well...so far. And I don't intend to touch the investment till I retire. We'll see how that works out.

I also got GAP insurance which covers up to $1,000 in insurance deductibles on all my vehicles. So I changed the deductibles from $500 to $1000 which lowered my insurance by some amount that more than paid for the GAP insurance. I forgot how much, it wasn't much though.

But having a payment still sucks.

I think individual driving habits will dictate whether or not a daily driver makes sense.

The daily driver can't be new, expensive or cost a lot to own and you have to drive it enough to off set the truck cost.

If you only drive 10K miles per year total it'll never work.
But if you drive 20,000 miles plus per year it might work if you can drive the car enough.

If someone replaces their car every few years it makes less sense too. I tend to keep vehicles for a pretty long time; around 10 years or more.

Oh, the other thing is NO mods for the daily driver! it's an appliance. It has one purpose....transportation and that is it.


When I bought my car I was driving a lot. Scuba diving in Monterey, backpacking trips, mountain biking trips etc were really costing a lot and wearing down the truck.
But since then I drive a lot less overall but the truck goes on more longer trips. Maybe I need to scuba dive more often and take the car on more trips?

 

... Well, you gotta make the investment "worth it" right?


I used to hold on to vehicles for a lot less time. Most vehicles before this truck were around 5 years. The Tacoma? I've now had it for close to 19 years. I haven't had a vehicle payment in over 10 years. (we paid cash for my wife's truck).

I do drive quite a bit though. With work, and trips, it's easily 25K a year.

 

Nice, how many miles were on your truck when you got it? Was it about 2 years old back then?

 

Tell me about it, the registration for my 1990 yota pickup keeps going up up. From $115 in 2013 to $169 this year. Blue book value is probably $2500...

 

Sure would be nice if they used some of that to, maybe, fix the roads... but, they don't.