Driving a truck…
The driving experience is fairly car like. You sit up high, and very much in front of course. I pull it up to within inches of my garage door and I could reach out and touch the door if the windshield wasn’t in the way. Yes I know, that will put me first at the scene of the accident. The huge side view mirrors are both nice and necessary since a central rear view mirror would be useless. I did learn right away that the box sticks out way past the side of the cab and it is very easy to hit something with the front corner of the box. There are round dome mirrors below the side mirrors but it is still difficult to see the sides that far forward.
The instrument cluster is very car like with just a few exceptions. It has an oil check switch and light that you can use even before starting the engine. Green is good, red is bad, just what you would expect. Don’t bother checking right after you shut it down though. It will show red until the oil drains down from the engine top end. It has an exhaust brake, which I gather is an exhaust restrictor, not a jake brake. It only comes into play if you take your foot completely off the gas. The braking effect is modest and only at higher RPM’s. It takes a tiny bit of getting used to the idea that you need to keep your foot slightly on the gas if you want to just coast.
It has a warm up switch which apparently activates the exhaust restrictor and warms the engine a bit faster. It also has an idle up button/knob that allows you to increase the idle speed by pushing the button/knob and then turning it to the right. I gather it is for warming up the engine faster, but I could see where it also might be useful for running the alternator at higher RPM to faster charge the batteries. I haven’t seen any use for either of these features, but it doesn’t get that cold here. It has a 3 prong plug and cord going to an oil heater tied up in the engine compartment. I don’t think it has ever been used.
The headlights come on when you start the engine and the shift lever is not in neutral, whether you have them turned on or not. It’s a bit weird, but I gather it’s a safety thing and normal for trucks. I know all this must be blah blah blah for you experienced trucker types, but some newbes might read this as well.
The automatic shift lever is a standard straight line on the floor. It has a little button on the side for overdrive but as a practical matter I can’t see that I would ever use it. The button will stay pushed in (overdrive on) all the time. I suppose I might turn it off for a descent in the mountains but I don’t know about that yet. I do know that if you try to turn it off above a certain speed it just ignores you in order to prevent over revving the engine.
The foot position on the gas pedal seems a little awkward to me. In a car you sit well back behind the pedals and push them mostly forward. You can rest your heel on the floor and push the gas with the ball of your foot. If you bounce up and down it doesn’t affect the pedals much because they go mostly forward and aft, and your foot is supported by the floor. In this truck your foot comes down more on top of the gas pedal. As you bounce up and down (which you tend to do because it’s a COE (Cab Over Engine) without air ride), you tend to bounce up and down on the gas as well. It may be a matter of technique, and I am already getting used to it, but I can imagine that on bumpy roads it could begin to impact your ability to control the truck.
On the whole, I would say that a wife or friend could drive this truck without batting an eye. It’s just a big car.
I will say that if you read the Mitsubishi Owners Manual it is ridiculously conservative. For example, they talk about breaking in new tires only on the front where the load is smaller, and then driving 125 miles at 37 MPH or less. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. Unfortunately, it makes it difficult to know what issues are a serious concern and what is just CYA nonsense.
When I started looking for a truck I really intended to get a manual transmission. When I found this truck it had everything I wanted except for the automatic, so I decided to compromise. I may regret it in terms of gas mileage or I may not. I will have no need to get anywhere in a hurry, so I can just slow down and save fuel that way. That and I really don’t need to be traveling long distances all the time. Mostly I will just move around a bit to visit friends, and keep from annoying anyone in particular. I don’t actually know what kind of mileage I am getting. I haven’t managed to burn a tank of gas yet going back and forth to the building supply store and the RV shop.
To be continued…
|