Trouble Maker

Since I don't need a small car to eat up high way miles with work from home I'm thinking about a different kind of vehicle. I've always wanted something that can off-road a bit and tow a bit but no room for a 4th car. Maybe 5k#s or 7k#s would be more than enough, just wanting to occasionally tow a small camper. I don't need Rubicon levels of off-road capability, just something that can do some light off-road trails for fun and maybe mod a bit; maybe a small lift, tires, other off-road basics. Target is around $20k-$25k, the closer $20k is better. I'm torn on how old I'm comfortable with going. We've had basically new cars for the last 7 years and it's been nice not to have to deal with maintenance. I like to target about 3 year used cars to try to find off-lease and let the first owner take the big depreciation hit. But I think most of the cars I would be interested in are above that price range at 3 years old. Maybe around a 2015 would feel great, but for the right car maybe older is OK. But even some 2015s are still out of my price range. Ideas I've had so far. 4 Runner. It's a bit old but I've always had a draw towards the V8s they made in the mid to late 00's. Trucks, any cab configuration is OK but I don't want a F-teenthousand that can tow mount Rushmore, triple duper cab with 9 foot bed that I'll take a family out walking on the sidewalk with how wide the rear end swing is. Crew cab would probably be what I would want. F150, probably the shorter wheel base one. Something like an FX4 trim? I was really impressed with the 2.7L turbo I drove that was around that year. Any of the mid-size trucks, what should I check out? I feel like these could be a better match for what I want than a full size truck. Colorado ZR2 could be awesome but since they just came out in 2018 and are still too expensive. Ridgeline - I can probably get a smoking deal on a few year used through my work. Sometimes you have to wait for deals to come around, so time is not on my side for this one. But also probably less towing and off-road capability out of the box than most other examples here. What am I missing here, any good ideas for what to look at?

AUTO LOL https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2003-porsche-911-turbo-77/

Cook some chickn' wangs on the headers.

And here's your chance to own an ACR. https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2008-dodge-viper-12/

A friend at work buys cars like this to wheel them around his property until they are deader than dead. Like the last jeep he had that by the time it was done had no doors on it and the gas tank strapped into the trunk area. I'm going to pass this onto him.

I think you were saying the same thing when we talked about this. Just walking by the Pit Boss stuff makes me not consider it, seems like it would fall apart if you looked at it wrong. Maybe I should have looked at it just to give it a fair shake. The Cuisinart in the pictures looks about the same. It looks like all of the propane grills I've had that fall apart from rust after 3 years. But again, maybe I'm being too harsh just based on pictures. The Camp Chef system does look awesome. The RecTec looks nice, mabye what I'll do if anyone has anything bad to say about the Webber ones. Anyone have any thoughts or info about the Webbers? The are expensive but felt like a tank when I checked it out in person at Lowes. https://www.weber.com/US/en/grills/wood-pellet-grills/smokefire-series/22510201.html I'm not so concerned with smoking but I want to cook over 'real' fire without having to make a fire. So ability to grill is more important to me. I'm tired of buying a new one every few years, so I want something that will last. It will mostly stay outside, but I can cover it. I think I even got a cover with my last one and it fell apart so I stopped using it, then it rust. Sorry to slightly thread jack Joe!

There was a deal on the JBL 305P a few days ago for $99/each so I got them for the garage. It didn't last long, but I'm sure there will be more deals through the holiday season on these and some of the others in this segment. But that's true for soundbars around this price too. They are way better than anything at this price should be. They will wipe the floor with any soundbar at a similar price for sound quality and loudness. But, you won't get HDMI inputs w/ARC, they are more visually intrusive. You won't get a 'real' center so dialog will be better for the better sound quality but worse due to no center. There is no audio enhancements like virtual surround & dialogue enhancement. No Bluetooth streaming from your phone. So, plenty of trade-offs to make a decision about. I'm happy to let anyone listen to them. They are in the garage so easy to mask up and social distance to do it safely.

Am I the only one surprised that Geeto's not in on this deal?

I just came from living in Japan for a little over a year, the part of the world that invented mask wearing to not spread or get germs and virus from others. Just so we are 100% crystal clear, the mask wearing in the US is abysmal, like dog shit dumpster fire bad. And it's not just mask wearing but the entire attitude that goes into it. I couldn't understand living there why things were so much worse here. Now it's easy to understand why. It's the selfish fuck everyone else attitude with a miss-trust of science as an excuse that is the blame for how bad things are here. Fuck everyone else, they don't matter so I can go about every part of my daily life including not wearing a mask. Then the excuse of the science isn't real layered on top as an excuse for their selfishness.

I can't vouch for any of this infos accuracy or bias, but here is a few places to do your own research. https://www.google.com/search?q=mvno+verizon+carriers https://bestmvno.com/compare/verizon-mvnos/ https://www.androidcentral.com/complete-list-verizon-mvnos

I mean, if your wanting to punish yourself by choosing worse customer service than cell service providers usually give then go right ahead and use a cable company as your cell service provider. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

About this many.

I don't have any specifics but maybe look up MNVO that uses Verizon list. I'm sure there is one somewhere with prices and customer ratings. We've been on Fi for about 5 years now so that's of no help to you; the use Sprint and TMobile towers. I'm also sure there are cheaper options now but I don't want to give up their international data for when I'm able to travel again for work or fun.

No, no one without a severely unbiased opinion is naive enough to think this kind of action is not possible out of both sides. Human nature doesn't suddenly change because people are on the far opposite side of the other nut jobs.

I honestly don't know the market, but if your top budget is honestly $10k I can't imagine anything in the 28-32 foot range not being old and at least soon to be broken. Is there such a thing as Sea Tow wherever you are or do they cover where you will mostly be? That might be critical with something older, especially once you get two or three families and kids on there! Almost everyone I know with boats that size that stay around Ohio or even go to some of the bigger lakes down south have open bow boats. But we aren't up near lake Erie so that might play a role in the decision. Speaking of Lake Erie, do you plan on going out on it at all? I would guess a 21-23 foot boat could be small and my impressions is nasty storms can pop up quickly. I've looked at boats a bit and this is my take on size, but I'm a bit all over the place too. It seems like it's really nice to invite people out and have a ton of space for everyone so open bow is nice. I personally love the idea of a small cabin, but anything small enough to tow by anything but a good full size truck has really small cuddy cabins. Plus it really cuts down on space that you will actually use for more people on a more regular basis for day trips. For us since we don't have kids the cuddy cabin could work for overnights, but we've camped in places without showers for days so it's OK not to have so much space or features. I would guess most people are going to want some shower and a closed off toilet area. I can see that getting big and expensive, but maybe those 28-32 foot boats can fit all of that in there?

Me and Gerg were just talking about this offline. I don't have any direct experience, but this is where I would look. Rtings seems to do some really good quantitative testing. You can also sort all of the results by test category like dialogue, movies, music, so you can picked based on whatever your priorities are. https://www.rtings.com/soundbar/reviews/best/by-price/under-100 https://www.rtings.com/soundbar/reviews/best/by-price/under-200 I wonder if for example your price target is $100ish if some of those $200 ones might go on sale for low enough to splurge up to $125-$150 on them. My usually go to for this kind of stuff is The Wire Cutter, but I'm turning away from them a bit. Their scope of view on number of items the check seems narrow. But anyway it's another data point to cross check. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-soundbar/ Edit: Most sound bars in this price range are going to be 2.0 or 2.1, even the x.1 with 'sub' is probably not going to go very low. The sub name here is kind of misnomer. Some of the powered 'studio monitors' I listed above would be some possible alternatives. But probably the cheapest you'll get there are the JBL 305P on sale at maybe $200/pair. With the soundbars at least you probably get HDMI with ARC for super easy connection and some DSP features like virtual surround, dialogue enhancement or the like. With the powered speakers you get stereo and that's it. Almost anything at any price point is a compromise of choices. The good thing with the stereo speakers is that their sole focus was sound quality VS form factor and features with the sound bars. So, it's a chose your own adventure game. I meant to mention before the Google Nest is a left field alternative. Only a 3" low end driver, but the audio wold seems to be raving about the sound quality. And they have Chromecast Audio built in, which is a huge tech bonus and super convenient if you will use them for streaming audio. You can get a pair and run them in stereo. But there is a problem with an audio delay during streaming. If only doing audio I guess it's only an annoyance. But if trying to run video on your phone and audio on the speakers it won't work. But you can hook them up to your TV wired and it should be OK.

I should have quoted AwShet, I was responding to him. I'm definitely in the same camp as you. It's semantics, but I would call room correction a form of DSP. My direction right now is Denon AVR-x3600, 3700, 4500 or 4700. 5.2.4 setup with Revel in walls for the main 5 channels, heights not sure, subs 2 x Rythmik L12s. Check out the Rythmik's if you haven't already. The JLs in general are definitely top of class, but have the price to match! I just have to convince myself to spend the money. For some reason spending $xk on this flooring project is an easy decision, but that on a semi-permanent surround setup feels harder. If you are just doing 2.2, there are some really interesting options. Check out the stuff from https://www.minidsp.com/ I think the SHD seems like an amazing solution for 2.2 w/ room correction/DSP.

Gabe, love the idea, any speakers external to the TV will be worlds better than the internal speakers. The Audioengine A5s are supposed to be really good. Maybe a bit overpriced for the segment but they look really good. You can also get them for a bit more with built in bluetooth which is nice if you want it. A few alternatives to look at. JBL 305P, 306P, 308P. They are full price right now but often go on sale for less, last holiday season was much less. You can probably get the 308Ps (8" woofer, more power, will play much lower and louder) for less than the MSRP of the A5s (5" woofer). Mackie MR524, 624, 824. I think those are really good looking. ADAM T5V and above, but those get expensive. The T5V is the same price as the A5 and has a fancy tweeter. Kali LP6 and LP8 are nice too. I'm going down this rabbit hole now for garage speakers and I'll probably wait until the 305Ps go on sale again. If you are just going to do stereo or maybe later stereo+sub and not full surround you might not need the receiver. Just use the HDMI switching in the TV and the line (headphones in the case of TCL) out to the powered speakers. Later if you do add a sub get one with line level (RCA) ins/outs. You can run the audio from the tv to them. The sub will split out the sub sound to the sub and will send above that to the speakers through the outs. But if you need some other function in the receiver, maybe no purpose of also having power in the speakers since the receiver can power them. You can get non-powered speakers that are as good as the A5s for less since you're not paying for the amplification in them. For passive (non-powered) speakers, to use the receiver amplifiers. The Pioneer SP-BS22-LR are almost universally praised as the best value in this price segment. It seems like they are $250/pair street price now, but often go on sale for less than $200/pair. But they also don't look as good as the A5s or some of the other powered speakers listed above. Earlier this year they ran a deal on a full 5.1 setup of the Pioneers for $354 https://slickdeals.net/f/10080624-pioneer-sp-pk52fs-andrew-jones-5-1-home-theater-speaker-package-best-buy-in-store-for-354 But this seemed like a weird clearance piece together deal. Pioneer or amazon was selling the full 5.0 (no sub) set for $450~$490 or the 5.1 setup with sub for $650. In the grand scheme of things only a bit more than A5s by themselves for a full surround setup with a sub. Though the sub is not great and you could do better with a different one with that $160~$200.

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I'll second what Tim said and had the same though, some trimming of the area and shrubbery will go a long way. Go to the HOA with a proposal, lips puckered and a heart full of hope.

You'll have space in your driveway when you have people over instead of them parking on the road. And the same people who complained to the HOA about your driveway would probably complain about people parking on the road. But yeah... I can almost see why someone complained, it does look like you are planning to setup an autocross in your front yard.

It tested ok over at ASR. I would guess it's probably par for the course at that price point. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/yamaha-rx-v6a-7-2-channel-4k-8k-dolby-av-receiver-review.17204/ Someone in that thread did mention Costco has a re-branded version that's only $400 as a TSR-700, but it was maybe CA only and that deal seems to be gone. I imagine there might be more deals as the holiday shopping season get's into full swing, this feels like an early reflection of that. In case you still might want one at a lower price point despite the HDMI 2.1 issue. But again, if you have something that works perfectly fine for now and the only reason to want a new one is full HDMI 2.1, yeah, it makes sense to wait.

Smokey, I don't have any experience in Orange, but in Franklin the permits office has been immensely helpful with any questions I've had for them. Almost to the point of walking me through the projects I had planned and telling me where I was OK/right VS need to do something different whether it was due to code or just best practices. It doesn't hurt to call. :nod:

Yes, kind of, no.