I'll try not to go any farther off topic of this thread but you can go on youtube and see Tesla race and beat practically every USA muscle and foreign exotic car you choose. Tesla P85 does 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds: Dodge Viper vs. Tesla:
To get this thread back on track. Since we are talking rough country and since much of my travels takes me far from pavement, one of my most important requirements is a manual trans. I have seen auto trans' have spontaneous and complete failure with zero warning. Especially on pickups carrying weight, an auto trans will be your most complicated, most likely to fail leaving you stranded part of your vehicle. Whereas an auto can fail with zero warning, a manual trans nearly never fails and if it does you would very most likely have had thousands of miles of a noisy bearing warning you. I am an ex pro mechanic so I end up fixing a lot of people's failures in some pretty far out places, making due with whatever we can use to help the vehicle limp home.
#1 most common failure that I see leaving a vehicle completely un-driveable in the wilds? An auto trans. Solution? Manual. Since we are talking full size, this leaves you only with a Dodge Cummins.
#2 most common failure I have seen in the back country is overloading a rated payload combined with suspension modifications. You name it broken springs, exploded airbags, airbags where the brackets or u-bolts have failed, broken drive shaft joints, burned out rear axles.....etc. Solution: Keep it stock (the professional engineers who rigorously test their design with thousands of rough miles using many vehicles know what they are saying when they rate say a truck at 1300 pounds payload),
and keep it under payload. If I want to carry a pop-top and all my crap with me, I better get a 3/4 ton. Plus, a mini-truck or 1/2 that is over payload will not stop well in an emergency. I might save a few bucks on a 1/2 ton, but I may lose my life in the deal.
Keep it stock. Last trip to Saline Valley the South Pass road was particularly bad with lots of surprise washouts. A fellow there had an F150 with only a shell on it. He had a very expensive front coil suspension mod and oversize tires. I saw this guy driving in to camp and I am like WTF, look how weird the front camber is changing as he drives! Well, the added leverage of the extended control arms and the added weight of the oversize tires was pulling off the suspension from the chassis brackets. The dude was about to have his front wheels and everything attached to them rip off at 50 mph on washboard! I pointed this out to him and offered my help. Upon inspection, we could see that the 1/2 ton chassis to suspension brackets are absurdly weak for the job he was expecting them to do. The mounting bolts, every last one of them, holding the control arms in place had loosened and the bolt holes were oval and enlarged! All I could really do was to tighten the crap out of the bolts with a cheater and he drove out very slowly. This guy's F150 had a Martin Crawler which was breaking his u-joints, oversize tires and off-set wheels wiping out his bearings. He told me the thousands he spent on this truck in mods. As far as I am concerned, I wouldn't trust a truck like that 10 feet off the pavement. With all the money he spent, he could have easily had a 3/4T.
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