So, here we are, a bunch of car enthusiasts reading an article about fixing an old bike, written by a guy who is riding the subway. Oh well. To be honest, I have at least a dozen widely varying bikes of my own, so I'm not complaining. 

I don’t even know what I’m looking at in your picture, but if it’s $27k and has 130k miles, I’ll take it.  That'll be a damn sight better deal than the Colorado.

Call me old-fashioned, but I won't be paying $27,000 for any truck less than a 3/4 ton, with 130,000 miles. ND

OTOH, the silver lining when a wealthy person sends you to the hospital — you can usually get significant compensation. Which would you rather have — a kid serving 2 years in jail and paying you nothing, or the kid getting no jail and his parents (or their insurance) coughing up enough money to pay all your bills and…

Um, yeah, the driver does count towards payload. Considering it is calculated every time I have seen it as GVW minus curb weight, there is no allowance for some “average” weight driver or any other nonsense. And, I hate to break it to you, there are millions of people using trucks who greatly exceed 5'9" and 160 lbs,…

Just go to Texas and take a look around — every truck has, at a minimum, a bull bar front bumper, huge rear bumper, running boards and a tool box. You could easily have 600-700 lbs right there. Then you exceed the payload with just 4 regular sized guys, no other gear.

That is correct, you will have run out of payload and should remove 250 lbs from the truck or lower your tongue weight to 10%. This is part of the reason why old timers tell you to not tow at max trailer weight and “you should buy more truck than you think you’ll need”.

Every “payload” I have ever seen is simply the GVWR minus the curb weight. There is no increasing the GVWR just because part of it is tongue weight. In fact, if you think about it, that tongue weight can shift very considerably during actual driving conditions, and it is leveraged on the tail end of the truck, making…

Just take a look at the trucks rolling around during hunting season. You could have an easy 1000 to 1200 lbs of people in the truck alone, all sorts of gear, dead animals, and a trailer with a couple 4 wheelers in it. That’s not an odd scenario and it exceeds nearly all 4 wheel drive 1/2 ton truck capacities, in some…

(I’m pretty sure the majority of the GVWR ratings out there are very much influenced by the tires — the Promaster City is a bit of a ringer.)

(I’m pretty sure the majority of the GVWR ratings out there are very much influenced by the tires — the Promaster City is a bit of a ringer.)

“What are you hauling that’s more than 1500 lbs” ???

Even this little guy has a payload of 1900lbs. Looking at many, many trucks on the roads has led me to understand that a huge percentage of truck owners have no concept of "max payload" or "GVWR".

In this scenario, if someone was going to shoot at me while I was jogging, or run over/into me, on purpose, at 50 mph, I would certainly prefer to get shot at. Why? Because the gun (the vast majority of guns) would be far less deadly than the car going 50. So, yeah, the gun is less deadly.

I believe what you have suggested is commonly referred to as, “the old fashioned way”.

Replace the car in the scenario with a gun (an even less deadly weapon), and the young lady with a young man, and wtf?

Kind of rotten, but very truthful insight. His/her sage advice is good for a young driver to hear — from a victim’s point of view. In other words, don’t trust the other guy on the roads, like, at all.

Well, clearly, this young lady will never do this (or worse) again. A little stint in juvenile detention will fix her right up and repay all of her debts to the victim and society.

Staring at the jagged steering column plastic remnants and that 85 mph speedo would be irritating to say the least.

Well, if the largest window encounters a problem, they already have the code brown part figured out.