Well life happens and it happens fast. There’s a lot that’s happened and a lot that going to happen, so where to start? This past Summer we experienced a break down with the Xterra and it caused us to cancel all our travel plans. Pretty much our entire rest of the year went under. I had to pull the plug on a few different travel series I wanted to film. We had some big plans that we wanted to make happen but it just wasn’t in the books for us.
I, Aaron, spent 3 months fighting the Xterra, trying to figure out what our problem was and after a long hard battle we finally got it fixed. However, we determined that issues like the one we faced we’re not going to get easier and if our main travel rig is spending more time in a shop being repaired than it is being on a trail it was time for us to reconsider our approach to our lifestyle. We didn’t want to give up our adventurous lifestyle but we also wanted to have the ability to build and expand into other thing we want to pursue. So, the solution was simple. Sell the Xterra and try something new.
Rewind back to fixing the Xterra, I taken it to the Nissan dealership thinking that they would be able to fix my issues, but I had my expectations set a bit to high. After several days of looking at it and racking up a massive hourly diagnostic fee they wanted to charge $2,000 to drop the transfer case and look for a possible electrical short on a wire harness that they don’t even make anymore. This just wasn’t going to happen for us. It was a financial crisis that I didn’t want to deal with and for a 21 year old vehicle it just wasn’t going to be a good investment. So when I drove up to pick up my rig from the dealership I decided to go across the street and take a look at the Toyota dealership.
Due to world circumstances I knew the used car market was going to be rough and finding a new model vehicle with what I wanted was going to be even harder. But as I looked around the parking lot we looked at several different trucks and SUV’s. I test drove a 2019 Tacoma but I really want impressed with how it handled. The vehicle took very wide turns and had a very small cab. It just wasn’t my taste. Looking around the lot a little more there was one vehicle that stood out to me above all the rest. The only one of its kind that they had was a 2021 5th gen Toyota 4Runner complete with the TRD off road package.
I test drove it and immediately fell in love with it. It’s sleek design, copious room in the cab, CarPlay, rear locking differential, A-trac, and tons more features that I previously didn’t have in the Xterra. It felt like coming out of the Stone Age. That same day I went to get my Xterra I drove home in a 4Runner. Sure, it might t be a little cliche. I now have a drone, a YouTube channel, a wife, and a 4Runner. But it’s a working formula.
Back the the Xterra we dragged it home as well. I decided to take one last crack at it and fix it myself to be sell and be rid of it once and for all. We got our our hands on a snake inspection camera and sure enough, within one hour I found the electrical short that had plagued us for months. With some liquid electrical tape I had it patched and ready to go in less that 5 minutes. No $2,000 needed. Once listed it sold within about a month. I didn’t quite get what I wanted out of it but it was better than sending it to a junkyard. I removed our hardshell roof top tent that we just installed on it and placed our old one back on to add a little value to it and get rid of some gear that I no longer use.
I was glad to finally be rid of the Xterra. Don’t get me wrong, that track took us to a lot of incredible places and we couldn’t have done it without it. But in the end with the amount of trouble it caused us I was glad to pass it off to someone else. Hopefully they’ll get just as much use out of it as me but for now I feel like a burden has been lifted from our lives.
So the plan now is to start a new overland build on the 4Runner. It’s exciting to think about. It’s an opportunity for us to take everything we learned from our previous build and apply it to this one. It’s a chance to fix the things we did wrong and improve the things we could have done better. I already have the Roof rack picked out and ready to go. As for the rest of the build it’ll happen slowly over time. There’s a lot to think about and a lot to do. We don’t do much traveling in the winter months so we are taking that time to research and work on our build. Our goal is to have a functional rig by spring or summer to get back on the trail again.
Stay tuned on our YouTube channel and our blog here to see what we are up to. We will be posting build videos and vlogs with everything we do to share with you guys.