Howdy! Thanks for the replies! I've got a lot more to say.
I guess I'll start with my use case. I live in the middle of a large suburb on a five acre plot. It's highly unusual but here we are. I need a "farm truck" for all sorts of odds and ends: moving around building supplies, hobby project work, gardening, trips to the local big box store. Also I'm married and have three children. We don't hang on to vehicles with leaks, odors, or enough mechanical issues to warrant more than a couple trips to the mechanic a year.
We had a 2004 F150 for a while. 4WD, 88k miles, great condition. It needed an AC and a new power steering line (rats chewed through it?!). It had some dings but was good. That is, until the day that I went to Home Depot on my way to work to pick up a 2x4. That was a mistake: I either had to risk the thing sitting out all day and being stolen from the parking lot at work, or bring it home. That day I realized that I'm after big truck based SUVs and not pickup trucks.
After a couple of years of no truck, thinking we could just rent one when needed, we found that renting and returning a truck takes half a weekend day. We looked around and settled on our beloved 2001 GMC Yukon XL Denali. We lovingly call it "The Monstrosity". It was owned by a doctor, a super picky dude, and a mechanic before I purchased it with 170k miles. Great truck, I love the thing to death. But (after thousands of dollars spent) the reliability just wasn't there. It's needed a new AC, two exhaust gaskets, new shocks, tires, a head cover gasket, a diff seal gasket... the list goes on. But that list is comparable to what the previous owner had to do so it's not /so/ bad.
With new Michelin Defenders, KYB MonoMax shocks, an autoride delete kit (coil springs), Mobil 1 oil, and new seat covers for the driver, it may as well be a new truck. I see 16+ MPG highway - remember that this is on a nearly 20 year old V8 truck with AWD.
We have five acres' worth of trees that need annual trimming and a burn ban in town. That means a few trips to the wood recycler every spring. Even with an 8' bed it would be a bear. So we just straight up purchased a 7000lb, two axle, 16' landscape trailer for about $2900. Most people can't get these because they have nowhere to park them. Well, we have five acres. The trailer just blows a pickup truck out of the water when it comes to capacity for large things, or gross things, or heavy things. Fridges, stoves, tool boxes, couches, etc. load up real easy with a low loading deck height. Zero regrets here.
But with the trailer we can get stuck in the mud in the rainy season. 4WD is a must. AWD on the Denali got us by, fortunately I never felt like I needed 4WD-LO.
The exhaust leaks gave us a scare with the baby. We don't want him inhaling those fumes. He's a good baby and want to make sure he outlives us after all. So the search was on for the replacement.
We like cargo space. The Tahoe and Yukon was out. We want big. I wanted a second row bench so that I could remove Row 3 and have all the space. I really love how on the 2001 the second row seats fold totally flat so you get a true 8' bed. No other truck based SUV else has this. Sure, we can get this capacity in the trailer, but not when it's raining. Also the big flat interior bed means we can make the thing a makeshift RV.
What's big? The Excursion. It's as big as they get. I even owned one for a while. I learned a few things from my experience:
- diesels are LOUD. The kids hated this.
- old diesels are stinky. The wife and kids hated this.
- the 7.3 is expensive, underpowered (at stock), tough to find, and loud. I test drove some but never owned one.
- the 6.0 is picky. I briefly owned one and got it fully Bulletproofed. It should have been perfect. But leaks kept cropping up, everyone else in the house hated it, and (in light of Dieselgate) the fact that it had an EGR and cat/DPF delete made me feel terrible. A kid who loves diesels has it now, and it's perfect for him.
- the 6.8 v10 is fine, I test drove one, but you get to live in fear of shooting out spark plugs. It sucks fuel. You may as well get a 6.0L or 8.1L GM engine.
- the 5.4 v8 gasser is, well, underpowered compared to the LQ4, and has the same issues as the V8. I had one in my F150. I never test drove a 5.4l Excursion.
- 2WD Excursions drive and feel great. The 4WD is so much heavier in the nose (with the transfer case) that you NEED 4WD in order to not get stuck.
- the handling and ride quality are junk. It's a 1999 F250 at heart. F250s have come a loooong way...
- In general, I've found that I prefer GM to Ford.
(I did really like the fallback to manual locking hubs, though.)
So, not liking any of the available engine options, or the grief of a truck with 250k miles on it (I like everything to work...), the Excursion was ruled out. If I win the lottery I'll consider an Excursion with the 6.7L Duramax.
I did look at a Duraburb. There was a nice one on eBay recently, in Victory Red (the best red). But I still don't want a "deleted" truck. I don't live in CA but I believe in CA emissions.
I ride bicycles and really love the fact that the '01 Denali has a 39" interior height aft of Row 2. That means the 3rd row seats come out and my bicycle goes right in. The 2015 and newer body style Suburbans give my use case the middle finger: row 3 is fixed, the loading height is taller, and interior space is now 35 inches, which means the bicycle doesn't fit unless the seatpost comes off. No thank you. So it was 2014 at best. That's tough because the used market is full of trucks with 125-200k miles. People don't just get these trucks to park them in front of their house and look at them (like I do...). The drive them into the ground. You've got to be careful to not buy someone else's problems.
I got to test drive a 2004 8.1L Yukon XL 2500. God I loved that thing. Damn near perfect mechanically and half what I paid for the 2013. It drove the way I'd imagine a Tahoe to drive with the new 6.2L. Torque to spare. But it's still a 14 year old truck. It had leaks, and a smell, and little issues with the interior. I passed. (DM me if you want it, the seller hasn't listed it online yet.)
We were down to two cars: our Nissan Leaf, and the 2001 Denali. Could two cars be any more different? But we love them both to death. The Denali was just too unreliable to be a daily driver family hauler in addition to a farm truck. (I'm a software engineer, not a mechanic. Now, I can turn a wrench, but I often have to go *buy* that wrench first!)
So we split it:
- daily driver family hauler duties were handed off to a brand new 2019 Honda Odyssey. It's officially my wife's car. She had one as a kid growing up and loved it. We all love it. Best feature is that you don't need to choose between a second row bench or captain's chairs - you've got both. That and 28 MPG highway, and the fact that (if you pull the seats out) you can get a true 8' flat bed. It just can't tow worth a damn and has FWD. (If the Pacifica Hybrid had removable 2nd row captain's chairs we'd have one. It doesn't.)
- farm truck, stuff hauler, backup family hauler for trips outside of the Leaf's EV range.
So here we were. I knew I didn't want an Excursion, anything with more than about 100k miles, anything much older than 2010, or anything newer than 2014. I knew I was after a Suburban or Yukon XL 2500. I wanted a second row bench if possible. I wanted red if possible, white as a fallback, and not black. It would be annual bonus season soon so the search was on.
That's enough for now. In a later post I'll talk about the search. I'll also talk about all the tiny little things I loved about the 2001, and why it's going to take some work to get the 2013 to fully take over responsibilities.
