As the title of my post suggests, I’m thinking of selling my 02 TJ, and buying a 3rd gen 4Runner. If I were to get a 4Runner, it would have to be a 5 speed, with preferably a 3.4L. I would also like to have the rear locker but that demands a price premium around here. I like Toyota’s, and my wife has a rav4 as a daily driver which has been awesome and relatively trouble free for the past 3 years of school. I’m sold on the Toyota design/durability/reliability.
Anyways, why am I thinking of selling the Jeep? This Jeep I’ve had for 1.5 years, and have been doing little fixes here and there quite frequently. More frequently than I’d like. It’s almost a project. Being a pharmacy student, I don’t want to dedicate all my time to fixing it. I would rather have a reasonably reliable vehicle that I can use to go camping, fishing, and mountain biking in my free time. I wouldn’t mind keeping the Jeep if it weren’t my daily driver, and I could work on it as a project. Also, my wife and I are looking at buying a tent trailer in the next year or two, and the Jeep is limited to a 2000lb towing capacity.
The next big thing is that I have a huge trip to make for school this year. In August I’m doing a hospital practicum in Whitehorse YT. So I’ve got a 6-7000km road trip in front of me. So I wonder if it’s worth getting a different vehicle and all the little issues that come with it or not at this point. I love driving the convertible jeep, but it is noisy and gets terrible mileage (good mileage is 18US mpg on the highway, average is more around 16-17). So fun off road though.
So I’m just looking for opinions. What would you guys do in my situation? I know this will be biased asking this on a 4Runner forum, but just looking for advice from like minded 4wheelers. I want to post this on the 3rd gen forum but need 15 posts first.