Best truck for a four wheel grandby

[thekidntheturk]

Hey all! I'm looking to put my "09"grandby onto a more fuel efficient truck and am looking towards Toyota. I'm currently on an f350 7.5L and at best getting 10mpg. I'm thinking Tacoma with an 8' bed and a 4cyl but am concerned about the payload being too low. The grandby is roughly 950#s dry. Does anybody have this setup or something similar? We've gone down to Panama and back and are planning for South America so toyota would be the best choice I believe in terms of parts and service availability. Thanks for all input!

 

[92dlx]

You aren't going to find a Toyota with a 4 cylinder engine and an 8' bed stock. The longest bed you could get with a 4 cylinder was the 7' longbed of the 2nd gen. Pickup/Hilux. 8' beds are available in a 2nd gen. Tundra but I don't know about anything before that (1st gen. Tundra/T-100.)

You could make it work I'm sure with a flatbed fab or the like and some suspension work. Whether a 4 cylinder will pull your camper to your satisfaction is another question entirely.

 

[goodtimes]

I get as good of mileage with my '99 Dodge (cummins) & FWC Grandby as some friends get with their much newer ('12??) Tacoma and FWC fleet. I usually only calculate it on longer trips that tend to have substantial highway miles & comparatively few "dirt miles" - but honestly, it's pretty easy to rack up 1,500 pavement miles to/from another state, only to see a hundred miles of dirt.

The no BS number?

Fully loaded & traveling at reasonable speeds (IE: slow lane, but not getting passed by many semi's) - consistently just over 17mpg.

 

[tanglefoot]

The Granby won't fit in a compact/mid-size truck bed like the Tacoma. The Granby's too wide.

The Tacoma never came with an 8-foot bed but the T100 did, and I believe a newer Grandby would fit in a T100 bed. Early T100s were available with the 22RE 2.4L and an 8-foot bed and later ones were available with the 3RZ 2.7L. You can put a Granby in a 6-foot bed, but it needs to be wider than a Tacoma, unless you remove the bed, flat bed it, etc.

You might also consider a T100 or 1st-gen Tundra with the 5VZ 3.4L. It's a V6, but it has nice low-end torque--fuel economy would pretty pretty similar to the 22RE or 3RZ.

You can also tow the Granby on a trailer behind the vehicle of your choice. This is actually a pretty common thing to do.

 

[Flagster]

I would not consider any camper on the Tacoma...the payload is a joke and it will be way overloaded...components wear out faster...blah blah blah...
Just look at the guy who wore out his clutch in like 40K miles...
And putting that big a camper in any truck is going to fetch you poor mpg...waiting for the dodge guys to tell me they get routinely 25mpgs ...
If you want a Toyota, flatbed a long bed tundra...

 

[stioc]

Payload for a 4cyl Tacoma is listed as 1300lbs, the V6 versions are not much more than that.

One person's experience but I found that with a V6 truck when loaded it gave me no better gas mileage than the v8 counterparts and even without being loaded the v8 versions weren't that far off. Nowadays with the cylinder management the V8 trucks are delivering pretty impressive gas mileage when cruising the highways. Personally speaking the thought of a 4cyl motor pulling a 4000lbs truck, then a 2300lbs (?) payload (cargo, passengers, perhaps bigger tires, skids, etc) and merging on the highway sounds like a lot of work (nevermind exceeding the payload and subsequently the emergency braking etc) rather than a fun cruise. Again, just my personal thought/experience and I'm often called a minimalist

I always thought the F250s were a great truck for a larger FWC application. However, lately I'm thinking the 2004-2007 Tundra would also make a good truck with the slide down window to access the cab from the camper shell. Then you have the big-three domestic trucks which all look like pretty nice options too.

 

[Martinjmpr]

I would not be worried about the engine as much as the other components.

4 cyl trucks tend to be "strippers." They have the bare minimum of brakes, tires, suspension, cooling, etc.

You're getting 10mpg with your F350 but that's a gasser, yes? I just wonder if going to a diesel might be a better idea?

I just think that putting a 1,000lb camper on a 4 cyl truck is really pushing the limits of what is safe, and I think any gains in MPG would (a) be minimal since that little 4 cyl would be working its heart out and (b) be offset by premature wear out of other components (tires, brakes, suspension, cooling, etc.)

EDITED TO ADD: Are you looking at new or used? Does the new F150 with the Ecoboost come in a long bed single cab?

 

[92dlx]

The Tacoma never came with an 8-foot bed but the T100 did, and I believe a newer Grandby would fit in a T100 bed. Early T100s were available with the 22RE 2.4L and an 8-foot bed and later ones were available with the 3RZ 2.7L. You can put a Granby in a 6-foot bed, but it needs to be wider than a Tacoma, unless you remove the bed, flat bed it, etc.

I didn't realize that the T-100 came with a 22RE and an 8' bed. If this is true I stand corrected in my earlier post.

 

[Clutch]

I didn't realize that the T-100 came with a 22RE and an 8' bed. If this is true I stand corrected in my earlier post.

yep

though I would try and find a 1st gen Tundra with the 3.4 V6 and manny trans.

I would not consider any camper on the Tacoma...the payload is a joke and it will be way overloaded...components wear out faster...blah blah blah...
Just look at the guy who wore out his clutch in like 40K miles...
And putting that big a camper in any truck is going to fetch you poor mpg...waiting for the dodge guys to tell me they get routinely 25mpgs ...
If you want a Toyota, flatbed a long bed tundra...

yerp...only thing I would put on a Tacoma is a Flippac.

1st gen Tundy...not sure what model this FWC is though???

 

[92dlx]

I looked it up and what the OP is looking for is a 94-98 T-100 with the 3rz-fe. I didn't think it could be a 22re. I'm not suggesting this for his purposes, just correcting my earlier mistake.

 

[thekidntheturk]

Thanks guys all great replies with lots to look into and think over. So far it seems that diesel (F250) is the direction I'll be looking in. (When are the 150 diesels supposed to make their debut?) Used, as the price of new trucks is more than the loss in fuel with my 460. I hadn't thought about the smaller engine being a bad thing but it makes sense with no torque or HP to stand on. I did contact FWC and they pointed out that the Tacoma bed is too narrow for a Grandby anyway.
Thanks Again.

 

[Clutch]

Thanks guys all great replies with lots to look into and think over. So far it seems that diesel (F250) is the direction I'll be looking in. (When are the 150 diesels supposed to make their debut?) Used, as the price of new trucks is more than the loss in fuel with my 460. I hadn't thought about the smaller engine being a bad thing but it makes sense with no torque or HP to stand on. I did contact FWC and they pointed out that the Tacoma bed is too narrow for a Grandby anyway.
Thanks Again.

More often than not, it is cheaper to keep what you have.

 

[Clutch]

I looked it up and what the OP is looking for is a 94-98 T-100 with the 3rz-fe. I didn't think it could be a 22re. I'm not suggesting this for his purposes, just correcting my earlier mistake.

I stand corrected as well...I thought it had the 22RE too. Even with the 3RZ-FE...man that thing had to be a dog. I like my 3.4 for running around town, great light duty truck...loaded down though, it is for the birds.

 

[tanglefoot]

I stand corrected too. I guess the '93 T100 only had the 3VZ-E. I could have sworn the 2wds had the 22RE.

You might also consider a 2nd-gen Tundra with the 4.0.

For decent fuel economy and nice payload/towing capacity, the cabover Fuso/Hino/Nissan UD/Isuzu/GMC medium-duty trucks come to mind. They're pretty affordable, used.

We've found that heavily-loaded 4-cyls can still deliver some nice fuel economy.

My pop-up camper (plywood construction) probably weighs about the same as a Granby. My 22RE truck gets the same mileage whether the camper's on or not--right around 20 mpg. On a trip last year with the camper on, I measured 22 mpg.

When I go with my parents, we take this:



It has a 22RE and 4-speed manual, and that camper body weighs much more than a Granby. If there's no headwind, it does 18-19 mpg. The same campers with the V6 (3VZ-E) do around 15-16 mpg, so sometimes, even with a load, the smaller engines still use less fuel.

 

[surlydiesel]

I've come across T-100's for sale with a 4 cylinder engine in them. I thought it was the 2.4 but I could be wrong. Anyway, they had singlecabs and 8 foot beds.

If your truck is going strong and doesn't need 1000's of dollars in repairs, it's usually cheaper to roll with what you've got. Insurance is more on newer vehicles, more electronics usually, parts cost more and you feel bad about running a tree branch down the side. If you are trying to conserve fuel for the environment, it's going to cost you some money unfortunately.

-jorge