Replaced The Beater Truck Today

Haven`t updated this in a little bit, but nothing that`s needed done besides another 5K oil change. Truck is a little filthy, but its been raining constantly.

There was a small issue yesterday though:

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What`s going on you say? Well this little bugger here:

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Yup, with all the roofing going on around here it was inevitable. Pulled the tire off and plugged it up. This is very controversial in the automotive world, but I`ve had different tires plugged over the years. Rotating the tire to the rear, they needed rotated anyways. It`s nice to have all the equipment to do it myself. And yes, that`s a torque stick on the impact. Gets it close and can do the final torquing by hand. I`m a little too anal sometimes.

Funny enough talking about nails in tires, I just brought this thing home after I "destroyed" my old faithful 30" single blade rear engine rider:

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Yea that was a unexpected $2000 expense. But, the next day I noticed the tire was almost flat. Sure enough a roofing staple was stuck in it. Must have got it on the way home as the place I bought it from was just one street behind my house so I drove it home. So my luck with tires right now isn`t so good...
 
Nizmo- Sorry to hear about the puncture, but I`m glad you could just plug it. My wife has been running a plugged snowtire every winter for years, it`s holding up fine despite being a little noisy, so I bet yours will do OK too.

Gee, how did you kill off your previous mower?
 
Accumulator said:
Nizmo- Sorry to hear about the puncture, but I`m glad you could just plug it. My wife has been running a plugged snowtire every winter for years, it`s holding up fine despite being a little noisy, so I bet yours will do OK too.

Gee, how did you kill off your previous mower?
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Well the plug didn`t hold too well. Dropped a couple psi overnight so I pulled it off and had it properly patched. $16 later all is well. That`s a bargain for patching and rebalancing the tire!

The old mower, well it`s been patched and hacked up for years by yours truly. Not junky, but its been wore out for a while. I hit a bad low spot in the yard that apparently I`ve never hit before. It was ok the first time, but what do I do, yep hit it again. Bent the blade, cracked the spindle, and bent up the deck. I could fix it, but at this point its useful life was up... The new one is much larger so it takes less time. I went with the bigger v-twin Kohler, and I`m glad I did. Didn`t bog down on the thick wet grass once. The old one would have choked down and had a fit!
 
Tire picture remined me of yesterdays drama. Was out shopping with her Escape. Thought i heard something weird up front, like a rock in the tire. Took a look. Nasty metal screw in the tire. She dropped it off at Monroe. Where she got the tires and they fix flats for free. A call later and $181 it was ready. Sadly if it would have been one inch over it could have patched. New tire. Sad part is the vehicle has not been used much the last 5 months. She has been working from home. Got me thinking, guess ROAD HAZARD WARRANTY on tires may be good thing. Even tho no one takes that option when buying tires. When i bought my truck, you got a free year of NITRO FILL tire coverage. Tire replacement coverage etc. I dropped it after the year. Makes me think of picking it up again. Think it`s only $70/year.


NICE MOWER BTW!!
 
PA Detailer & Nizmo- Hope the wheels didn`t get damaged during the patching; our local Michelin store ruined one of the Tahoe`s wheels (well...IMO it`s ruined, but I`m still running it as the damage is in the barrel) after assuring me they wouldn`t do exactly what they did.

Nizmo- Gee, $16 is like...*nothing*! And yeah, IME Kohler engines are the [stuff]. You sure *did* kill your last one, huh?!?
 
Been a while since I posted on here, so I guess I`ll do an update incase anybody was curious.

Shortly before the cold hit, I was able to get the truck protected. Lightly polished the single stage on the doors as that`s all that was left. Went with a layer of with Collinite 845 and later on a quick coat of some Natty`s Blue I had laying around. While the paint isn`t perfect, nor do I intend it to be, it came out nice.

(yes my garage is a mess, don`t judge, lol)

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Couple weeks after that I cleaned the frame the best I could and Fluid Filmed what I could of the frame. I can hopefully starve off more rust/corrosion under there a little longer. Even with proper care, it`s only a matter of when, not if the frames rot out on second gen Tacoma`s.

Last weekend was very nice, in the upper 50`s so even though it wasn`t quite due for an oil change, I figure go ahead and do it while it`s nice. Had some extra on-sale oil laying around that I was going to use in my now departed GTI (will explain later). It`s way over spec`d for this truck, but hey I`m not gonna waste it!

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And I promptly made a mess, like usual...

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Oops...

Every fluid got checked and the drive shafts got some grease, it was ready to go! Good thing as we got some nasty weather here this week! This was the first time I drove it in any measurable amount of snow. I can say I am completely impressed with the way it handled. Most of the roads, while plowed, had a good layer of snow still down. Driving across the border into Maryland they didn`t do anything to the roads! Still, went on without a hitch. Kept it slow, I left plenty early. There were a truck or two that wasn`t happy with how slow I was going, but I`m not getting stupid and wreaking.

It now needs a bath real bad!

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Like I said before, I sold the GTI last week. With used car values at an all time high, I decided to do it. It never gets driven as often as it should so I figure why pay the extra monthly note and insurance on it. I also want to get into a bigger house so I wanted to downsize some stuff. I do plan on hopefully trading the truck in on a brand new Tacoma here first of the year. Nothing wrong with my current Tacoma, but with daily driver duty he`s getting up there in mileage. I`ll still be hundreds less a month than if I had 3 vehicles.
 
Nizmo- It`s sure looking good! Glad it`s driving well too.

On selling the GTI...I sure sympathize with you regarding something that`s not getting used (it`s been *years* since I`ve driven half of mine :o ). Since you were still paying on it, moving it makes perfect sense IMO.
 
Congrats, Tacoma`s are fantastic trucks. We just put a 3/4 yard in bed poly sander in our 2011 with 250K miles on it for doing our work and rental property. Still runs perfect at 250K miles.
 
Nizmo- Gee, I turn my back for a moment and your Beater Truck turns into a brand-new one! I bet you`re able to look back and think that this whole thing has gone pretty swell...or at least I sure hope so. Now you`ll be doing *different* truck-owner-stuff huh? I bet it`ll be a nice change of pace.
 
Thanks folks! Yea it was a spur of the moment thing. The Toyota tax is real on these, so no real discount so I did spend a little bit more. Still under what I was paying for the GTI and old Tacoma together, but still hefty... I didn`t "need" the TRD, but it was only a little bit more than an SR5 and this has the technology package. The keyless start still has me a little screwed up. Starting it is fine, but I`m still reaching for the key to turn it off, lol.

Accumulator said:
Nizmo- Gee, I turn my back for a moment and your Beater Truck turns into a brand-new one! I bet you`re able to look back and think that this whole thing has gone pretty swell...or at least I sure hope so. Now you`ll be doing *different* truck-owner-stuff huh? I bet it`ll be a nice change of pace.
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Heh, I pulled a sneaky on ya!

I could have gotten a nice used example, but they were not much cheaper than a brand new one. Not to mention a possible unknown history. This will be a nice clean slate so I`ll know ALL the maintenance done on it. While I loved my 09, I look back and realize I put way too much time and money into it to get it to my satisfaction. Unfortunately I bought this new one in the winter so I can`t do a full protection. Going to try and do a quick coat of Turtle-Wax Hybrid Ceramic spray. For an over the counter product it seems to work well. Used it on the Jeep and Mitsubishi and appears to be holding up well. Other than that constant undercarriage washings are in order. Right now you can eat off this frame!
 
Nizmo- That TW HC oughta be a good way to get through the winter.

...constant undercarriage washings are in order. Right now you can eat off this frame!
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That`s the attitude! Keep it nice and it`ll pay off down the road. IME it`s quite satisfying to work on a new undercarriage, doesn`t seem so much like fighting an already-lost battle.
 
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