Phil's modded Toyota T-100 spotted in the wild & posted on Jalopnik. Comments ensue!
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Someone apparently spotted Phil's (aerohead's) Toyota T-100 in the wild, and submitted the photo for consideration by the sometimes amusing peanut gallery at Jalopnik:
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http://cache.gawker.com/assets/image...8/original.jpg The comments are mostly positive, I'd say. Well... positive, but qualified! And Elhigh put in a good effort to educate the crowd (nice!). Go read: An Ecomod Toyota Truck? Really? - Ecomod - Jalopnik . |
Surprisingly enough, they didn't really give me anything to criticize. :confused:
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And now this has been posted to Autoblog Green:
Questional Aesthetics: Truck owners get in on the aero ecomods too — Autoblog Green |
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Looooooooooooooooooooooooooong ago.
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Nice find, Neil. It's funny how the car blogs pass around hot topics like chicken pox at a daycare. (We're guilty too.)
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photos
The T-100 gets photographed a lot.And one never knows what becomes of it.
I must have been doing EcoModder stuff when the first shot was taken,as it is from outside Copy-Pro,here where I use Al's computer. The second shot was taken in the parking lot of CVS Pharmacy where I use their photo lab. Provoking any discussion about efficiency is worth the rubs.And I'm the first to admit she's blemished,so the jibes about aesthetics is okay by me. When the naysayers learn about the latest test results from my recent trip to Phoenix they may feel less taint when observing all of our attempts at low drag. Adam may have snickered with his first look at Eve.But I think he got over it. |
I think part of the negative reaction most ‘civilians’ have is that they have never seen anything like it before and their conformist world is wobbled a bit by such a truck.
Part of their reaction is that Phil’s truck is what it is – a DIY experiment in progress. Any racer would look at it and see a kindred spirit. Most really fast racers have yards and yards of 600 mile an hour tape on them, and show the effects of scores of small modifications seeking that extra mile per hour. Part of their problem is legit. Phil’s bed cover seems to be like mine in that it is fixed and limits bed utility. This is always the big squawk I hear about tonneau covers. Everyone can see that it improves MPG but it puts the brakes on loading up the four-wheeler without removing the cover. My bed fairing has the same problem. I am pretty much reduced to hauling 2x4s. Part of their problem is in the execution. Phil is not Chip Foose, and the body work shows it. By now, Phil is probably pretty close to the ideal pickup truck shape. If he let somebody like Bondo use it as a guide for some professional-looking body work, the result might get a very different response. |
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And I could easily get a few bales of hay, sheets of plywood, sacks of cement etc in there with the cover on. So I'd just need to take it off when planning to go get firewood... As for loading the four-wheeler, that's what trailers are for. Though I have to say that I greatly prefer the four-hoofer instead. |
These bed covers/fairings/whatever would get a great deal less ridicule if they could be conveniently opened or removed. Getting mine off take about twenty minutes of wriggling and tugging.
It would be interesting to see what the T-100 or Basjoos' boattail would look like executed by a talented custom body man. |
It is difficult to R&R toppers especially by yourself. Odds of scratching paint get pretty high. It's such a pain that most people I'm aware of with a topper/tonneau/whatever, once it's on there, it pretty much stays there forever.
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Sucks when a gust grabs it right about when you think you have it all under control. :mad:
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LOL My father's S10 came with a flush topper on it... he took it off once. Never put it back on. Sold it for $200 to a friend.
Since then, I've been trying to get him to let me add external body work to the sides of his step-side. We don't use the steps, it's wasted space... might as well add some tool boxes or something, right? (IN the process, smoothing and tapering the sides a bit, to improve side flow.) If anyone could come up with a top-view of a short-bed step side S10, I'd gladly paint it up to show what I mean in another thread. |
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personally i dont like tonneau covers
i use a truck to haul stuff and it always seems to get in the way my dad has one and he almost never takes it off yet everytime i borrow it, i almost always do an easily removed lightweight aerocap would be all forms of awesome |
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I'd like to take Bondo's hatch top a step further.
Instead of a hatch use a tambor-type tonnea as the cargo cover. I like the ReTrax topper but there are others. Get one that is four feet wide (for a step-side truck and install it on an appropriate slope. Put a filler plate on the tail gate. This type rolls up into a canister in the front and allows access in a matter of seconds. No free lunch. The canister takes up about eightenn inches of bed space. Mated to Bondo's well-made fiberglass, it should look spectacular and work well enough for most people. |
How 'bout a frame mounted in the front of the bed coming up to the height of the cab, and hinge the topper at the front, at the top of that frame? You'd need to latch it down to the tailgate in the back but that doesn't sound like much trouble--a couple/few pins in the tailgate so when the tailgate closed, the pins would go into holes in the topper.
To load the bed, open the tailgate, lift the topper (gas spring assist?) slide the tall stuff to the front of the bed, lower the topper, close the tailgate. For really big loads, leave the topper up as high as needed and tie it down to cover the load. If you have a load that's higher than the top of the cab (it happened about once a year when I had a pickup) then take off the topper at the hinge pins. Seems to me it would be pretty practical. |
I'd extend Jack's idea even further, with what you might call the TransformerTopper(TM). Takes a bunch of hinges & latches. There's a frame around the cab, and a central beam going back to the tailgate. The two sides are sort of clamshells that hinge to the beam and latch to the sides & tailgate. Either side can lift to put in small stuff, and can easily be unhooked from the beam, and they're light enough for one person to handle. Remove the two sides, and the beam can then be removed (and maybe the frame at the cab, too) so you have a standard open pickup.
Now the transformer part is that the clamshells & beam also hinge crossways, so the topper can be opened as a lid from the tailgate, hingeing about halfway back along the bed. |
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