Truck Forums and the Lack of Cogent Comment

Humvee military vehicle.  They're diesels.

One of the pages on this site is the Dodge 3500 Project, about the slow motion of working on my 2007 Dodge 3500.  As people stopping in at that post will be able to see, the discussion there is the work that's slowly taking place on that truck, which is a mere thirteen years old the way I view it.  It has about 176,000 miles on it, as also noted, which doesn't seem that much to me in terms of a modern diesel vehicle.

Anyhow, one of the things I've tried to do as the project has advanced, slightly, is to learn the technical details on various things about the truck.  As I have one really old truck I had grown accustom to the really good Dodge Power Wagon Forum.  Otherwise I'm mostly familiar with the really good forum of The Society of The Military Horse.  From that I slowly picked up the idea somewhere that all forums must be like that, i.e., populated by really knowledgeable folks.

Not so much.

Indeed, my efforts to learn some technical details from forums on modern Dodge trucks was a complete failure.  Questions about such topics as the differential type (open, as it turns out) on my truck went completely unanswered.  Its become pretty clear that fishing in those waters is fishing in a pretty shallow pool.  That's probably, quite frankly, the way most forums are.  I just didn't realize it.

Anyhow, in looking up one recent item I saw a comment along the lines of "of course, diesels aren't real off road trucks".

Eh?

Every military in the world uses diesels for their vehicles, and they are very off roady.  I have no idea what the person who stated that thought was the case, but the comment is stupid.

Of course, what he may have meant is that modern "off road" 4x4 pickups aren't diesels.  But frankly, I don't get those anyhow . They're one of the odd developments in trucks that are hard to grasp in general.

Dodge 4x4 pickup of early World War Two. They were all "off road" back then.

When I was a kid, there were pickup trucks.  Most were 2x4 and some were 4x4.  Most of the 4x4s were owned by ranchers or companies that had back country work on a regular basis, but some were owned by outdoorsmen.  The belief that 4x4s required a lot more maintenance than 2x4s kept most outdoorsmen, however, from buying them.  As time went on, however, that changed and more and more outdoorsmen bought 4x4s.  At some point in the late 80s or early 90s it seemed that every pickup in this region became a 4x4.  Today, I'm surprised when I see a 2x4 truck.

Anyhow, there was no distinction at all between work trucks and trucks you used to go hunting, fishing or camping, etc., except at some point Chevrolet, at least by the 1960s, marked 2x4 trucks as camper specials.  None the less, any truck a person had was useful for any purpose a person could put a truck to, whatever that was, within its weight classification.  By the 90s at least Chrysler had introduced the "Sport" truck which seemed to mean a 1/2 ton with nicer than normal features.  But it was still a truck.

Now things have indeed changed and at least Dodge and Ford both market 4x4s that are specifically "off road".  It's weird.  Any 4x4 should be off road.  Otherwise, what's the point?

Of course they're marketed as sort of super off road.  I don't know that much about the Ford offering the Ford Raptor, but it's a 1/2 ton truck with a high horsepower engine and special off road features.  The Chrysler offering is the Dodge Power Wagon.

The current Dodge Power Wagon takes its name from the old Power Wagon which was introduced after World War Two and made all the way into the 1970s.  It was a really heavy duty truck and there was no doubt that it was intended for off road use.  But the intended use was off road working use.  People didn't buy the 6 cyl version to go hunting, fishing or camping. They were feeding cattle and putting up power lines.  They were really slow too. The later 8 cyc versions had wider use and were useful for anything that other 4x4s were,, but they were really heavy duty trucks.  Dodge is borrowing from that old cache for the name.

That truck is a short box, automatic transmission, 3/4 ton. Why a short box?

Indeed, why a short box on anything?  If you can't put a sheet of plywood in a truck, it's use is impaired.

Anyhow, both of those offerings  have special off road features and at least the Dodge has locking differentials.  I wish my 07 had them and that's part of what I need to do.  The interesting thing, however, is the development of these specialized, and expensive, 4x4 pickups designed to do what any old 4x4 was expected to do.