We got rid of our first tundra when we left Canada, 8' box with canopy. When we got back we replaced it when a new extended cab with a 6' box and a normal cover. Some day I hope to no longer buy enough sheet goods that I miss the 8' box....

I'll only buy trucks with 8" beds. I had one on my F150 and it was too damn useful to ever go shorter. Never had a canopy, though. But where I lived it rarely rained and never snowed. I would get one now.

Are you building treehouses for ****ing ants?

lol I didn't notice that. That's what I get for posting from phone while at work.

My bed is 6’6”. I’m glad I didn’t get the shorter one. This fits my bikes and other things with tailgate closed and sheet goods with tailgate open. I went throa new ram and an f150 before I found a truck I could live with. I hope it lasts forever. I put the TRD supercharger in there so it makes over 500 hp.

I don’t bow hunt. Those are youth bows I picked up so I could teach my son.

The camo jacket is actually part of the extreme cold weather gear I was issued while I was in the military. It’s good ****. Full gore tex.

Ammo can was from Costco. Impulse buy. No ammo in it.

Basically my pickup truck could only be larger if it were a one ton dually. It has the full size four doors and the full 8 foot bed. I rarely need all of that at the same time but it's great to have when I do. Personally I'm glad that I didn't find a dual rear wheel truck when I was looking as I don't tow enough to need it and it would just be another two tires to replace. One of the compromises with this sort of vehicle is the lack of covered full height interior space when we are hauling us and our pets somewhere. I have a solution in mind that I may fabricate someday along the lines of products offered by a company called Cowtown Sleepers. Basically a sleeper section that boots in through the back window. I have a more sophisticated idea but it's low on the list of priorities right now. Anyway, if I know I'm going to a downtown area (which I hate going to downtown areas I'm unfamiliar with, which is all of them) I rarely go in my truck especially if I know I'm going to be using a parking garage mostly because I have big stupid CB antennas!

A picture from a few years ago:

So I braved the cold to fix the stripped transmission pan bolt hole only to have another do the same thing. I think I can do this one without pulling the pan back off though. Tomorrow is supposed to be wet. I have to get this done so I can get by truck to the body shop on the 18th.

State of my garage (and truck):

I had a little mini-bike like that when I was seven years old. I bought it with birthday and chore money for $40. I loved it and rode it everywhere until it died when I was nine. Literally, I was riding it and it caught on fire. I sold it some dude (all burnt up, lol) for $30.

Mine didn't have brakes, though; it had a foot lever that would push a flat piece of steel against the top of the rear tire and rub until it stopped. Didn't work very well. Crashed a lot.

That was my son's Christmas present but he has one failing grade and isn't allowed to use it now.

I've also got the table-sometimes-saw cleaned up now. Grilling steak for dinner now but back in the garage later.

I had a giant F-350 I bought new back in like... uh 2005. It was the huge bed with the crew cab and it was their FX4 or whatever off-road version. And I had the V10 gas engine (not a fan of diesels for a variety of reasons). I only had it for about a year before I had to sell it but I really liked it at the time. The problem I had with it (other than the payments) was the bed height; it was so hard to load/unload stuff into it. It was definitely a pain to park. By the time I bought my tundra (which is the double cab or whatever they call it -- not the full crew cab because you only get a 5' bed with the crew cab) two of 3 kids had moved out so the extra space in the cab was not needed.

In the meantime I have owned an F-150 with 2-piece sparkplugs that broke in half while trying to remove them, and also with plastic "cam phasers" which exploded in the engine and made it sound like a diesel and not run right. Both are extreme design failures and I'm not buying a Ford again.

I also owned a new Ram 1500 which was a pile of crap. I remember quite a few small issues they were able to take care of but the worst thing was that the gas pedal constantly vibrated/knocked under my foot, enough so that my foot would go numb after ~20 minutes driving. They refused to acknowledge the issue despite hundreds of others having the same issue. The cylinder deactivation was also super annoying; it only worked while going downhill and when it happened the truck would vibrate. Then it would lag before coming back on. Argh, it's coming back to me now. The cruise control was also crap; on even super mellow inclines the truck would slow down 15 miles per hour before flooring itself and overshooting the set point by another 8 mph or so. Also the throttle response overall was complete crap. From a stop, you press the gas, the damn thing would barely go, you press it harder, nothing, it felt like a geo metro accelerating, press it more, nothing, press it more, still nothing, finally you get to like 80% throttle and it would roar to life and start spinning the tires. WTF?

I've had the Tundra since early 2015 and I've only had minor issues with it. One of the backup sensors had to be replaced (it kept thinking something was behind me so it would beep). The heater blend actuator thing was acting weird one year and they somehow reset the travel via software and it was fixed. I think that might be it?

In an Amazon review for the Helicoils I bought:

Agree. I chose never to buy a Chevy because their 5.3 and 6L (gas) V8s were so pathetic, but my dad loves them. He didn't have many problems with his gas versions but some time ago he bought a GMC with some diesel in it and since he owned it he had to buy a new turbocharger for it (left him stranded in the middle of Montana somewhere) and then just recently he had to have new head gaskets installed. Each of those repairs were over $5k...

I'm going to be really sad when I have to get rid of my Tundra. They no longer offer TRD superchargers; you can go directly to Magnuson and get the hardware but Toyota is no longer providing updated firmware/software/flashes/whatever so you get these 3rd party programmers/chips/**** and they never work right, everyone has problems. They have piggy-back versions and overwrite-your-**** versions but all of them suck. I'd be totally happy with the ... errrggh... my power is blinking, I think this snowstorm is causing problems, going to hit submit before my post gets lost.

Any internet discussion will eventually come to how terrible software is making the world

Yeah, I'm not sure how computer-laden cars are going to pan out long term. Seems like a nightmare to maintain. Now we're in the time frame where 2000's cars are becoming things to constantly repair, and from the sound of it dealing with old computer parts is as nightmarish as it seems at first estimate.

Sorry, your new dashboard oem uses a different firmware version from your timing sensors. Everything will be haywire unless you replace those too. Have fun spending more money and labor.

What do you mean. My house is so much better since I linked my SmartToilet flushing sensors to my Amazon Echo. I don't even have to flush, I just say "hey Alexa. Please suck it" and the toilet flushes.

This massive time saver only cost me a $400 initial investment and took two weekends to install. I've only had to replace parts twice. A steal if you ask me.

It depends on what you think is going to happen long term.

There’s a lot going on in this area that is unfavourable to consumers, to say the least. Some of it is computer use in good faith, to make cars more tunable after assembly or to reduce costs. Some of it is Apple/John Deere style blatant anti-consumer, anti-repair radicalism. Short of silicon abruptly becoming much less affordable, I can’t see this trend changing.

Perhaps if people stop buying new cars (that they already can't afford).

A fact I found amusing you may appreciate: Dr. Tainter drives a late model Porche 911 and gets unending **** from the rest of the NR college staff.

I think computers in cars are fine when they're used to control specific functions -- for example fuel injection is great. But when the entire car is integrated as one huge system (CAN-BUS nightmares) it causes much pain. I have a few examples.

My wife clipped the side blinker which hangs off the side view mirror on the side of the garage while backing out; it caused the blinker lens to be broken off; this broke the wires to the blinker in the mirror. Note this car has no other electronic function attached in that mirror (no blind spot monitoring or other safety features). However, once this happened the entire car started going wonky. The transmission overtemp warning light came on. It locked itself into park and refused to come out without manual override. Dash lights started glowing like a Christmas tree. Couldn't drive it. Towed to dealer and they had to replace (in addition to the ~$100 blinker part) the entire central computer thing. Wuuuuttt.......

Unrelated: I'm renting a GMC SUV; it has so many electronics. It has blind spot monitoring which is constantly telling me **** is in my blind spot even when it's not. The computer is obviously not fast enough to keep up with everything because a bunch of features on the screen (and responsiveness of controls) is laggy; like I'll put it into reverse and sometimes the backup camera comes right on and other times it takes 10 seconds; sometimes the heater controls switch immediately other times it doesn't; sometimes blind spot picks up semi trucks next to me, sometimes it doesn't (already mentioned how it picks up ghosts).

Back to my wife's car; it also has subaru "eye sight" -- most nightmarish thing I've ever used. The "adaptive cruise control" is a nightmare, it basically turns the car into "*******" driving mode where it leaves huge space between your car and the car in front of you, so people are constantly getting into it, and then when they do, the adaptive cruise control freaks out that it's following too close and it hammers the brakes, causing everyone behind me to have to brake aggressively, too.

The naggy "lane departure warning" system gets confused when the roads are wet, it thinks puddles are the edge of the road; it cries when you cross the lines to dodge trash cans or pedestrians or pot holes.

I feel like the automatic braking is going to kill me one day. It randomly detects that I'm about to crash into something and starts freaking out; it beeps loud and starts flashing red warnings all over the dash, but there's nothing there but clear road. It's like it's detecting shadows or glare or a single rain drop, I have no idea. The whole thing is a complete mess. So far it hasn't actually initiated the brakes but it sure seems like it's going to.

The whole eyesight system shuts down if it's too rainy, snowy, foggy, or just randomly (and it doesn't take that much rain); just when you would assume it would be needed most.

My wife and I both hate it and we hope that when it comes time to buy a new car we can find one without this type of crap. If "self driving" is based on any tech in the same realm as this, we are all doomed.

Might as well. If global supply chains collapse we're not gonna be able to grade roads, let alone extract energy cheaply enough to justify driving anywhere.

Eye Sight can be turned off, right? Seems like it would be nice on a long trip where distraction or fatigue increases the chance of driver error but I have read/heard complaints about it.

Just out of curiosity, why do you think this is? Just seems odd to me.

Have compu`ers made our lives better?

2 separate buttons which have to be held down for 2 or 4 seconds each and resets every time the car is turned off. And you can’t do it at the same time. And there’s a third button for adaptive cruise which resets every time cruise is turned off. The whole thing is hostile.

We once were developing for an in-car system of some new Mercedes S-Class. And because Mercedes was too stupid to just give us the computer to test on we actually had to have the whole car sitting in a secured garage. It was always a huge PITA to test something there, not only because we had to go to the garage and go through security. But also because that was a stupidly cramped sports car, making it almost impossible to juggle a laptop for quick development, a smartphone for internet connectivity and the car's computer system.

Anyways, all this stupidity aside, when we didn't need the car anymore some colleagues got to bring the car back to Mercedes and of course they were speeding at >260 km/h (about 160 mph) down the autobahn and were also worried about how the adaptive cruise control would handle cars cutting in front of them. But according to their reports it was smooth as butter. Decelerating early enough to avoid slamming the breaks.

So, I guess you just have to buy a car for the price of a house for these systems to work properly...

Mercedes uses radar. Cheaper systems will be optical or laser range finding, prone to false positives from dirt and weather (or false negatives, I guess, depending on the personal priorities of the engineers).

Most fully autonomous cars of the future today use lidar, which is like laser rangefinding except instead of failing due to weather it fails due to weather in 3D.

Oh but I forgot, the new lidar systems google is using solves the “snow problem” by pumping watts at it. Of course you can’t take a picture of their cars anymore because they destroy digital cameras. Retinas too, probably. Seems like something safe to have driving around.

Basically it doesn’t matter how pessimistic you are about self driving cars, the reality is far worse. This also applies to me.

At this rate I expect a Hacker News post about Google using convict brains in their self driving cars, and then one of their employees to respond “but it’s ok, because we’ve also added a churchgoing grandma brain to keep the convict brain from killing anyone”

What are you talking about? The cars were tested in all varieties of sunny weather in Silicon Valley.



There're laborers who keeps getting paid. So long as they are, this is a problem which demands being solved immediately!

We all know they're going to do what they did with cars to begin with: make cities less safe for pedestrians.

I find it odd that cruise control would even have been engaged at that speed.

That's what I keep saying, and then I show them my car and they start giving me ****, its beautiful.



They file it under conspicuous consuption and also it's a 'complicated' car and he is the complexity guy.

Hell's frozen over and I'm genuinely thinking about buying a Peugeot once they're available.



If I do I'll probably wait until someone else has driven it off the forecourt first.

I just clicked around through the video. Looks cool.

Finally finished my project that resulted from me hitting an immovable object in December.

Before:


After:

that looks like an unstoppable force, all right

D:

Since this thing was announced I keep looking at potentially buying a new car that isn't this, because there's not a hope in hell that I'm buying a brand new car.

Unfortunately I keep finding myself looking at a ****ing Volkswagen, which is how I know I'm a boring ******* that's scraping thirty.