So I've been going back and forth whether it would be worth while for me to get a Diesel truck.
Right now I have an '06 Nissan Titan Crew Cab with the Big Tow package and use it to tow a 27' bunk house trailer. The trailer is about 7500lbs with all our crap in it. All in all the Titan pulls it pretty good. Going up to the mountains I have to slow down to about 45 on the 6% grades and get about 7.5mpg up. Going down I get 11.5. I did a 1200 mile road trip last summer to Utah and averaged 9.8mpg. It has a 5 speed auto and I almost never put it into 5th. That way the trans stays cool and the torque converter stays locked.
It would be nice to have a Diesel to tow with, however they are quite a bit more expensive to buy, and maintain. My Titan is paid for. I have already decided to not touch a PowerStroke or Duramax after really digging in and asking questions from those owners and mechanics. They have all agreed that I am better off with what I have from a cost standpoint.
One mechanic I was talking to was stating that the older Cummins trucks are a bit cheaper to operate because they are more reliable, easier to work on, and a little cheaper to fix. He pointed me towards the '03 - '04 2500's. As long as I find one manufactured after 1/03 it will have the 48RE trans. He said that the 04.5-07's are ok, but have more failures with the fuel system. Anything newer has more smog crap and gets worse fuel economy. The '02 and older 24V Cummins have injection pumps that are not as reliable as the newer ones and the 47RE is weaker.
My dilemna is that if I get into one I really don't want to have to dump a bunch of money into it. If I was able to get one for what I could sell my Titan for (around 15k), would it be worth it? I found a '03 2500 2WD SO 4 door (manufactured 3/03) with 117k miles that looks clean for about $15k. Otherwise it seems like the 4X4's are out of my price range.
Thoughts?
Right now I have an '06 Nissan Titan Crew Cab with the Big Tow package and use it to tow a 27' bunk house trailer. The trailer is about 7500lbs with all our crap in it. All in all the Titan pulls it pretty good. Going up to the mountains I have to slow down to about 45 on the 6% grades and get about 7.5mpg up. Going down I get 11.5. I did a 1200 mile road trip last summer to Utah and averaged 9.8mpg. It has a 5 speed auto and I almost never put it into 5th. That way the trans stays cool and the torque converter stays locked.
It would be nice to have a Diesel to tow with, however they are quite a bit more expensive to buy, and maintain. My Titan is paid for. I have already decided to not touch a PowerStroke or Duramax after really digging in and asking questions from those owners and mechanics. They have all agreed that I am better off with what I have from a cost standpoint.
One mechanic I was talking to was stating that the older Cummins trucks are a bit cheaper to operate because they are more reliable, easier to work on, and a little cheaper to fix. He pointed me towards the '03 - '04 2500's. As long as I find one manufactured after 1/03 it will have the 48RE trans. He said that the 04.5-07's are ok, but have more failures with the fuel system. Anything newer has more smog crap and gets worse fuel economy. The '02 and older 24V Cummins have injection pumps that are not as reliable as the newer ones and the 47RE is weaker.
My dilemna is that if I get into one I really don't want to have to dump a bunch of money into it. If I was able to get one for what I could sell my Titan for (around 15k), would it be worth it? I found a '03 2500 2WD SO 4 door (manufactured 3/03) with 117k miles that looks clean for about $15k. Otherwise it seems like the 4X4's are out of my price range.
Thoughts?