Relocating the battery to the rear.

[Msfitoy]

Leave the battery up front, add two extra at the rear for spares...voila!

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[Sheepdog]

Yea.
Well, for one thing, I simply had no idea cops retired so well.
I knew they did ok, but daymn.

It's an interesting subject- a lot of people don't know how it all works out for us.

In some places, cops merely do okay. But some places pay pretty well. I worked in a place that paid very well. I was an FTO (Field Training Officer), and I don't remember the last time I had a 21 year old rookie that made less than $100K their first year on the road. I did considerably better than that, and since our retirement pensions are based upon our earnings, I'm doing okay in retirement also.

And we can retire with full retirement benefits at 55.

And my pension is tax-free.

And I get free medical for life.

As a high-school dropout, I am VERY thankful that it all worked out okay.

 

[Msfitoy]

It's an interesting subject- a lot of people don't know how it all works out for us.

In some places, cops merely do okay. But some places pay pretty well. I worked in a place that paid very well. I was an FTO (Field Training Officer), and I don't remember the last time I had a 21 year old rookie that made less than $100K their first year on the road. I did considerably better than that, and since our retirement pensions are based upon our earnings, I'm doing okay in retirement also.

And we can retire with full retirement benefits at 55.

And my pension is tax-free.

And I get free medical for life.

As a high-school dropout, I am VERY thankful that it all worked out okay.

So much for my college degree...62 still working...

 

[Sheepdog]

So much for my college degree...62 still working...

Yeah, and all I had to do for it was run towards gunfire for a living.

I have been shot, stabbed, attacked by pitbulls, and was retired by an injury in the line of duty requiring reconstructive surgery and a year and a half of rehabilitative physical therapy.

 

[Sheepdog]

Same. Except I didn't get to retire. I still gotta grind away until retirement...

Sorry to hear that, brother.

Are you saying that you're still working as a cop, or what?

 

[Msfitoy]

Yeah, and all I had to do for it was run towards gunfire for a living.

I have been shot, stabbed, attacked by pitbulls, and was retired by an injury in the line of duty requiring reconstructive surgery and a year and a half of rehabilitative physical therapy.

You deserve a good retirement...I'm just jealous that a Lambo is not in my future lol

 

[GitRDone]

This thread took some turns, but it was interesting reading. Back to the prerunner discussion, I never got why the Toyota Prerunners were always 2wd, but makes sense now.

 

[OFC Ranger]

Leave the battery up front, add two extra at the rear for spares...voila!

I like you.

Also that is my plan, cept they will be charged by a solar array on the forward portion of my roof platform.

You know people sometimes I ask me why I did all this work on a 2x4. I explain as best I'm not the guy whos rock crawling or mudding. I am the mobile supply station at base camp that is a magic box on wheels that will produce everything from emergency parts to white claws and hot pockets.

If my truck was a video game character

 

[NvrFinished]

The problem is, when I say "prerunner" here, it seems like most people don't even know what that is. It makes no sense to the millenial that just wants to install 33" mud tires on chrome wheels with a 3" spacer lift in the front and colored light bulbs on his heavily-financed 4x4 Ranger, to try to pick up high school girls at the mall. It makes no sense to the old guy that just wants to install a bug screen, running boards, a tonneau cover, Hello Kitty mudflaps, monogrammed floor mats, a padded Betty Boop steering wheel cover, a CB radio antenna, a personalized license plate frame, and every other non-functional cosmetic doo-dad he can order out of the J.C. Whitney catalog.



And if I were to say "prerunner" on Dezert Rangers, most people would assume that I'm talking about a $100K truck with fiberglass bedsides and fenders, full roll cage, fuel cell, bed cage, external triple-bypass Kings all the way around, a spooled full-floating fabricated 9" on a 3-link in the back, a long-travel setup a foot wider than stock up front, 37" Baja T/As on beadlock wheels, and so on. Plus, Dezert Rangers is full of guys who want to build the ultimate prerunner Ranger, but they have no interest in actually prerunning, they just want to huck it at Glamis or something, and they also only have about 5% of the money they'd need to actually complete their plans since they're a 22 year old greeter at Walmart, so they buy an old 4x2 Ranger, take it apart, cut it up, strip it out, and then never complete it.

I'm a retired cop, with a healthy pension- I can afford to buy and build just about anything I want- before I retired, my work commuter was a Porsche convertible that I custom-ordered new. My wife's daily driver is a BMW Track Pack car that I let her custom order new, and then we flew to Munich Germany to pick it up at the factory. We park our $250K motorhome inside the 2,300 square foot workshop on our ranch in Texas. My motorcycle is a hand-built MV Agusta- we toured the factory in northern Italy before I bought it. A vacation to us is spending a month in Europe every year, doing dinner in the Eiffel Tower and stuff like that. A simple $30K Ranger with $10K in upgrades, is really not a big deal to us. Like all of our vehicles, owning them is not the goal- the goal is to gain certain life experiences, and the vehicle is simply the tool that we use to gain those life experiences.



We're looking at doing something much more conservative, discreet, and economical. We actually intend to prerun in Mexico. Not every prerunner in Mexico is a $200K race truck with license plates- some people even pre-run in stock vehicles. We'd like to do something in between those two extremes. We'd like a new vehicle with A/C and cruise. We'd like it to be more comfortable, faster, and safer than a stock vehicle. We'd like it to be less conspicuous than a wide-body long-travel prerunner. We'd like it to be a little bit of a sleeper. We will probably carry only one spare, and we'll probably carry it in the stock location underneath. I'd even run the stock front bumper, but I think a proper frame-cut prerunner bumper and skid plate would be a lot safer. We were planning to order a new F150 Raptor, but a new 2021 4x2 SuperCrew Ranger with Electronic Locking Rear Differential, 33" tires on grey colored wheels, and a mid-travel Camburg suspension with King 2.5s and reservoirs made more sense to us. We may even spray the Kings flat black with Plasti-Dip before we go.

All too familiar. I used to race SCORE in Baja with KTM bikes in the 90's. Prerunners are good for getting down the road at a decent clip in order to cover a lot of ground while scouting out the course. Just watch out for the silt...

 

[peterson1604]

Yeah, centralizing mass is always a good idea, but the weight bias is so bad on stock pickups, that moving it as far back as possible may actually help more.

One of the purposes of prerunning, is for teams to be able to view the course beforehand, because locals tend to build jumps on the course without permission, for the purpose of photographing Trophy Trucks in the air and then selling the pictures to motorsports media outlets.

A Trophy truck encountering an unexpected kicker, may simply result in a little unintended flight time. A nearly-stock pickup encountering that same unexpected kicker, even at what would otherwise be a safe pace, could result in landing like a lawn dart.

With no cage, helmets, HANS devices, containment seats, SFI 16.1 harnesses, window nets, or wrist restraints, that could be a big deal.

They run the Pro 2 and Pro 4 trucks 15 miles from my home in Bark River, Michigan. I think it's the Lucas Oil Off Road series. They are a blast to watch and super fast on the track. No doubt that a stock Ranger would be toast after half a lap try to match their speeds. I believe in one of the jumps they're covering 50 to 75 feet or more in the air. Cool stuff!
Share a picture when you're done with it.

 

[OFC Ranger]

I suspect like most departments a lot of that has to do with either overtime or special duties.

Previous year I doubled my yearly salary, however to do that I worked nearly 1100 hours of overtime.

 

[Sheepdog]

They run the Pro 2 and Pro 4 trucks 15 miles from my home in Bark River, Michigan. I think it's the Lucas Oil Off Road series. They are a blast to watch and super fast on the track. No doubt that a stock Ranger would be toast after half a lap try to match their speeds. I believe in one of the jumps they're covering 50 to 75 feet or more in the air. Cool stuff!
Share a picture when you're done with it.

We are not trying to go as fast as the race vehicles- we just don't want to have to go as slow as we'd have to go in a stock Ranger. We intend to drive well within the limits of the vehicle.

 

[Sheepdog]

This thread took some turns, but it was interesting reading. Back to the prerunner discussion, I never got why the Toyota Prerunners were always 2wd, but makes sense now.

Yes. And Tacomas and Rangers have always been popular as prerunners...

 

[Sheepdog]

You deserve a good retirement...I'm just jealous that a Lambo is not in my future lol

Thanks.

That's not my car- that's just a rental car (an LP570-4 Gallardo Performante Spyder) when we were in northern Italy to tour Lamborghini, Ferrari, Maserati, Pagani, Ducati, and MV Agusta- they're all located within a couple of hours of each other.

I was shopping for a Gallardo or a Ferrari 360 Modena at that time, but ended up ordering a new Porsche instead. I would like to have had a Murcielago, but I just could not justify the expense.

If you are looking for a Lamborghini (or a Ferrari), I can share some things that we learned along the way.

Gallardos and 360s are fairly affordable, and they don't really depreciate, so it doesn't really cost anything to own one. That said, we kind of got lucky with my Porsche, as it was the last year of the naturally-aspirated flat-6 engines in the non-GT cars, so my Porsche didn't really depreciate very much either, which made it fairly economical to own.

But the thing is, most of us buy cars to drive, not just to own. Modern Ferraris and Lamborghinis are more reliable than older ones, but they're still hand-built in Italy, which means that you should never drive one without a fire extinguisher and a cell phone.

And Italian stuff is expensive to fix.

Almost all Gallardos came with the crude "E-Gear" robotized single-clutch manual transmission (no clutch pedal), and they just don't manage the clutch very well- you can expect to put a $10,000 clutch in it about once a year.

Most 360s come with Ferrari's "F1" robotized single-clutch transmission, which is well-known for expensive failures of the solenoid system.

Gated manual Gallardos and 360s tend to be very rare, and a lot more expensive.

Then there are the tires. I drove like a grown-up, and the original tires on my Porsche were done well before 20,000 miles, and it was a grand to replace them. Expect the same thing from any supercar.

And although you can buy a Lamborghini in any color you want, it's always besy to buy a Ferrari in "resale red".

The reason I ended up ordering my Porsche, was because Porsche is "the everyday supercar". It may lack the soul of something hand-built in Italy, but I never had to worry that it would fail to start or catch on fire just to spite me. It also gets MUCH better fuel mileage than a typical Lamborghini or Ferrari.

If you are still set on something other than a Porsche, take a look at the Audi R8. It's built on the same platform as the Gallardo, but they tend to be MUCH less expensive to purchase. Clarkson referred to driving the R8 as being "like smearing honey into Kiera Knightley":

 

[Sheepdog]

Clarkson reviewing the Murci:



Ed Bolian's "free" Murci is painted that color. He daily drives it.

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