offroad plumber
New member
Hello all,
I am new to this forum but not to montero's. I have always owned jeep's of some form or another. 5 of which were wranglers. When my wife was pregnant with our third kid I traded my last wrangler in on a 2000 Montero with the winter package and no locker. I had originally been on the hunt for an FJ80 or FZJ80 but couldn't find one in my price range. I did some research on the net and ended up interested enough to check out montero's which I was not familiar with. I was able to find one of those purely by chance and brought it home the next day after test driving it. It had 122,000 miles on it at the time. I was unsure about it offroad for a while having been used to wrangler TJ's as my previous two vehicles. That went away pretty quickly after tooling around the desert with it a couple of times. It didn't take long for it to become my favorite vehicle that I've ever owned. Years later with 180,000 miles on the odometer and no major repairs I was very happy with the truck except for the lack of a rear locker. As luck would have it my wife was looking on craigslist and found a 1996 SR with only 98,000 miles for $4,300 and that afternoon it was mine. I parted with my 2000 gen 2.5 for $3,500 effectively getting a montero with half the miles and a locker for only $800 bucks more. My 1996 is very clean and drives and rides very tight. I threw on some 33" BFG's and called it a day. For now.
The thing is I have a work van and only drive my montero on weekends. I have owned the truck for a little over a year now and only put 4,000 miles on it since purchasing it. I have taken it to Wyoming a couple of times and Moab once. So far, so good. I put a cheapie roof basket on it which has held up fine so far. It is a Kurt brand from cabella's. I use the basket when loading our family of 6 in the truck. I have carried coolers and such up there with no complaint from the rack.
I now have an itch for longer trips and really want to bring my dad along for the experience. He wants to buy a vehicle to bring along which I would like for him to do as well. He doesn't need the people carrying capacity that I do but likes the Montero idea. He would have to drive up to Colorado from Texas just to meet up with me so he needs a comfortable truck and more importantly a reliable truck. I believe his budget to be $5,000 to $6,000 max. I have also suggested troopers as an alternative to the Montero but we both like the monty more. He would also need to be able to depend on this vehicle as a daily driver. My mom uses a wheel chair so they would need to be able to cart that around from time to time. I kind of think a gen 3 would suit him nicely but have no experience with them. We are not looking to do any real rock crawling like in a wrangler but more of extended back country trips.
Do any of you have ideas or do you know of good trucks for sale? I really love my Montero and so does he. A sport may be considered too but not as highly. He is open to most makes and models but in general keeps coming back to the montero's. Any advise is welcome.
I am new to this forum but not to montero's. I have always owned jeep's of some form or another. 5 of which were wranglers. When my wife was pregnant with our third kid I traded my last wrangler in on a 2000 Montero with the winter package and no locker. I had originally been on the hunt for an FJ80 or FZJ80 but couldn't find one in my price range. I did some research on the net and ended up interested enough to check out montero's which I was not familiar with. I was able to find one of those purely by chance and brought it home the next day after test driving it. It had 122,000 miles on it at the time. I was unsure about it offroad for a while having been used to wrangler TJ's as my previous two vehicles. That went away pretty quickly after tooling around the desert with it a couple of times. It didn't take long for it to become my favorite vehicle that I've ever owned. Years later with 180,000 miles on the odometer and no major repairs I was very happy with the truck except for the lack of a rear locker. As luck would have it my wife was looking on craigslist and found a 1996 SR with only 98,000 miles for $4,300 and that afternoon it was mine. I parted with my 2000 gen 2.5 for $3,500 effectively getting a montero with half the miles and a locker for only $800 bucks more. My 1996 is very clean and drives and rides very tight. I threw on some 33" BFG's and called it a day. For now.
The thing is I have a work van and only drive my montero on weekends. I have owned the truck for a little over a year now and only put 4,000 miles on it since purchasing it. I have taken it to Wyoming a couple of times and Moab once. So far, so good. I put a cheapie roof basket on it which has held up fine so far. It is a Kurt brand from cabella's. I use the basket when loading our family of 6 in the truck. I have carried coolers and such up there with no complaint from the rack.
I now have an itch for longer trips and really want to bring my dad along for the experience. He wants to buy a vehicle to bring along which I would like for him to do as well. He doesn't need the people carrying capacity that I do but likes the Montero idea. He would have to drive up to Colorado from Texas just to meet up with me so he needs a comfortable truck and more importantly a reliable truck. I believe his budget to be $5,000 to $6,000 max. I have also suggested troopers as an alternative to the Montero but we both like the monty more. He would also need to be able to depend on this vehicle as a daily driver. My mom uses a wheel chair so they would need to be able to cart that around from time to time. I kind of think a gen 3 would suit him nicely but have no experience with them. We are not looking to do any real rock crawling like in a wrangler but more of extended back country trips.
Do any of you have ideas or do you know of good trucks for sale? I really love my Montero and so does he. A sport may be considered too but not as highly. He is open to most makes and models but in general keeps coming back to the montero's. Any advise is welcome.
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