So the wife and I have been thinking about getting a truck for a while now, but we've just never had the disposable income to do it. For the past couple of years, we've been using a small utility trailer pulled by a Cavalier probably at least once a week to haul everything from animal feed to lumber to a hot tub to 17 bags of cement (at once, plus a ~650 lb trailer; amazingly it could still do freeway speeds). Somehow the engine/tranny haven't blown up in 230,000 miles, but I digress. On the upside, it managed 24 mpg while towing for almost a full tank of gas.
About a month and a half ago, my dad came down to visit. I asked him if he'd help me fix the A/C in my car (hasn't worked in over a year, I never bothered to fix it because I can just ride my motorcycle year round), which is still broken because he did me one better - this is now sitting in our driveway!
It's a 2012 Tacoma, 57k miles. It's definitely your basic work truck - 2wd, reg. cab, 4 cyl, auto trans, manual everything else - but that's probably what we would have ended up buying anyways, just a lot older with a lot more miles on it. My initial impression is that it's a [censored] of a lot nicer than an econobox built last millennium; much smoother going over bad roads, the 4 cyl feels plenty fast, I like being higher off the road, and it doesn't scrape the exhaust trying to go over the washed-out dirt road one of our customers lives on. I do wish for a back seat when the two of us are in the cab and there's absolutely no room for groceries or anything we buy, but a toolbox in the bed can fix that, plus give me a nice place to store a jack, tire pump, various bungies and tie-downs, and stuff.
The only real complaint I have about the truck is the transmission. It seems to want to shift into overdrive way too early. Like 40 mph at 1500 rpm early, and the engine feels like it's just one step above lugging. It'll try to do it accelerating up a hill, and I'll actually lose speed until I give it more gas and it reluctantly shifts into a more appropriate gear. I'm sure Toyota designed it that way for MPG (and I get 22-25 in normal driving so far) but it's definitely annoying at times. I'm going to change the ATF when I install a tranny cooler this weekend, but I doubt it'll change what seems to be factory programmed shifting behavior.
Other than that, I have no complaints. If I keep it in second gear, it'll pull our loaded trailer up a steep hill at 60 mph, where the car with its terrible 3-speed auto struggled to do 35. Now that we have something capable of towing it comfortably, we hope to have a teardrop trailer built by next summer so we can camp in it on a trip we have planned to NM.
Thanks, dad
About a month and a half ago, my dad came down to visit. I asked him if he'd help me fix the A/C in my car (hasn't worked in over a year, I never bothered to fix it because I can just ride my motorcycle year round), which is still broken because he did me one better - this is now sitting in our driveway!
It's a 2012 Tacoma, 57k miles. It's definitely your basic work truck - 2wd, reg. cab, 4 cyl, auto trans, manual everything else - but that's probably what we would have ended up buying anyways, just a lot older with a lot more miles on it. My initial impression is that it's a [censored] of a lot nicer than an econobox built last millennium; much smoother going over bad roads, the 4 cyl feels plenty fast, I like being higher off the road, and it doesn't scrape the exhaust trying to go over the washed-out dirt road one of our customers lives on. I do wish for a back seat when the two of us are in the cab and there's absolutely no room for groceries or anything we buy, but a toolbox in the bed can fix that, plus give me a nice place to store a jack, tire pump, various bungies and tie-downs, and stuff.
The only real complaint I have about the truck is the transmission. It seems to want to shift into overdrive way too early. Like 40 mph at 1500 rpm early, and the engine feels like it's just one step above lugging. It'll try to do it accelerating up a hill, and I'll actually lose speed until I give it more gas and it reluctantly shifts into a more appropriate gear. I'm sure Toyota designed it that way for MPG (and I get 22-25 in normal driving so far) but it's definitely annoying at times. I'm going to change the ATF when I install a tranny cooler this weekend, but I doubt it'll change what seems to be factory programmed shifting behavior.
Other than that, I have no complaints. If I keep it in second gear, it'll pull our loaded trailer up a steep hill at 60 mph, where the car with its terrible 3-speed auto struggled to do 35. Now that we have something capable of towing it comfortably, we hope to have a teardrop trailer built by next summer so we can camp in it on a trip we have planned to NM.
Thanks, dad
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