TRD, SR5, or both?

^I agree with that. If you're planning on ripping out most of it like I do eventually, there's no need to spend your money on either package.

 

"Whoever said a 4x2 with a locker will take you any place a 4x4 without it.....I would happily take you up on that. Deep sand and you are stuck like chuck....."....driven skillfully....."......I can drive a Honda Accord "skillfully" and keep from getting stuck.....part of that skill is avoiding the deep stuff. In a 4x4(open or not) you can just mindlessly chug right on through. I do it all the time in my open 4x4 with the crappiest tires on the planet."


HAHA just came back from tahoe...and i had to put chains on my friends 4x2 TRD Prerunner...and he was giving me crap for not getting a "TRD"

 

Arizona is mostly rocks so I was thinking about the stuff I would normally wheel on.

Are you forgetting to consider how a differential works? An open differential will allow the wheel with the least amount of traction to just spin. a 4X4 with two open diferentials and one front tire in the air, and one rear tire in the air will not move. The tires in the air will just spin. Put a 4X2 with a locker in the same spot, and that one tire that is on the ground in the rear will get power to the ground. I am not making this up.

In this kind of situation the locker in the 4X2 will win. If they all come standard with a LSD(limited Slip Differential) then it is not as severe. However wheelers call LSD "Limited Grip Differentials" for a reason. Serious rock crawlers know lockers rule. They also know that they sometimes break, or cause axles to break. Having a factory locker means having a warrantee, adding an aftermarket locker almost guarantees that you will void the warrantee that would cover those broken parts. I guess I should have said "In some situations a locked 4X2 can out wheel an open 4X4." I can not argue the sand situation, and sand and snow are similar in some ways.

 

Living in AZ is the reason I bought a Prerunner. I grew up in Texas, so offroading typically involved mud. In the 5 years I lived in Tucson, I saw mud twice... lol. The type of offroading I was doing out there didn't really require the 4x4 as I didn't care much for driving over rocks...

Now that I live in MD I wish I had bought a 4x4. Oh well.

 

I will have to agree, I had an S10 Blazer long ago and I was going up a hill and the road was all ice on the curb side and the center was clear. I got stuck even in 4 wheel drive cause the right side wheels were on the ice and spun while the driver side wheels were on the pavement. I had to roll back and move the truck more to the center of the road to get the right side tires off the ice. I then made it up the hill.

The 4 wheel drive works until one side of the truck loses traction, then you get stuck, unless one of the diffs has posi.