Oh man, this HAS been beat to death, but I can't resist, cause I'm one of the guilty ones driving an 06 double cab Tundra with a pimped-out Hawk. In a weak moment, I sold our 99 3/4 ton GMC 4x4 to get the year old Tundra with only 7000 miles on it, before the FWC was even a glimmer in our eyes. I immediately installed Hellwig overload springs on the Toyota, which I have done on previous 1/2 ton trucks. We were way overloaded on our camping trips with four of us, a big dog, two kayaks on top of the shell, 20 gals. of water, two weeks of food, etc,etc., long before the glimmer. Kids are grown, now mostly two of us camping, with a new 80 lb dog and the Hawk. I took the rear seats out, makes up for the dog weight. I am very conscious of what we throw in on the longer trips. The truck does fine on the highway, but it certainly has that maxed-out feel, I won't be locking the brakes up to avoid hitting someone's cat. Cruising at 70 + mph is out of the question for my style of driving, but hitting 80 mph to briefly pass is not. On rougher dirt roads and bad washboard I'm creeping. There's a whole lotta swaying going on, (some of that is due to lowered tire pressure), and I hate it when stuff breaks away from our driveway. Highway headwinds suck, I'll back off so the 4.7 liter doesn't have to stay above 3000 rpm to push against it. Basically I'm very conservative traveling with this loaded rig, I'd like to get a quarter million miles out of the truck before upgrading, and it probably won't be another Tundra as we now know them.
Wait a minute, let me put my helmet on. When Toyota came out with the new "smokeandmirrors" Tundra body style in 2007, it sure looked all mondo and tough, but it was still just a half ton pickup, and immediately became the ugliest truck on the road. I've been disappointed in Toyota's priorities ever since. When is someone going to come out with a gas powered 3/4 ton truck that can get 30 mph lightly loaded? Ok, fire away!
Wait a minute, let me put my helmet on. When Toyota came out with the new "smokeandmirrors" Tundra body style in 2007, it sure looked all mondo and tough, but it was still just a half ton pickup, and immediately became the ugliest truck on the road. I've been disappointed in Toyota's priorities ever since. When is someone going to come out with a gas powered 3/4 ton truck that can get 30 mph lightly loaded? Ok, fire away!