DivByZero
SILVER Star
Yeah, mine is my DD. Wouldn't have it any other way. If you want to be good on the trails, you need to know your car and be able to drive it with finesse and precision from muscle memory. Don't see how you can do that if you only dust it off once a month.
I think the key is, you need to buy one of these cars with the intention of doing all, or nearly all the work yourself. If you can't do that from the start, you'd really have to plan to use the vehicle as a learning opportunity and work up to that. Mechanics fix cars when they break. It's up to you to maintain them, an in tern, stop them breaking in the first place. As you do this work more and more, you'll also naturally start to build up your cache of spare parts, which is actually the key to keeping your costs down IMO.
In my garage for example, I have an entire front diff assembly from hub to hub with the centre, and I have spares of both the rear axles and hubs, with the rear diff centre. I paid a total of $500 for all that, at different times and places. If/when I ever need to do repairs there now, it's cheap and quick, I can just swap things over. If you insist on brand new shiny parts straight from Toyota, you can make things expensive, and I do that myself for plenty of things as a choice - not a need, but if you look for second hand parts proactively and keep them on your shelf ahead of time, you make things much cheaper. My starter for my HZJ80 needed rebuilding four months ago. Didn't have the time to stuff about, so I took my good genuine used spare, which I didn't even bother rebuilding and I got on ebay for $70 shipped, and switched it over. I now have my original starter motor on the shelf instead, and a box of shiny new parts waiting for me to rebuild it, in my own time. That didn't cost me much money at all, and I didn't have a long vehicle downtime. It took more of my time than paying someone, but a fraction of the cost. Those options are there.
Honestly, I don't think these cars are expensive to maintain, if you use second hand spares. I have a Kia Carnival as a second family vehicle. Parts on that are a lot more expensive and harder to get, and break far more often. There's the usual dumb stuff - broken door handles, switches, stuff I don't even bother fixing half the time. Then more annoying things - broken plastic gears inside the starter motor, things that put it out of action and get expensive. Had a siezed pin in a front brake caliper last month. New caliper? $1300. Used caliper? $600, because they all pack up, and the used parts guys know what they can get for them. Self service wrecker? They're all long gone, because other people needed that same part, or the commercial outfits harvested them all first. Managed to pull the pin myself without cracking the caliper - just. New slide pins to replace the bent ones? $200, and a 2 week wait while they come from Korea. Month before? Drivers side brake line blew. Custom line with a funny bracket. Price from Kia? $320. And a two week wait. Aftermarket? Doesn't exist. Managed to find a single compatible line in a self-service wrecker. Dodged the bullet. This month? Drivers side CV shaft is buggered. Hoping to find one I can swap over. Next month? Bloody thing will be up on carsales.
