A huge, heartfelt thank you to all of you for sharing your experiences and advice.
I'm blown away by how much I have learned from this thread and am really thankful to have found this community.
Unfortunately, the car I was looking at in Arizona sold.
And I canceled my deposit and appointment to see the Onyx Black 2015' with 144k miles.
Thanks to all of you, I now have a much better idea of what I want.
I'll keep looking for a good deal on a white GX with good maintenance history.
Thanks for the heads up about the black Friday sales! I'll be sure to look for deals. Just need to decide on black vs. grey vs. bronze. I think they all look really good.
The spare tire fit is one thing that I've been digging into a lot lately and worrying about. I really don't want to deal with either making the spare fit in the cargo area (since I tend to be a gear whore and pack way too much for camping trips, so I'll already be maxing out the cargo space), or installing a rear/hitch mounted spare to start. I'd ideally love to go with the above mentioned TRD rims and 265/70/17 tires (maybe the BFG ones), but I've seen lots of differing opinions on whether they fit or not, likely coming down to manufacturing tolerances from car to car. From searching this forum, it seems like 265/65/17 matches the original tire diameter, just gives 0.5" more sidewall. Not sure what the best way would be to check if the spare fits or not other than buying the larger tire size and seeing if it fits.
I definitely don't want to be without a spare, since the whole point of me getting this car is to go to more remote and unpopulated places where a tire shop or any sort of help may be far away.
Really thankful for your tips about your Xterra ownership experience. Bone stock, it seemed to me like the Pro-4X trim gave me the best off-road capability for the fewest dollars. There's just not many around these days, so it's difficult to even test drive one. Your comments about the interior space kind of seal the deal for me, since like I mentioned I tend to be a heavy packer and the GX already didn't seem to be super roomy in the cargo area.
Good notes about the temperature. I'm definitely sold on white for this rig.
Did you have any issues with fitting the 265/70/17 in the spare tire location?
And yeah, my biggest thing with mods for now is I simply don't have enough experience to know where I want this vehicle to evolve, so I'd rather explore its limitations stock, and learn more about what I want out of it before diving deeper.
Haha, I absolutely loved my black BMW, just because I think it's such an elegant color and I think the GX looks absolutely amazing in it. But I think given that most of my trips will be overwhelmingly in the desert, a lighter color seems like the way to go.
Yep, like I mentioned above, I still don't know well what I want/need simply because I don't have any experience driving an off-road capable vehicle. For years now, any time I went on more far flung expeditions, I went with my buddy in his Tacoma, which was a fantastic rig. But I just prefer SUVs to trucks personally, so I think I'll just keep the rig stock for a while and do more trips and figure out what I'm lacking.
Not scared about the pinstripes either, but that's why I'd rather try to get a cheaper used GX, since I just know it will hurt the first few times I scratch it.
Black just looks so good!
Definitely plan to ditch the steps down the road. A bit scared of the bumper chop since I'm not confident in my ability to not screw it up royally and make it look like crap haha. But would love to do that down the line.
Thanks for the tips! Will be less averse to Ecru based on that.
I hadn't read about the KDSS lean anywhere, will look into it.
Funny enough, while pulling up the Lexus owner's website maintenance history for one of the cars I was looking at, the history mentioned multiple visits to the dealer for a lean in the car. I thought it was odd, but I'm pretty sure it's what you're referring to.
Definitely, would likely either get the Wildpeak or the BFG KO2.
