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Showing posts from August, 2015

Daily Driver Part 1: Lacking Sound and Technology

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For the time being the Ford Excursion is my daily driver.  This gives me time to work out any issues with it before loading up the family and pulling a 12k lb trailer all around.  Hopefully I can find any problems with it and take care of them before risking stranding my entire family on the side of the road in the middle of the Utah desert.  I'll tell you what I learn in multiple blog posts, while driving it 5 days a week nearly 80 miles round trip from Ogden into Salt Lake City. For anyone who has driven a modern vehicle, stepping back into time 10 years might cause some techno-shock!  Lack of technology is a problem for somebody like me who loves gadgets!  We're talking a 10 year old sound system that was made before bluetooth was invented!  This just isn't going to work for me and I knew this going into the purchase.  I had planned a massive sound and tech upgrade from the beginning. Apple Car Play (or Android Auto) is Priority #1 Ever since t...

The Find!

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I could write a fairly long post about my search, but I don't want to bore you.  Instead I'll summarize my journey into a few short tips. Patience Basically I was very patient, waiting for the right rig to come along and ready to snatch it up when it did.  I was searching from Excursions in my home state of Utah, as well as Colorado, California, and spent a lot of time looking at southern states where no salt is used on the roads.  I spent a lot of time scouring eBay, Craigslist, and Autotrader. Price As I mentioned before I had set my price range around $20k as most of the clean diesel rigs with about 100k miles on them were selling around that price on eBay which gave me a good indicator of what I should be willing to spend.  NADA and Kelly are completely wrong by the way.  They aren't accounting for these vehicles becoming rare and in demand and prices have stopped depreciating on them from what I can tell.  Age doesn't matter much, only condition ...