Back to the 2020 FX4 Salvage Rebuild

[XionUAV]

@XionUAV
How goes it now?

Sorry for the very late response. Had totally forgotten about the thread until an email alert notified me of a post.

Truck is excellent and runs great. Very happy with it. Only issue is two of the Goodyear Dura Trac tires ended up having a high Road Force imbalance. Had a vibration in the steering that would come and go so finally took them in for a re-balance. The store that originally mounted them said nothing. The second store let me know about the problem. They said one of the tires was also visibly out of round. That's what happens sometimes purchasing take-off tires at 1/3 the cost of new. Put the two bad ones on the back so even though there is still a vibration or slight bounce overall, steering is solid.

The drive-train certainly isn't the smoothest, but the acceleration, although unexciting being a 4-banger, is impressively quick. Used 4WLo a few times climbing steep hills and it did great. Otherwise 4WHi works great as well. No complaints about the transmission. Works as it should. One thing I discovered by accident that I think is pretty cool is the gear indicator left of the speed indicator if you push the + on the gear shift. That's when I noticed under normal acceleration the transmission will skip gears. Runs 1-3-5 as I recall.

Something else I used a few times is the descent control. Now honestly I prefer to use the manual gear mode for a lower gear and use the brakes sparingly rather than the descent control just using the brakes all the time. My Touareg is smarter in that regard and uses engine braking along with wheel braking on decent in "Off Road" mode. That said, the suspension in the Ranger with the Eibach Pro Truck 2.0 shocks is far better off-road. Back end will still jump out over washboards for instance but does everything else well and handles like a fat sporty car on pavement

Now for the bad part. My wife was let go from her job a few weeks ago and we weren't quite prepared for that. We're fine but suddenly scrutinizing finances and the truth is the truck is now an asset that between yearly registration and insurance is an expense we don't absolutely need. So it's on the short list to sell if my wife doesn't find another job in the next few months. She was only a couple of years from retirement. The layoff was one of those BS corporate knee-jerk cost slashings even though she was a highly-experienced, liked and valued employee of over 20 years. Regardless, it is what it is.

I'll hang on to the truck for a little while longer to see how things go. In the meantime I'll still use it and enjoy it, carefully, for what it is.

Attached a few pics. Had to laugh that every single one is of the driver's side.

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[Chris M]

Sorry for the very late response. Had totally forgotten about the thread until an email alert notified me of a post.

Truck is excellent and runs great. Very happy with it. Only issue is two of the Goodyear Dura Trac tires ended up having a high Road Force imbalance. Had a vibration in the steering that would come and go so finally took them in for a re-balance. The store that originally mounted them said nothing. The second store let me know about the problem. They said one of the tires was also visibly out of round. That's what happens sometimes purchasing take-off tires at 1/3 the cost of new. Put the two bad ones on the back so even though there is still a vibration or slight bounce overall, steering is solid.

The drive-train certainly isn't the smoothest, but the acceleration, although unexciting being a 4-banger, is impressively quick. Used 4WLo a few times climbing steep hills and it did great. Otherwise 4WHi works great as well. No complaints about the transmission. Works as it should. One thing I discovered by accident that I think is pretty cool is the gear indicator left of the speed indicator if you push the + on the gear shift. That's when I noticed under normal acceleration the transmission will skip gears. Runs 1-3-5 as I recall.

Something else I used a few times is the descent control. Now honestly I prefer to use the manual gear mode for a lower gear and use the brakes sparingly rather than the descent control just using the brakes all the time. My Touareg is smarter in that regard and uses engine braking along with wheel braking on decent in "Off Road" mode. That said, the suspension in the Ranger with the Eibach Pro Truck 2.0 shocks is far better off-road. Back end will still jump out over washboards for instance but does everything else well and handles like a fat sporty car on pavement

Now for the bad part. My wife was let go from her job a few weeks ago and we weren't quite prepared for that. We're fine but suddenly scrutinizing finances and the truth is the truck is now an asset that between yearly registration and insurance is an expense we don't absolutely need. So it's on the short list to sell if my wife doesn't find another job in the next few months. She was only a couple of years from retirement. The layoff was one of those BS corporate knee-jerk cost slashings even though she was a highly-experienced, liked and valued employee of over 20 years. Regardless, it is what it is.

I'll hang on to the truck for a little while longer to see how things go. In the meantime I'll still use it and enjoy it, carefully, for what it is.

Attached a few pics. Had to laugh that every single one is of the driver's side.

From a looks perspective, I think it turned out quite nicely! I'm glad you're able to get some fun usage out of it for now.
Very sorry to hear of your wife's trials, though. That sucks for sure. Hopefully she will find something soon to carry her to retirement.
Thanks for sharing your rebuild journey with us!
Chris

 

[Muscleford]

Sorry to hear about your wife loosing her job. My son lost his job end of January last year. He is 55 and had 18 years with the company. They decided to sub contract their delivery to a company in the same line of product. I do not purchase their products any more and they had excellent product.

Sad how companies *#@% their long time employees.

 

[IdahoRanger]

Sorry for the very late response. Had totally forgotten about the thread until an email alert notified me of a post.

Truck is excellent and runs great. Very happy with it. Only issue is two of the Goodyear Dura Trac tires ended up having a high Road Force imbalance. Had a vibration in the steering that would come and go so finally took them in for a re-balance. The store that originally mounted them said nothing. The second store let me know about the problem. They said one of the tires was also visibly out of round. That's what happens sometimes purchasing take-off tires at 1/3 the cost of new. Put the two bad ones on the back so even though there is still a vibration or slight bounce overall, steering is solid.

The drive-train certainly isn't the smoothest, but the acceleration, although unexciting being a 4-banger, is impressively quick. Used 4WLo a few times climbing steep hills and it did great. Otherwise 4WHi works great as well. No complaints about the transmission. Works as it should. One thing I discovered by accident that I think is pretty cool is the gear indicator left of the speed indicator if you push the + on the gear shift. That's when I noticed under normal acceleration the transmission will skip gears. Runs 1-3-5 as I recall.

Something else I used a few times is the descent control. Now honestly I prefer to use the manual gear mode for a lower gear and use the brakes sparingly rather than the descent control just using the brakes all the time. My Touareg is smarter in that regard and uses engine braking along with wheel braking on decent in "Off Road" mode. That said, the suspension in the Ranger with the Eibach Pro Truck 2.0 shocks is far better off-road. Back end will still jump out over washboards for instance but does everything else well and handles like a fat sporty car on pavement

Now for the bad part. My wife was let go from her job a few weeks ago and we weren't quite prepared for that. We're fine but suddenly scrutinizing finances and the truth is the truck is now an asset that between yearly registration and insurance is an expense we don't absolutely need. So it's on the short list to sell if my wife doesn't find another job in the next few months. She was only a couple of years from retirement. The layoff was one of those BS corporate knee-jerk cost slashings even though she was a highly-experienced, liked and valued employee of over 20 years. Regardless, it is what it is.

I'll hang on to the truck for a little while longer to see how things go. In the meantime I'll still use it and enjoy it, carefully, for what it is.

Attached a few pics. Had to laugh that every single one is of the driver's side.

Awesome pictures, glad to hear you are happy with the final project. Hope your wife can find the right job.

 

[TJC]

Sorry to hear about your wife loosing her job. My son lost his job end of January last year. He is 55 and had 18 years with the company. They decided to sub contract their delivery to a company in the same line of product. I do not purchase their products any more and they had excellent product.

Sad how companies *#@% their long time employees.

I was at 25 years of service with IBM when they pulled the retirement plan for their employees. My wife still works there, but the writing is on the wall. We expect her to be a "resource action" victim sometime this year, and have prepared for it.

When I left IBM for Lenovo 15 years ago, the company had 430K employees, and over 350K of them were based in the USA. Today there are less than 50K US employees, and there is an active movement to eliminate them down to a skeleton crew based in IBM HQ in Armonk, NY.

They are being replaced with "low cost" foreign employees. These are not my words, they are the words coming from senior IBM management. IBM goes to great lengths to keep employment data confidential. They know the law, and lean well over the line, but never cross it legally. For instance, there is a layoff threshold that when crossed requires reporting to the government. IBM structures their layoffs over a year to stay just under the threshold. The don't do massive layoffs in one fell swoop. The dribble them out slowly by division and over time, staying just under the reporting threshold, but by the end of the year they achieve their targets without government intervention. They have perfected the model.

IBM - "International Business Machines" has morphed into IBM - "India Business Machines"! There are now 200K+ IBM India employees. The CEO is an Indian National.

And it has been announced that employees in high costs countries need to prepare to be let go. High Cost Employee Regions include the entire western hemisphere, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Japan.

This last wave saw their high level performance employees targeted. A high level manager that I know told me... "It wasn't about job performance or ratings." My wife's manager and 2/3's of her dept were replaced with low skill people who have no idea how to perform their jobs. We plan for her to leave by the end of this year if she has not been let go. Working for people who have no skill, idea, or understanding of their roles and responsibilities is quite stressful. She is basically training her departments foreign management and replacements.

We long ago began preparing for this and will be fine. We intentionally lived well below our earnings, and even without a retirement in place managed to save enough to be comfortable.

A word of warning, get out of debt, save, and invest wisely. Your security is literally in your own two hands, Governments and corporations routinely intentionally lie to their citizens and employees. Once you come to that realization, your path becomes much clearer, and decisions easier to make.

If you don't or can't believe what I am saying, read - IBM India. Also note the dates, nothing recent!

Here is an excerpt:
Between 2003 and 2007, IBM's head count in India has grown by almost 800%, from 9,000 in 2003 to nearly 74,000 in 2007. Since 2006, IBM has been the multinational with the largest number of employees in India.[6] IBM is very secretive about the geographic distribution of its employees. By most estimates, it has close to a third of its 288,000 employees (~ 100,000) in India, and it likely has more employees there than in the US.

I think that maybe IBM isn't the exception, but the rule. Things, they are a' changin!

 

[TJC]

Sorry for the very late response. Had totally forgotten about the thread until an email alert notified me of a post.

Truck is excellent and runs great. Very happy with it. Only issue is two of the Goodyear Dura Trac tires ended up having a high Road Force imbalance. Had a vibration in the steering that would come and go so finally took them in for a re-balance. The store that originally mounted them said nothing. The second store let me know about the problem. They said one of the tires was also visibly out of round. That's what happens sometimes purchasing take-off tires at 1/3 the cost of new. Put the two bad ones on the back so even though there is still a vibration or slight bounce overall, steering is solid.

The drive-train certainly isn't the smoothest, but the acceleration, although unexciting being a 4-banger, is impressively quick. Used 4WLo a few times climbing steep hills and it did great. Otherwise 4WHi works great as well. No complaints about the transmission. Works as it should. One thing I discovered by accident that I think is pretty cool is the gear indicator left of the speed indicator if you push the + on the gear shift. That's when I noticed under normal acceleration the transmission will skip gears. Runs 1-3-5 as I recall.

Something else I used a few times is the descent control. Now honestly I prefer to use the manual gear mode for a lower gear and use the brakes sparingly rather than the descent control just using the brakes all the time. My Touareg is smarter in that regard and uses engine braking along with wheel braking on decent in "Off Road" mode. That said, the suspension in the Ranger with the Eibach Pro Truck 2.0 shocks is far better off-road. Back end will still jump out over washboards for instance but does everything else well and handles like a fat sporty car on pavement

Now for the bad part. My wife was let go from her job a few weeks ago and we weren't quite prepared for that. We're fine but suddenly scrutinizing finances and the truth is the truck is now an asset that between yearly registration and insurance is an expense we don't absolutely need. So it's on the short list to sell if my wife doesn't find another job in the next few months. She was only a couple of years from retirement. The layoff was one of those BS corporate knee-jerk cost slashings even though she was a highly-experienced, liked and valued employee of over 20 years. Regardless, it is what it is.

I'll hang on to the truck for a little while longer to see how things go. In the meantime I'll still use it and enjoy it, carefully, for what it is.

Attached a few pics. Had to laugh that every single one is of the driver's side.

I gotta say, you did a great piece of work here! Very impressive.

 

[XionUAV]

Sorry to hear about your wife loosing her job. My son lost his job end of January last year. He is 55 and had 18 years with the company. They decided to sub contract their delivery to a company in the same line of product. I do not purchase their products any more and they had excellent product.

Sad how companies *#@% their long time employees.

I worked for corporate American for several years until in the mid nineties became fed-up with the BS and personal agendas and went out on my own. For some of us, being in charge of our own fate and destiny, as much as is possible, is preferable to working for someone else even when times get tough.

Having health insurance and getting regular checks is great when work is good, especially with matching contributions to a 401K and possible pension, depending on the job. It can be a kick in the head when you depend on those resources and they suddenly go away. I grew up on a farm so I have that farmer mentality of adapting as necessary. It still hurts though when our well-made plans go in the ditch.

Times are difficult for a lot of people. We all just have to figure it out the best we can, hang in there and try to find joy where we can.

 

[XionUAV]

I was at 25 years of service with IBM when they pulled the retirement plan for their employees. My wife still works there, but the writing is on the wall. We expect her to be a "resource action" victim sometime this year, and have prepared for it.

When I left IBM for Lenovo 15 years ago, the company had 430K employees, and over 350K of them were based in the USA. Today there are less than 50K US employees, and there is an active movement to eliminate them down to a skeleton crew based in IBM HQ in Armonk, NY.

They are being replaced with "low cost" foreign employees. These are not my words, they are the words coming from senior IBM management. IBM goes to great lengths to keep employment data confidential. They know the law, and lean well over the line, but never cross it legally. For instance, there is a layoff threshold that when crossed requires reporting to the government. IBM structures their layoffs over a year to stay just under the threshold. The don't do massive layoffs in one fell swoop. The dribble them out slowly by division and over time, staying just under the reporting threshold, but by the end of the year they achieve their targets without government intervention. They have perfected the model.

IBM - "International Business Machines" has morphed into IBM - "India Business Machines"! There are now 200K+ IBM India employees. The CEO is an Indian National.

And it has been announced that employees in high costs countries need to prepare to be let go. High Cost Employee Regions include the entire western hemisphere, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Japan.

This last wave saw their high level performance employees targeted. A high level manager that I know told me... "It wasn't about job performance or ratings." My wife's manager and 2/3's of her dept were replaced with low skill people who have no idea how to perform their jobs. We plan for her to leave by the end of this year if she has not been let go. Working for people who have no skill, idea, or understanding of their roles and responsibilities is quite stressful. She is basically training her departments foreign management and replacements.

We long ago began preparing for this and will be fine. We intentionally lived well below our earnings, and even without a retirement in place managed to save enough to be comfortable.

A word of warning, get out of debt, save, and invest wisely. Your security is literally in your own two hands, Governments and corporations routinely intentionally lie to their citizens and employees. Once you come to that realization, your path becomes much clearer, and decisions easier to make.

If you don't or can't believe what I am saying, read - IBM India. Also note the dates, nothing recent!

Here is an excerpt:
Between 2003 and 2007, IBM's head count in India has grown by almost 800%, from 9,000 in 2003 to nearly 74,000 in 2007. Since 2006, IBM has been the multinational with the largest number of employees in India.[6] IBM is very secretive about the geographic distribution of its employees. By most estimates, it has close to a third of its 288,000 employees (~ 100,000) in India, and it likely has more employees there than in the US.

I think that maybe IBM isn't the exception, but the rule. Things, they are a' changin!

Well said. Getting out of debt, saving and investing wisely is the key to any level of personal financial security. Selling the Ranger would allow me to pay off our house. We're that close. That's why that option is currently on the table.

The inherent problem with any business that trades stock publicly, or is managed by investors, is with very few exceptions it prioritizes profit above all else. Employees are usually the highest cost center. When profits are down, employees are typically the first to go. The rub of course is who goes. What we may see as a valuable employee who's helped guide and build the company for years or even decades, a bean counter may see only as a yearly $150k expense. Eliminate fifty of those and presto, $7.5M saved annually.

My wife's company was generating about $1.5B annually and doing well. A change of CEO a few years ago saw a shift from employee satisfaction and "Putting People First" to focusing on the process. There were other factors involved as well but in the end, the investors hired a consulting firm to tell them how to reduce costs and of course the highest expense was the employees. Younger and upper management stayed. Many older and experienced and middle-management were shown the door. In my wife's case there was some year-old personal agenda BS going on as well.

Layoffs are simply a fact of life. A company will do whatever a company thinks it must in order to survive. Sourcing cheaper resources out of country has been going on since making the most profit has been the goal. A company not making a profit is a company on its way to bankruptcy and foreclosure. Then every employee loses. Regardless, layoffs still suck.

Oh there are numerous long-term consequences regarding outsourcing. Maintaining a good balance of imports and exports is the key. Good luck with that one.

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