Sold my FG140....What now? general knowledge JDM question ....

[skippythedog]

Sold my Fuso with super singles and mods. It was geitting hard to clamber into up into the cab and I was not enamored by Mitsu abandoning the U.S. market....replaced it with a Tundra but I also miss the days of when I first got my Fuso, with the duallies, closer to the ground. I used it like a pickup...got the same mileage as my Tundra too....Lot's of JDM stuff is showing up and the little Toyoace looks interesting, particualrly with the diesel....Is it possible to keep one running here? Parts? Mechanical work by commercial shops? What do you know? What have you heard? Rumors welcome.....I figure that it might not be any worse than the pending parts situation with Fuso...or what Unimog owners deal with now. The thing that amazed me about my Fuso is, I bought it with 20k miles on it, sold it at 85k and never put a dime into it for maintenance except fluids....My brakes were still at 70+%.....I figure a low mile commercial JDM truck will similarly eclipse my Tundra in maintenance costs as well....

 

[Czechsix]

If it's getting hard to clamber into those cabs, you sound like me. One big issue I had was also the ride quality. Even with the suspension upgrades, tire and wheel upgrades, etc, there'd be plenty of hits to the back during a road trip. I'm not getting any younger, neither is the wife, and those hits all add up.

When you get down to it, all of the small/medium duty Japanese FC offerings are pretty much designed to be used as day trucks in cities, on high quality roads. I think that's one thing that's ignored by buyers and sellers here. Plus that ride quality is just something that'll have to be dealt with when going with the FC design. I've seen exactly one example that rode nicely, but then again that had over a hundred K in suspension work done to it.

So for ride quality, standard designs like that Tundra win the day.

One has to balance that with what capabilities are needed. For me, I'm still looking at getting a smaller 'mog. Plowing, hunting, wood gathering, towing are the jobs I have, so for me it might still be worth it for another ten years or so.

But then there's that maintenance thing...

Any time we're dealing with a non-standard vehicle over here we're going to have to get used to parts prices and availability not being anywhere near domestic vehicles. Another thing to put some thought into is the current trade situation. Tariffs have absolutely hammered costs for vehicle parts that have to be imported, and that'll make a big difference for a while.

Always a gamble.

But the coolness aspect is worth some grins too!