My response was to the guy above making baseless claims that the OP must be a trust-funder and that’s the ONLY way he could have pulled this off, where the reality is what I initially suspected: single guy living incredibly frugally to fund a multi-year break from work to travel the world.

I definitely agree that once you start lifting and changing the CV angles reliability absolutely plummets.

Why the need for this masturbatory moralization of comparing the western traveler to the locals?  Why is it a “vanity project?”  Sounds like the guy just wanted to have the adventure of a lifetime and to see the world, and worked/saved/planned and executed on that dream.

The Hilux has gone over to IFS two generations ago lol. Land Cruiser 200? IFS. Prado? IFS.  For rutted/graded/crappy higher speed road use, a well built IFS will have less unsprung mass (less component stress) and better handling than a solid front axle. Note that he had to replace the front U joints as well. I can…

You come across as a total jackass, to be quite honest. Without knowing anything about the guy, I assume he doesn’t have a family to support, has an education that allows him to get a job in tech(?) to work and get paid well for 3-4 years at a time and to save up for these type of trips and travel as funds allow.…

Why make this comment without knowing the truth?  I could totally see someone scrimping and saving at a decent white collar job to afford to take a long trip like this living very basically out of their car.  I took a 39 day long cross country motorcycle trip back in 2008 (NY to CA and back) and the total spent on…

A Toyota IFS is anything but “fragile” in the type of use (overlanding) presented here. Hell I’d bet on a Toyota IFS holding up BETTER (balljoints, bushings, tie rod ends, CV joints) on a similar trip over any Jeep/Chrysler product.

I’ve literally never replaced a gas cap before in my life.... people really replace them every few years pre-emptively? LMAO

This seems ridiculously wasteful lmao

Soooo less than 10 years old? What’s the problem lol.  Yeah less than ideal for a daily driver/something to put your kids in, but hell for an old truck, 8 year old tires are on the newer side lmao

LOL Pussy.  You gonna have a mental breakdown like Shilling on his road trip through?

Funny you mention a bike in the bed, that was exactly what I hauled in mine. I had been storing my old Yamaha XS500 at my bro’s place in rural PA while I bounced around apartments, once I bought a house I took the 8.5 hour drive to his place and back. Ranger took it like a champ altho the hills in West Virginia and…

Your description lines up exactly with my experience with an ‘07 Base model with a 5spd and no cruise control. The throttle pedal/seat cushion position leaves taller people with their leg muscles cramping up horribly trying to maintain steady pedal pressure. Just plain horrible. Ended up trying to prop up the front of…

Having owned a pair of mid 90s Lima-powered 5spd reg-cab Rangers and taken them on 8+ hour drives, as well as my folks’ 07 Fit, believe it or not the Ranger is a much better highway car than the Fit, and that’s less of a compliment to the Ranger than it is to note just how bad the Fit is (for taller people especially,…

Now is an appropriate time to remind people that Shilling literally had a mental breakdown at a rest area in the Dakotas after piloting his Fit across country lmao.

My parents have an ‘07 Base manual Fit they bought new.  As good of a city/rural runabout as it is, it is equally a miserable highway car.  The worst I’ve…

Good Lord yes, stop it with the gloss black wheels!  Yeah bro your $45k Telluride looks totally sick and MURDERED OUT in the school dropoff lane

The 4EAT was wholly mediocre from a driveability/mpg perspective, but one thing that it did do was hold up well in terms of reliability.  The same cannot be said for the current CVTs, especially in the heavier more powerful applications.

Until said appliance breaks

They’re cheap and pump up the MPG numbers while being smooth, at a cost of longevity.

“ (this will be my next used car)“

Bettery pony up for a zero deductible warranty bub