Author Archive for Jason Lancaster

Ipod Shuffle Blog Contest

I just found out that Brandon Hopkins is having a contest for an iPod shuffle. All you have to do is link to him and link to this site about free business cards and you

Tundra Fuel Economy: 7 Ways To Improve your Tundra MPG

Yes — we know you bought a truck. You didn’t buy it to save gas. You bought it to do stuff. We get it.

But what if there was a way to do stuff with your truck and save gas? Interested? We thought so. Here are some tips.

1) Drive like your grandmother.

Your truck burns fuel at almost twice the normal rate during hard acceleration. If you’re racing from every stop light, you’re going to burn through fuel faster than green grass thru a goose. The ideal acceleration rate for maximum fuel economy is generally agreed upon to be about 2mph per second. At that rate, it would take you 30 seconds to reach 60mph. While we don’t really believe anyone can accelerate that slowly without getting shot at (or at least flipped off), if you don’t like your gas mileage try counting to 10 or 15 seconds as you accelerate. If you’re getting to your speed any faster than 10 seconds, you’re burning more fuel than you need to.

2) Avoid high speeds.

Believe it or not, aerodynamic drag, or wind resistance, isn’t significant until you’re traveling at 40-45mph. Then, as your speed increases, aerodynamic drag starts to build up rapidly. By the time you hit 100mph, your engine is working almost entirely just to overcome aerodynamic drag. In other words, less drag at low speeds means better fuel economy — that’s why your truck gets the best fuel economy at about 55mph. If you have to go faster, realize it’s hurting your efficiency.

3) Check your tires.

Other than wind resistance, the only other major friction you must fight is your Tundra’s tires. While the best fuel economy can be had using a highway tire with a car-like tread, you can actually get good results with a more aggressive off-road truck tire as long as the tire pressure is correct. Your owner’s manual will tell you what it should be for your specific vehicle, but it’s safe to say that 32-35 psi is a good safe pressure for just about any vehicle on the road. If it drops below 30psi, you’ll see your fuel economy take a hit. Also, don’t inflate your tires to the suggested pressure printed on the sidewall — that number is usually WAY too high.

4) Don’t drop your tailgate.

Here’s another believe it or not — dropping or removing your trucks tailgate *hurts* your fuel economy. The Canadian government sponsored a study — you can read it for yourself or just believe us when we tell you to leave your tailgate in the “locked, upright position”.

5) Stay up on normal maintenance.

Not that you shouldn’t be doing this anyways, but having a clean air cleaner, oil that’s been changed within the last 5,000 miles, and making sure your check engine light is off are all great ways to save fuel. Nuff said.

6) Look for excess weight you can remove.

Are you still hauling around tires or sandbags from last winter? What about all the “stuff” that’s in the back seat or pickup bed? None of it may seem significant, but a few items can quickly add up. Eliminating an extra 100 pounds of “junk” in your car can improve your fuel economy 1-2%. Not a lot, but every bit counts. Finally, consider telling your spouse to loose weight to help with fuel economy.

7) Make fewer trips that are longer in length.

Your engine doesn’t reach peak efficiency until it’s had enough time to warm up — typically about 15 minutes. If you can take all your short errands and string them together to form one super-errand, your engine will operate more efficiently during the majority of your trip.

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Toyota Tundra Truck Bed Liner Options

If you’re like most new Tundra owners, you’re seriously considering bed protection. Fortunately you have options — lots of them. Here are the highlights:

1) No Bed Liner. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it could work out just fine. But while you may not ever intend to haul anything that would damage your truck’s bed, you never know when a situation will arise and you will be forced to put something back their that damages the paint job. If you’ve got scratches in your bed, your options for adding a bed liner later get more expensive. That’s because before you add any sort of removable liner you’ll need to re-protect the bed (i.e. re-paint) so that any moisture that gets caught between your bed and your liner won’t cause your bed to rust. If you’re leasing your truck, this might be your only option.

2) Rubber Bed Mat. It’s old-school but it certainly deserves consideration. There’s no disputing that a heavy piece of rubber will protect the bottom of your truck bed from gouges and scratcheswhile at the same time providing a surface that has more friction than the factory bed. If you’re considering adding a rubber mat, make sure you purchase one that is fairly thick. Thin rubber mats (anything less than 1/4″) tend to “roll-up” when you’re loading the bed, making them sort of hazardous. You should also make sure that the mat you buy has a knobby bottom surface so that moisture doesn’t get trapped under the mat and lead to premature bed rust. Finally, we like mats that are pre-cut to fit your truck. Those mats you have to trim yourself never fit right and they tend to be cheap anyways. The best feature of a nice rubber mat is that it will only cost you $75-$100.

3) Plastic Bed Liner. Plastic bed liners (or “drop-ins”) fit OK, install quickly and easily, and do a nice job of protecting the bed from most kinds of damage. Plastic bed liners are especially nice if you need to slide items in and out of your truck. Plastic also won’t scratch anything you put in your bed (like furniture), and it washes out quickly and easily. The biggest disadvantage to plastic drop-in liners is that whatever you have resting in your bed can slide around at any time. Plastic is slippery, especially when wet, and we’ve seen big loads shift (even when they were properly tied down). Also, it seems like a lot of moisture and gunk accumulates under the plastic liner, requiring you to remove it and clean the bed periodically. Plastic drop-in bed liners can cost as little as $250 or as much as $400.

4) Plastic Coatings. We’ve all seen the ads — send in $49.99 and they’ll send you a gallon of special “truck bed paint” just like the pros use. Get out your roller and paint brush and you can install your own “spray-in” like bed surface on a Saturday afternoon. Bulls#&t. Unless you have experience applying this stuff, you’re probably going to screw something up. Worse, it doesn’t always bond properly to the bed, meaning big hunks will flake off at the least helpful times. While we don’t want to condemn all of these products, we haven’t ever seen it work. Proceed at your own risk.

5) Spray-In. This is by far the most popular option, and for good reason. It’s the best looking and most durable bed liner there is. The bed is sprayed with a special polyurethane “paint” that protects the bed from scratches and chemicals. The coating is permanent, the texture is rough (which keeps things from sliding), and the material is nearly indestructible. In fact, unlike every other option listed here, a spray-in liner will last forever.

Lots of companies offer spray-in bed liners, but the top two are Line-X and Rhino. While you may hear lots of differing opinions about the two products, it’s fair to say that they’re basically the same stuff. However, the installers are not the same. In fact, any stories you hear about a bad Rhino or Line-X liner have more to do with the person that installed the liner than the product itself. The best way you can make sure you get a good spray-in liner is to find out how long the installer has been in business. If you have any doubts about them, get references and check them out. Your local Toyota dealer is also an excellent place to get a recommendation for a good installer. You should be able to get a quality spray-in liner with a lifetime warranty installed for $300-$400 (under rail). Over the rail should add about $50. There are other names out their in spray-ins, and we’re sure that some of them are just fine, but they’re not usually any cheaper than Line-X or Rhino so we don’t recommend them.

6) Carpet Liner. The carpet liner is usually a strong outdoor carpet with a thick rubber or vinyl backing. They’re surprisingly strong and they have the benefit of being soft. They’re especially popular with people that are going to add a camper shell to their truck. The biggest advantage to them, in addition to being plush, is that they’re removable. If you like the idea of being able to see your factory finish whenever you want to, this might be a good option for you. Cost is about the same as a good plastic bed-liner, about $350. The only thing we don’t like about these is that they don’t seem to stay attached, but that probably has to do with the way they’re installed.

You can also add plywood to your truck bed, and there are some cool commercial roll-up systems that literally unload your truck for you (like Load Handler).

Have an opinion about Tundra bed liner options? Share it!

More Proof the Tundra Hybrid is Coming

Recently, we wrote about the fact that Toyota will be releasing a hybrid version of the Tundra and the Sequoia in 2009 as a 2010 model. Amazingly, in spite of all of our evidence, many people still don’t believe.

Check out these comments by Jim Press, president of Toyota USA “everything will be a hybrid…you don’t buy a car for image any longer that’s a big gas guzzler.” (Source Chicago Tribune) Clearly, these comments are directed at the belief that many people purchase large trucks and SUVs for the image they connote, as well as their utility. Perhaps because image is a concern for the buyers that Toyota is referencing, does that mean that a Lexus hybrid SUV will be available too?

Of course it does. Toyota is racing to bring these hybrids to market because it will give them a competitive advantage for years to come. When the Prius debuted, it was slow, kind of ugly, and a little pricey. Amazingly, it was estimated that Toyota was losing anywhere from $2k – $5k on each Prius sold because the costs of the technology were higher than the cost of the vehicle. At the time, many executives at other automakers (GM comes to mind) were talking about how they weren’t going to bring a new technology to market until it was profitable (consider the EV-1, GM’s electric car that died a miserable death).

Yet look at today — because Toyota made the leap to develop and sell a hybrid FIRST, they own the market. Why not do the same thing with trucks and SUV’s? Toyota is going to sell a hybrid Tundra soon — count on it.

Tundra Monitoring Station

During one of our internet scouting missions, we encountered a page on the University Of Colorado’s website that we thought was kind of interesting.

It turns out that the geeks at CU have installed a Tundra Camera atop Niwot Ridge (about 20 miles outside of Boulder, Colorado). The camera sits at about 11,600′ (about 3,500m for all you metroids), and is part of a “Biosphere Preserve” of alpine Tundra.

While we hesitate to call it fun, you can visit the site right now and control the camera from your home computer. It’s pretty dry up there right now — during the winter time it’s nothing but white-out.

Here’s a picture of a Hawk checking out the camera:

Anyone know what kind of Hawk that is?