Anyone rolling in a 589 yet?

The EZ pedal clutch is like driving a pickup.

 

god I love my 1995 W900L more everyday. It's got problems due to old age and they're cheap and simple to fix. The biggest issue I have is old bolts breaking when I'm taking stuff apart, but I'll take that over this nonsense everyday of the week. I wonder when, if ever we will realize that putting the CANBUS system into semi trucks was a terrible idea. I can't believe it's still so unreliable. I know guys with brand new 250k Peterbilt's that randomly lock their doors and active their wiper blades and if they want to change their headlights from led to halogen they have to go to the dealership to get a software update. CRAZY! And they got 3-4k truck payment a month for the privilege of dealing with all this nonsense. I don't understand how everyone isn't doing restorations on 90s trucks.

 

Because at the end of the day a restored 90’s truck is still an old truck. I’ve done two of them and have less than zero desire to sit in an old truck again. Problems arise when people want to drive a new truck and not do anything preventative to them. Most of the electrical things can be cured by updating the computer but a lot of people don’t think about doing that. And sometimes it’s not the truck causing problems.

I was getting a random turn signal fault when I’d use my right turn signal but only when my trailer lights were on. But the signals were all working properly. Then before I got back to the shop the light panel in front of my trailer axles stopped working and after that happened I stopped getting a turn signal fault on my dash. Shop repaired the lights and it’s been good since.

And if people have a $4k truck payment that means they didn’t have enough down money and probably shouldn’t be driving a new truck down the road. When I got my new one in 2022 I had to finance less than $60k.

 

$60k and you can have another 95

 

What is the wheel base on that?

 

265

 

Between your 95,my 95 and Abyliks 95 w9 I could have a pretty nice fleet. I got no desire to deal with drivers though. Best to just put all my extra money into Bitcoin. Probably make more money that way than running trucks with hired help in them too lol.

 

You had a sweet W9 and a FLD that made you a lot of money. As you know you ran the heck outta those hauling cattle. You could have had either one of those full frame off restored,rewired and even frame replaced for less than 1/2 of one of these new trucks if a shop did it and probably 1/4 if you did it yourself and then it wouldn't hardly be an old truck anymore, but everyone's gotta do what they prefer. You can put a big down payment down, but that's still costing you money every month. You could be getting 10-20% by investing that 100k+ so it's costing you 10-20k a year in opportunity cost on the capital. Plus DEF,Emissions maintenance/downtime and increased insurance costs.

I do kinda get it though. I've hopped in a T680 a guy I pulled for had to help out on a run while my truck was in the shop and i would say it feels much more like driving a car. Super quiet exhaust thanks to the dpf choking out the engine. Little quieter cab due to not having 1.5 million miles on it yet lol. It's a nice truck to drive. I just wouldn't wanna be paying the bill when it needs a 20k DEF system at 500k miles or a rebuild at 300k due to the emissions constantly making it run too hot with too much back pressure and rebreathing it's own exhaust.

I've still never driven an Automatic Semi truck and hopefully never will!

 

To quote my financial advisor when I wanted to restore the FLD when the cab cracked: “If you do that then you will have a hundred thousand dollar thirty thousand dollar truck”. And the KW looked decent but that thing was a mess from the get go. I learned my lesson about buying a truck from a friend of a friend.

I know new trucks have their problems but simple preventative maintenance from new can lessen them. I think a fair amount of guys pay zero attention to that little book that comes with the truck that has the maintenance intervals listed in the back. They just drive until a light comes on.