Just need to vent...

Nice, that worked!

There's my old M9 truck.....she had power NOTHING...and no A/C.....turning her used up some real testosterone and don't you dare keeping the hands on the steering wheel when coming out of a turn.....it'll break your fingers! Two 50-gallon diesel tanks and she got 3-6 mpg's so you're stopping a lot to refuel which was just as well....we'd stock up on cold soda and ice cream as we were in Las Vegas in the summertime.

We were driving through West Texas once on our way to Vegas (in July) and I got a flat on an inside tire so jacking her up and changing tires was a fun job....slept REAL good that night....

 

Our old Mercedes Class C was a dually. Would always carry the 2 gallon Craftsman compressor with a ¾“ rattle gun for just such occasions. It'd rattle 3 or 4 loose - then wait for compressed tank to refill. Rinse & repeat

 

Yeah the larger military convoys would have a dedicated team from the post car-pool maintainers but we were just a small, Air Force squadron with no maintainers assigned. (We'd just drove over to the base motor pool when they needed maintenance or had issues.)

We'd just have one or two M9's, with generators, and one or two Chevy or Ford 6-pack trucks and we'd take turns driving as the trucks had A/C. (But they were military-spec trucks so, other than A/C, they didn't have anything....Chevy/Ford even went so far as to replace carpeting with cheap rubber mats, AM radio only, manual window controls....whatever maximized their profit when selling to the gubmint...I hated those things.

 

Way back story. 1959 Ford F600 DIY camper conversion with dual rear wheels. Vehicle weight did not justify 4 rear tires but I left them on for 'soft' traction. It was used a lot on unimproved roads.

However I saved a lot of tolls on NY Throughway by removing the 'inners'.

--
The right-side wheels were reverse threaded and that was a hard lesson to learn

 

One thing that impressed me (of very few things) about driving the old, about-to-be-replaced-by-Silvie-based-ISV/Heavies, High-Mobil... HMM... Humvee was how easy that twice-as-big-as-a-Mutt was to drive. I'm talking the real ones -- ironically not the civvies ones based on... yep, Silvies.

Takes decades but even the US Army can learn from getting its doctrine lunch eaten by third-world-funded, 'wrong'-sided asymmetrics

As wide as those things were... just cake to drive ime. All-wheel indy suspension and wheels pretty far out on the corners made them bulky, but not cumbersome or spine-crushing like deuces and 5Ts were, and not as prone to sliding on ice, getting stuck or breaking down, as the (Blazer-based) CUCVs were -- again ironically, doesn't apply to our just-obsoleted Mutts in '89. All ideas come back around, I guess...

Parking with a trailer was also easy as long as you've got two brain cells to rub together (yep, more than exception than the rule ). Then again, my rather friendly but strict E-6 road test grader (not driving instructor, I'd stress) took me down into the local German town with hard stone arches and walls to auto-fail you, were you a f***up... and directed me to a 90º turn under a narrowing arch with another 90º in the opposite direction to exit, to conclude my roadtest -- haha, passed with no contact. Took 3 or so mins, but that staff wasn't gonna fail this automotive enthusiast

Had to drive my CO towing a generator when we went to Graf once; much, much nicer exp than getting an inch shorter every roadtrip in a 5T or deuce -- backing up in mud, even more diff

---

* esp since he had a father who shouted nearly constantly in his right ear about how useless he was, months learning how to drive, on the elder's schedule

 

The only thing I disliked about driving the M998 was the mileage and the low top speed, although I probably busted the 40% limit a time or two. or more.....
If you can drive a 6x6 with a tow, then parking and backing a HMMWV was like driving a Prius.

 

So true...you never want to get in the left lane, especially when a hill is coming up, in one of these bad boys!! Ours could hit 60 going downhill but, normally, we were lucky to get her to go 55 mph....had her floored!!

Scaring folks with that air horn was always fun, too....one of the only thrills of driving them around. (And don't spill diesel on yourself...you'll stink all day!)

 

LOL!
Drive one during the summer months and you'll stink all day ANYWAY - ESPECIALLY if you're wearing 40lbs of battle rattle.

 

Gives new meaning to this thread title, 'Just Need To Vent'

 

Oh btw... Amazon just zapped my access to review anything I buy -- good ol'd A.I f***ing everything up again.

Have been accused by offshore mods of bias in past (5 - 6y ago), so got warnings. Fine -- changed my tune. Nothing has changed on my side since buying some Anker products recently, which I really like. So if saying that and why in a review is 'bias', then you know people aren't reading them -- because in order for that to happen, you need to employ and cover their bennies

F***ing Scamazon. You want bias? There it is -- played by your rules every time goalposts were moved, and still they pull this shite. Go f*** yourself, you monopolising-bully FTC nightmare

 

I can understand their point.

 

Sure -- because I act like that in writing

Did I touch a nerve...?

Hill Country speaking: the sentiment is mutual

 

Talked to my friend who's son-in-law is a master mechanic at one of our local Toyota Dealerships. He is STILL repairing or replacing the V-6 V35A engines in the Tundra because of the #1 crankshaft failures....3-4 a week! He said the crankshafts are usually pretty mangled up and twisted when he looks at them....an obvious weakness Toyota has, yet, to fix. He said they need to redesign them to be a LOT beefier to hold up to the stresses the twin-turbos are putting on them.

Makes me wonder if all of these Toyota issues are due to the new CEO, Koji Sato, who replaced Akio Toyoda in April 2023. Seems like the new folks are more interested in profits over quality and maintaining customer loyalty.....very sad, (I highly doubt I'll ever buy a Toyota with a turbo...underpowered, overheating, and a LOT of expensive repairs when things break.) My 2014 V-8 Tundra isn't going anywhere anytime soon!!

 

...ever wonder why youngsters are disgusted by many in the older generation - pay particular attention to the conversation that starts at the 11 minute mark of the video...

 

The baton-passing at Toyota... last time this happened (Matrix-era), was a few yrs before the unintended-acceleration disaster that (temporarily) forced the company to overhaul its board to survive. Guess a new generation of grifter-on-top's gonna have to put the company thru this lesson all over again, Old-Man-Honda-passing style

Some of this attitude towards the customer's stained the way the 5G and other Toyota's problems have been handled (like, all the new trucks)... shame this ilk of Boeing-esque profiteering's luring Toyota to be even more of a domestic carmaker

Re: 3.5L turbo V6 -- in order to fix a problem, you have to admit to the public one even exists. They're burning thru decades of trust and goodwill to Tundra owners driving timebombs, just to keep their stock stable, sickening.

 

meh.
People are still buying Priuses, and Toyota absolutely screwed the pooch with the G3s.
Toyota truck fan-boyz are even more ardently devoted to their TRD festooned trucks!


Tacos are still mostly OK.
Just ask Toyota!!!!
I spent over three months trying to buy one of the derned things after my CFO TOLD ME it was time to go out and buy a truck!
I didn't want a full-size but thanks to the EPA and the Climate Industrial Complex, one could not buy a small truck in 2023, and you STILL cannot buy one now in 2026!!!
You CAN buy a small front-wheel drive, unibody car that cosplaying as a truck, and admittedly some of them can do 90% of the "trucky things" that suburbanites need to get done.

So?
I gave my beloved 09 GMC Sierra to a needy relative and bought a '23 GMC to replace it with for about the same price that the Tacos and Cosplayers were going for at the time.


As far as Toyota's "street cred?"
They.
Don't.
Care.

They are currently settling for "sucks less" and often failing to meet THAT standard!!

 

Kinda have to buy Priuses, if you want a hybrid hatch worth anything -- what's your alternative, a Niro? Good luck w\ after-sale support on one of those

3G was designed... yep, right when UA was raging, so related to rot between the ears of that era's boardroom.

If the 5G were that bad... think I'd have noticed. They actually tried with hard parts for this car -- just how the company's handled the inevitable bugs that crop up in any new design, they've of course fallen short -- still have a stealership saying 'what recall?' re: the red notif on my Toyota app for yet another rear door latch issue.

I think they used to care, more than they will in the next 4 - 5y as Toyota wants to spend for flash, not rock-solid. Expect more shens and deep bows and redemption arc before -- hopefully -- can replace the 5G with a future EV Corolla. If not, just have to keep driving a reliable flash of hybrid lucidity

 

Most don't know the difference. I saw "another" gen3 on the side of the road this morning with its hood up.