THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

Thanks for the opinions so far everyone. The Coronado, at least through Lone Mountain, is a brand new truck with a DD15, just like the Cascadia they offered as well.

I'm not too worried about the emission laws becoming stricter on gliders. I have no good reason to ever go into California or the northeast for that matter LOL. That's the kind of issue that I would worry about if/when it actually becomes one.

The reason I'm struggling over my decision right now is whether or not I want to dump the money into my current truck. There is absolutely no reason for me to go dump probably over $6k into it if I'm going to turn it in at the end of the lease which is 3 months. I will continue to just run it like it is now if I'm going to turn it back in. If I found the engine in this truck to be in excellent shape (internal wear wise), checked out on dyno, blowby, oil samples, etc., and put the money into getting the timing issue looked at (pretty sure it has slipped), got a new turbo/actuator, and had the truck away from SFI and did some magic on the emissions crap on here I could easily hit 8-9 MPG if not more. And I'm not kidding about that, I've seen numbers from someone that has done it with his truck, and for others and they are all getting those kinds of numbers. But, again, I still go back to "ok great so I have a great running truck getting good MPG but I have no warranty or $40k saved up if the engine blows".

I really can't see leasing another truck for another year through SFI. Been there done that, ready to move on from leasing a truck from a carrier. I *might* consider re-leasing this current truck for one more year to knock the residual down even further, but again, I'm still held to the lease agreement of "no modifications" for that year. Only if the payments were low though. I'm done with $1075 every week for payments. I want to manage my own maintenance account and have a lower truck payment so life is that much easier.

The Lone Mountain trucks payments are still a little high for my liking but honestly its not a bad deal. Bottom line is they are brand spanking new trucks and no matter where you get one of those from... the payments aren't gonna be super low.

I'm just drooling over the glider because aside from the fact that its just a plain old Columbia and not a W900 (but hey, gotta work my way up right? LOL), its a new truck, zero miles, with the engine that can easily go 1 million miles without being opened up, has no emissions bullcrap, no variable geometry turbo, easy to work on, just a good choice for someone like me that likes to work on my own stuff when I can, and it has a friggin warranty that can be honored at any Freightliner dealership, and to top it all off the cost is a good 40k-50k less than the Lone Mountain trucks.

But, financing... gonna be very tough. I guess I need to talk to someone at Freightliner and just see what my options, if any, are.

 

Yep yet another drawback to the deletes along with the big one being "don't the EPA find out" lol. Can't take it to Cummins or by law they are required to flash it back. So I'd then have to flash it back myself... again, lol.

I'm just trying to get away from all the problems emissions-era engines have, and it doesn't matter if it's a Cummins or a Detroit or a few years old or brand new - the crap is just not reliable and really makes an engine suffer as you're forcing dirty air back into the intake with EGR.

It could also be an issue if I kept this truck, did the deletes, and then tried to sell it in a few years. Try to re-enable everything to find that none of it works since it hasn't been used in so long.

I've heard rumors that EGR may be done away with in a few years as the aftertreatment technology progresses and improves, however, I'm not about to sit around for a few years and find out.

Think I'm just gonna have to do what 91B20H8 says and talk to the bank, talk to Diamler, and just see what happens.