In just 22 days, we’ll be making a major change in our lifestyle. We’re gearing up for the move to our new-to-us park model home here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. We will take possession on March 1st. Our motorhome will remain in site 5245 until the end of March, so we have a full month to make the transition. I plan to move everything out of the cargo trailer and put it up for sale. In the future, we plan to travel without the cargo trailer and leave the MG Midget behind.

To accommodate that, I’ve been looking at alternate transportation – we will tow a vehicle directly behind our Alpine Coach. We’ll be able to travel a lot lighter since we won’t have to carry everything we own all of the time. We’ll be able to leave behind winter clothing and a lot of the gear that’s in the trailer and basement compartments when we travel in the summer months.

After considering our needs and options, I decided to shop for a used pickup truck. We can set it up to flat-tow behind our coach and use the bed of the truck for things like Donna’s bike and the Sea Eagle kayak. Not all vehicles are suitable for flat-towing (all four wheels rolling). Most automatic transmissions with a few four-wheel drive exceptions can’t be flat-towed without making major modifications such as a drive shaft disconnect or external automatic transmission fluid (ATF) pump. Automatic transmissions will generally self-destruct if the driveshaft spins the output shaft of the transmission without pumping fluid through the transmission to cool and lubricate it. The ATF pump is usually found at the front of the transmission and only pumps fluid when the engine is running.

Most manual transmissions don’t have this issue. Some modern manual transmission designs still have flat-tow issues though. It would take a lengthy technical description to fully explain this, but I’ll try to simplify the details. In modern manual transmissions, the gearsets mesh together full time – that is, if the input shaft is spinning, the gears on it are turning the gears on the output shaft. However, only one set of gears can be engaged at a time. For this to work, one half of the gearset spins freely on the shaft (the shaft runs through the center of the gear) until the shift fork moves the gear along the shaft to engage splines, thus locking it to the shaft. Simultaneously, the previously selected gear is moved off of the splines and spins freely, so only one gearset at a time connects the input to the output.

Here’s where the problem can happen. In some modern designs, the gears on the input shaft are fixed while the sliding gears are on the output shaft. This means that with the transmission in neutral, engine off, the input shaft doesn’t spin as the output shaft is turned by the driveshaft because the output shaft spins freely through the center of the output gears – in neutral, none of them are locked to the shaft splines. The transmission relies on the spinning gearsets to splash the gear oil throughout the transmission. Since the gearsets aren’t spinning, things aren’t lubricated as well as they should be.

In older designs, the sliding gears weren’t all on the output shaft. Some were on the input and some on the output with corresponding fixed gears on the opposite shaft for each gearset. This kept oil splashing about any time either shaft was spinning. I had to do some research to find out which manual transmissions could be flat-towed without risk of damage. It turned out Toyota doesn’t recommend flat-towing any of their trucks, regardless of transmission type. I’ve read where several people have said they do it with Toyota manual transmissions and haven’t had any issues, but I don’t think going against the manufacturer’s recommendation is a good idea. Nissan, on the other hand allows it, but they advise starting the engine and letting it run in neutral for two minutes to spin the input shaft after 500 miles of flat-towing. This is easily doable.

I told Donna I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a vehicle that will be pulled behind the coach and subject to the road rash that’s inevitable. I also said I wasn’t interested in a lot of bells and whistles that could spell expensive repairs on a used vehicle. She bought into the concept.

I watched the Internet sites and found a few interesting trucks in the area. Yesterday we made a trip to west Mesa to look at one and take a test drive. It was a 2015 Nissan Frontier. It’s the base “S” model, 2.5 liter four-cylinder (QR25DE) engine with a five-speed manual transmission. This is the basic, no-frills model that Nissan advertised with a MSRP under $19,000 in 2015. By no frills, I mean no power adjustable seats, no power windows – that’s right, it has manual window winders and manual mirror adjustment. It does have climate control though. I didn’t want electric power windows – that to me means a possibility of having to replace a $300 window regulator when a manual window winder is under $100. I can roll windows up and down, no problem.

We took a test drive and I liked it. Back at the car lot, we dickered a bit and came to a deal. It was 2:30pm by then and we had dinner plans. Donna needed to shower, dry her hair and get ready to go out, so she left in Midget-San while I finished the task of buying the vehicle. Since I was dealing with a used car outfit, it wasn’t so simple to finalize everything. Once we had agreed on a price and the manager approved it, I told them I wouldn’t be financing – I would write a check for the purchase price.

Then I had to wait while paperwork was generated. I looked at the breakdown of the final cost and saw a “Doc fee” of $499! I told them to forget about it, there wasn’t any reason for me to pay a document fee when all they had to do was write up a sales receipt. There weren’t any financing or credit reports to generate. They rewrote the sales agreement lowering the purchase price by $500 and keeping the $499 doc fee. I was okay with that, but it shows how shady car sales can be. By keeping the doc fee on the paperwork, it made the floor manager on duty look stronger to his management, while cheating the salesman out of some commission. Salespeople are usually compensated with a percentage of the gross profit of the sale price (retail price paid minus wholesale cost of the vehicle and reconditioning costs equals gross profit). They don’t get anything for fees paid.

They left me stewing over this for about 45 minutes before I could finish the paperwork with their “closer.” This is where they try to generate some extra profit by selling mechanical breakdown insurance they call an extended warranty. I made it clear right away I wasn’t interested and finally got out of there around 3:30pm. We have a toad now – our 2015 Nissan Frontier truck.

This truck will be a lighter load going down the road than the loaded cargo trailer and our overall length will be four or five feet shorter. In RV parks, we can quickly disconnect the truck and won’t have to deal with finding a long pull-through or dropping the trailer.

I got home in time to shower and head out with Donna to the Power Food Park where we were meeting Howard and Sara Graff. The Power Food Park is an empty gravel lot with picnic tables, lights strung up, hay bales and few games like corn hole. Food trucks come in to the lot and it opens at 5pm for dinner.

We heard that Four Peaks Brewing would have a truck there Saturday night and we planned on having a cold one with dinner from one of many food offerings. It turned out that Four Peaks Brewing had a truck there, but it was serving food only, no alcohol sales in the food park! To say I was disappointed is an understatement. We claimed a table, then wandered and looked at the dinner options.

I decided to go for a gyro from a Greek food truck. It was a long wait for the food to come up. Meanwhile, Donna chose a Mexican shrimp bowl, Sara had a vegan bowl and Howard had a burrito. The Mexican truck they went to was much quicker than the Greek truck I was at. They were halfway through their meal before I even got back to the table.

Today is Superbowl Sunday. We were invited to a couple of Superbowl parties, but opted out. We are still playing it safe and avoiding indoor contact with large groups of people. I plan to break down a chicken and grill yakitori before the game, then we’ll probably snack for dinner during the Superbowl. I don’t have a horse in this race, so I just hope it’s a good game.

The weather here in Mesa, Arizona has been fantastic. We’ve had clear skies and daily high temperatures in the mid to upper 70s. The forecast for the week ahead calls for more of the same. We’ll be enjoying the sunshine on the pickleball courts. The nights cool quickly and we’ve had overnight lows around 50 degrees. No problem with that!

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and  I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!