Wyoming is Fighting Back

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There isn't a solution for the long distance truck towing problem yet. It's on its way though. I'm glad that all you wealthy people can afford big pickups and their high cost of operation. My little 1998 Toyota barely gets 20 mpg and needs regular maintenance. The only good news is it doesn't depreciate any more.

I personally don't drive more than 200 miles a day except to attend model boat races. At my age stopping every two or three hours for food or other relief was not an issue on my trips to the two California Nationals. It's hard to eat a fast food meal or pee as quickly as the car charges. I easily took my three boats and support equipment in my car. No trailer needed.

I love high performance cars and engines. I stood on the corner as a patrol boy in 1955 and admired all the incredible new American cars. I built a model 10 cc racing engine in high school shop. My childhood friend's father was a Pontiac dealer. I visited him at the Newport Car Museum. We loved all those old muscle cars. I noted that my Tesla could easily accelerate all of them up to 1/4 mile. It's one of the new American muscle cars. Maybe I'll give my wife the Model 3 and get a Plaid. Times are changing.

Lohring Miller
 
There isn't a solution for the long distance truck towing problem yet. It's on its way though. I'm glad that all you wealthy people can afford big pickups and their high cost of operation. My little 1998 Toyota barely gets 20 mpg and needs regular maintenance. The only good news is it doesn't depreciate any more.
I'm not wealthy by any stretch and I don't spend a lot in maintaining my truck. My diesel is a 2006 Chevy Silverado crew cab 6.6 turbo Duramax with just over 200k on it. If I keep my foot out of it (like under 75mph) I can get 24-25mpg on the highway and 19-20 towing the 16 foot enclosed trailer. I change the oil myself twice a year (10 qts Mobil 1 full synthetic and premium grade filter) and the fuel filter one a year. Tires get rotated by me in my driveway every 7500 miles. That's it. Of course we all have normal wear and tear like tires and brakes but that's as needed and it isn't that often. I've saved a small fortune over gasoline powered trucks I've had in the past and a well maintained Duramax motor/Allison trans combo is known for lasting 350-400k, I'm going drive this truck until the wheels fall off. Best part is I get people asking if I want to sell it all the time, even with 200k I can get more than I paid for it (I take good care of my stuff). The whole point is we need to keep all options open. It's great an EV works for you Lohring. There's nothing wrong with hybrids either and I know 2 people who have them and for their lifestyle they work great. There are many who in life requirements hybrids or EVs just won't get it done. The issue is this huge push to all out ban fossil fuel vehicles when we are nowhere near ready to even consider such an action. As previously mentioned we do not have the capacity in our current national power grid (which is in poor shape as well) to support a mere 20% increase in EVs and are a minimum 8-10 years from that even if they started spending big money now which isn't happening. Again, let's not try to run the train until the tracks are in place...........
 
Like you Don, I have a 2007 Dodge CTD, manual 6 speed, 4x4 crew cab dually and wouldn't give it up for the world. People constantly ask me to sell it to them, ( it
has almost been stolen twice.)
There is nothing on today's market that even appeals to me as a replacement.

I do tow heavy with it a few times a year and the confidence that this truck gives me to do it safely is important... let's not forget, that a rolling load needs to also be stopped and properly controlled for the safety of others on the road. These lighter trucks being built today are missing it in this respect.

I used to tow with a 1/2 ton Yukon...it was scary to say the least... a friend of mine saw the rear axle come off the ground when I had to do a panic stop at an intersection... the load of the trailer was enough to lift the back of the Yukon off the ground!

That was the last time I towed with it.
I bought the Dodge shortly thereafter,,, it tows beautifully, some loads I can't even tell the trailer is behind me....I seriously doubt that there is ANY EV out on the market that will compete with my rig.

Other than the "freewheel kit" I installed on the front axle, It's bone stock. I do all of my own maintenance, it just rolled 200K on the clock.
It was built to do one job, haul loads.
And it does it well.

EV's don't stand a chance against a rig like this....no way.
 
Lohring, your Toyota gets the exact same mileage as both my 2003 S-10, with a 4.3 V-6 and my 2011 Tahoe with it's 5.3 V-8. The former has 170K on it while the later has 110K. Like Don, all I do is the basic maintenance and they just keep going. One thing to remember is that I can rebuild anything, if required on either of my trucks. You can't say the same on your EV.
Last I heard, the going rate for a battery replacement was in excess of $15,000. I'm having the transmission of a 1999 Grand Prix removed/rebuilt/reinstalled for around $3,000 and can buy a short block, if needed, for less than half of that. The fun part about the Grand Prix is it has almost 250,000 miles on it and it's still as quick as just about anything else on the road.
As we all know, battery packs have a lifespan based on charge cycles. How many charge cycles can you get with a Tesla battery pack per the manufacturer's specs?
You said you don't drive over 200 miles per day, unless going to a race. That would be about the same for me. That said, however, when I go cross country, unless the wife is with me and wants to stop for something, I don't stop unless I'm gassing up. That means 300+ miles with the Grand Prix and S-10 and 500+ with my Tahoe and Impala. When we do stop, its for gas, restrooms and food, normally lasting no more than 20 minutes. Obviously, I can't go that far while pulling my 26ft trailer. Even with it, I still get over 200 miles with the Tahoe.
Frank, what were you towing that lifted the rear axle off the ground? I've been towing my 5600 lb trailer with both of my trucks and have never had anything like that happen. Your trailer does have brakes, doesn't it?
 
Frank, what were you towing that lifted the rear axle off the ground? I've been towing my 5600 lb trailer with both of my trucks and have never had anything like that happen. Your trailer does have brakes, doesn't it?
I have a rock crawler I tow on a 16 ft twin axle car hauler trailer.... yes it does have trailer brakes on one axle, but they are electric and braking is very optimistic...
I'm sure whatever the trailer manufacturer put on it was just enough to satisfy Texas DOT regs.
Yeah, the Yukon was a 2 door 4x4 (like the old blazer) with a tow package hitch.
When I say panic stop I'm not talking the light changing from yellow to red....
the front nose dove so bad that the rear came up and locked the rear tires in midair... A lady totally blew a crossing red light as a truck to the right of me was making a turn, I never saw her until she was in the intersection....luckily I was only moving about 40-45 mph...my buddy was behind me in the next lane about 20 ft off the back of my trailer..

We immediately pulled off the road to check all of the bindings and chains,,, and my buddy said " dude, I could see daylight under your rear tires!!!" I think the ABS chattering the front tires was the only thing preventing me from jacknifing... that and the death grip on the steering wheel!!
 
Almost sounds like the trailer brakes weren't working at all. I've had a few times when I had to slam on the brakes but I've never had anything like that happen. My trailer brakes are set to grab slightly harder than the Tahoe's disc brakes so they have actually locked up on me a few times when I've had to brake hard. I figure it's better to wear out the trailer brakes and tires than lose everything :eek: :eek:
 
Yup, the trailer is rated for 8K I think, and the axles are 5 lug hubs with drum brakes on one axle... when the time comes to do any suspension or spring replacement, everything will come out and 8 lug axles with hydraulic disk brakes will go back in.

I've custom widened and done some other work on the trailer to accommodate the crawler and my 660 Yamaha grizzly, so I don't want to buy another trailer,, rather keep this one and modify it as needed....
Besides, the dodge handles it fine now!
 
My Tesla gets the equivalent of 120 miles per gallon average over the last 76,000 miles. The battery has most of its origonal capacity and is expected to last the life of the car. The battery warranty is for 8 years. There are older Teslas with over 3000,000 miles on their battery. I won't keep the car for close to that milage.

The least efficient vehicle I've owner was a Chevy one ton dualy we used to tow Dry Martini. It got 8 to 10 mpg. I've owned several diesel vehicles. I hope you know to run winterized fuel when it's cold assuming you can start a diesel. The only advantage was better city mileage. EVs have city mileage that's about the same as highway mileage because of regenerative braking.

As I said in the beginning, you don't know about EVs from actual experience. Check back in a year or so. EVs are already the best selling cars in a lot of markets including places like Germany.

Lohring Miller
 
I do believe there is a place for electric vehicles. Especially metropolitan areas with hydroturbine produced electricity. So electric buses in Seattle makes a lot of sense.

But, I do think the technology has to improve substantially for electric vehicles to be practical for even one fourth of the population. I was fueling my pickup in Minnesota when an electric Audi pulled up to a charging station at the same convenience store. It was a beautiful new car and the owner was quite proud. I asked him how long it would take to charge his car. He said that his batteries were only half charged, so it would not take more than 45 minutes. When the batteries are low and he is at an older charging station it can take up to 2 hours. When fully charged he could drive about 300 miles.

I fueled up, used the men's room, bought a cup of coffee and a muffin, then was gone in fifteen minutes. I drove over 600 miles on that tank of diesel fuel.

So, someone living in a metroplitan area, driving to work and plugging the car in over night, makes sense for some people, but not for my lifestyle.
 
Your prostate is in better shape than mine. LOL I stopped about 5 times on the trip from Oregon to the Nationals. I probably would have needed to make the same stops in any vehicle. I'm sure it took more time, but I still made both trips in a day. The real advantage was the Tesla advanced driver assist systems. I wouldn't have considered the trip without Autopilot or FSD (working in beta version for this year's trip). The improved range will come.

Lohring Miller
 
Haha, that chart is a screen shot of 2015 to 2022. NOAA has the full chart available. The red bars means each of those years is higher than the average. Lower years are shown in blue when you zoom in on them. So despite the subtle fluctuations of a 7 year micro snapshot showing a tiny bit of a decrease this is not even close to the complete picture.

Here is a screenshot of the full chart.

15C8664C-EE3C-4FFB-80AF-0B5CD278FD54.png
 
Climate change is REAL, always and forever. HOWEVER the information you are being fed regarding it is political.

thinking that we can STOP IT, slow it or adjust it, is complete insanity. (again your being lied to for a political agenda)

I cannot.. for the life of me.. understand how people can not see this... i just dont understand.....

NOBODY has put forth a "Good" argument that WE are the cause and that WE can slow or stop it..

Cheers all!

Grim
 
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