Talk me out of a 4x4

OrioN

2008 2500 170" EXT
Can we get the mods to change his name? That would be awesome to Chuck Norris Big Boy?
I wouldn't bother, like many who have come and gone before him, it's only a matter of time until he tires and leaves, never having owned a Sprinter.....
 
I drove numerous 4x4 vehicles up Mt. Hood during the winter. Two of them were Hummer H1s, one belonging to Phil Knight (owner of Nike), and one belonging to Tim Boyle (owner of Columbia Sportswear). Two of them were 3/4-ton 4x4 Suburbans of mine. One was a mud truck, with 20" of lift, 44" Swampers, 5.13 gears and Detroit lockers in both ends, and so on. The other was a trail rig, with 35" Goodyear military MT tires, 4.11 gears, lockers in both ends, no sway bars, and a high degree of articulation...as well as a 9,000-pound Warn winch stored inside on a 2" receiver mount (to improve approach and departure angles), 2" receivers built into 2x8x.120 bumpers and electrical connections for the winch on both ends, two full-sized spares stored inside with the winch, spare front and rear driveshafts, spare fluids, spare belts, spare hoses, tools, tug strap, 60" High-Lift jack, shovel, axe, tools, and so on. I also occasionally took my built-to-the-nuts 650-horsepower GMC PAS Typhoon- God's own snow-blower.
Great. Few if any posts lends creedence to your purported experience.
 

asimba2

ourkaravan.com
Just out of curiosity I built up a 2019 VS30 4x4 Sprinter online with the same options as I have on my 2017 NCV3 (tagged a 2016 for emissions reasons). Mine was just under $41k. The 4x4 version of the new model came to over $64,000 and it was lacking the factory swivel seats (~$500) and the HID headlights mine has (LED for the new ones but they aren't currently available), that option being about $1k. Not sure how much of that is the new model of Sprinter, but that's a $25,000 difference in price when you account for the missing options on the 2019.

The new ones have many more options to drive the price up even higher.

I'm pretty shocked by the price, quite frankly. At the time I thought $41k for my van was a lot of money, but $64k with no build inside...ouch.
 

IdleUp

Member
These things are never an entirely logical decision, however I will never regret the decision to go for the 4x4 Sprinter over the 2WD.
I have both actually. Well the 2wd is the VW version.
The VW is more comfortable, does up to 40mpg and like for like was 40% of the purchase price (3 yrs old)
In % terms the amount of miles the Sprinter does off road is minuscule.
BUT, the amount of time we spend off road is significant.
However the most important factor is the experiences and memories we have. That is priceless and well worth the extra outlay and the compromises.
From an "investment" perspective that really is a smart investment!
From a financial perspective 2WD Sprinters are 2 a penny here, the depreciation is catastrophic. If you really want to shred money, get a Transit:hmmm: by about 5 years old/150k miles they can be 50% cheaper than the equivilent Sprinter/Crafter or Ducato. Because people know they can't cope with miles or age.
4WD Sprinter deprecation is way less, (i can add and subtract before anyone talks about the initial outlay:lol:)
In fact there's a distinct possibility that we could make a profit on ours, there is a "scene tax" over here.

I've taken 2wd vehicles to places others wouldn't attempt in a 4wd but to suggest a 2wd van can do what a 4x4 van can do is utter boll##ks:snore:

LOL That's a joke, almost any 2wd car can do what the Crown did, no great feat there, its really a joke!

Maybe you can follow some wimp in a 4x4, but you won't even think of going where I've been with 4x4 trucks!

You guys need to quit trying to compare a 4x4 with a 2wd because they are two different breeds of animals!

Mike
 

Ed463

Active member
LOL That's a joke, almost any 2wd car can do what the Crown did, no great feat there, its really a joke!

Maybe you can follow some wimp in a 4x4, but you won't even think of going where I've been with 4x4 trucks!

You guys need to quit trying to compare a 4x4 with a 2wd because they are two different breeds of animals!

Mike
I seriously have no idea what you're getting at:dripsarcasm: where's the joke?
My point is, stop trying to say a 2wd can do what a 4x4 can.........:thinking:
 
I have a 2016 4x4 Cargo. My 4x4 failed with 2k miles on it. They had to replace the whole transfer case. Do I use it? Yes, I use it on job sites that require a 4x4 because they do not want to tow you out of the mud. Since the replacement I have had no issues with the 4x4 operation. For me at the time it was a 8600 leap but because of it I was able to get onto a job site and made a 70k sale for a fire alarm install. This is just my application. Just make sure the correct gear oil is in the diffs When they drained it, it was the blue "efficient" crap. My sprinter tech used the red 80W140 GL-5 GEAR OIL per my request and I had no trouble, no droning etc.
 

RVCuisineScene

Active member
I have a 2016 4x4 Cargo. My 4x4 failed with 2k miles on it. They had to replace the whole transfer case. Do I use it? Yes, I use it on job sites that require a 4x4 because they do not want to tow you out of the mud. Since the replacement I have had no issues with the 4x4 operation. For me at the time it was a 8600 leap but because of it I was able to get onto a job site and made a 70k sale for a fire alarm install. This is just my application. Just make sure the correct gear oil is in the diffs When they drained it, it was the blue "efficient" crap. My sprinter tech used the red 80W140 GL-5 GEAR OIL per my request and I had no trouble, no droning etc.
I work at Wolf Creek ski area which is located at the top of Wolf Creek pass in southwest Colorado, the pass climbs 3000+ feet topping out at well over 10K feet, last winter the pass received over 46 feet of snow, about a 1/3 of the way up is a 180 degree hairpin turn which requires navigating at speeds below 15 mph or less depending open the road conditions, I call the turn the eliminator, many 2 wheel rear drive cars, vans and trucks spin out and get stuck trying to accelerate out of the turn. If I didn't have 4X4 I would have to stop at the bottom of the pass and chain-up, in fact when traction laws are in effect it's against state law to try going up the pass without snow tires, chains and or 4X4. Even with the stock Vanco tires I've never had difficulty going up the pass often passing 4X4 with all season tires.
 

ENMeyer

Well-known member
I work at Wolf Creek ski area which is located at the top of Wolf Creek pass in southwest Colorado, the pass climbs 3000+ feet topping out at well over 10K feet, last winter the pass received over 46 feet of snow, about a 1/3 of the way up is a 180 degree hairpin turn which requires navigating at speeds below 15 mph or less depending open the road conditions, I call the turn the eliminator, many 2 wheel rear drive cars, vans and trucks spin out and get stuck trying to accelerate out of the turn. If I didn't have 4X4 I would have to stop at the bottom of the pass and chain-up, in fact when traction laws are in effect it's against state law to try going up the pass without snow tires, chains and or 4X4. Even with the stock Vanco tires I've never had difficulty going up the pass often passing 4X4 with all season tires.
I think I met you at the Phil's World trailhead a month or so ago. We chatted a bit about your (black?) sprinter conversion. I was in the silver 144 (2WD).
 

RVCuisineScene

Active member
I think I met you at the Phil's World trailhead a month or so ago. We chatted a bit about your (black?) sprinter conversion. I was in the silver 144 (2WD)
Yup, I remember, gotta love biking in Phil's World, I'm currently in Alaska for the summer and will be in Maine for the fall, next winter not sure where?
 

mgladden2

Member
This thread has been a good read, with lots of advice here and there. I have an older FWD SUV crossover and I take that thing down 4x4 roads all the time, but there have been dozens of situations where I narrowly got out (deep sand, steep gravely grades, hairpin uphill corners in sand) and I currently have 7" ground clearance that is never enough (rocks hitting the bottom all the time). There's no way the Ford Transit AWD would work for me (6.5" measured myself at rear suspension; sprinter 8.75" measured myself), unless I want to cut into the rear suspension, spend thousands on kits and install, void parts of the warranty, etc. So I went with a sprinter 4x4 custom order.

Cost is only a concern if you can't convert that value into cash again. From what I can tell there's a strong market for 4x4's, even those that are a few years old, so the way I see it is I'll get the 4x4, and if someday I'm not using it enough, sell, and buy something else. Emissions concerns are real, but more likely to hit in later years (by which time I may have sold it), and the solution appears to be doing more oil changes if you idle a lot, drive around town for long periods w/out highway driving, or use greater than 5% biodeisel fuel (some states that's the only option). At $150/oil change if you use a local shop (don't tell MB, just do your required 10K changes with them), it's really not that big of a deal.

But I hope all of that is true and I don't end up in "limp home" someday cursing at the emissions system. I know it happens, anecdotally here and there with newer model vehicles, but mostly older ones, and I know plenty of people with 3-4 year old rigs that idle all the time and have never once seen an error (yet). I wish there was a good source of statistics, not anecdote, on actual emissions errors for newer (last 5 years) MB v6 diesel engines.

The internet attracts all of the complaints, so anecdote is heavy here, true for every car I've owned (my current one is generally disliked by users online and rated poorly with tons of problems cited yet I've never once had a single non-routine maintenance issue with it in 10 years and I've beaten it up like nobody's business on roads it wasn't meant for).

Cheers.

Mark
 
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VanGoSki

Well-known member
Honestly, I wouldn't count on any less depreciation with 4x4 than a standard van. Take a look at all of them in the classifieds, quite a few. I posted the build sheet a couple of weeks for a really good 2019 4x4 144 Cargo that's in final QA and shipping now and due to arrive in a week at my dealer. And as far as I know, nobody is interested in it. Charleston is now cranking them out and dealer build slots are popping up all over the place. So the market is changing. You really should base your buying decision of the merits of the vehicle for your own purposes and not make any assumptions about the rate of depreciation. It's a vehicle, not a bank account.
 

mgladden2

Member
You really should base your buying decision of the merits of the vehicle for your own purposes and not make any assumptions about the rate of depreciation.
Indeed, which is why the first half of my post is about my own purposes and the 4x4 being a match.

But I do think there is an argument to be made for the investment value being higher due to scarcity and lower depreciation. You may be able to make a counter argument, but every dealer I've called has a wait list of 5-20 people, with many smaller dealers not getting any allocations for 4x4 this year whatsoever. The reason? The 4x4 transmission is only made by a single shop in Austria (no North American supplier), and they only make about 8K-10K per year, with less than half of those being allocated to North America. That's it. No matter how fast Charleston cranks out 2wd vans, it can't make more 4x4's (for now).

I also just spent the past few years shopping around various 4x4 SUV and van options, and most of the ones I wanted were selling at significant premiums (beyond the initial value of just the 4x4 option). That market may change as well, and the whole quad van big-SUV trend may change, but I'm okay with unknown future outcomes if the current trend is constructive.

In any event, I do need the 4x4, so you're right about that being the primary focus. Looking forward to taking this rig down some roads that my 2wd SUV barely managed, one in particular that ends right at the Colorado river.

Cheers.

Mark
 

VanGoSki

Well-known member
In any event, I do need the 4x4, so you're right about that being the primary focus. Looking forward to taking this rig down some roads that my 2wd SUV barely managed, one in particular that ends right at the Colorado river.

Cheers.

Mark
Sounds great, Mark. As one future 4x4 owner to another, I hope to see you down the road. :cheers:

Joel
 

thepowwhale

New member
For what it's worth to future buyers, I have a 2WD, and even with wintery-compound A/T tires, I wish I had 4x4 every time it snows or whenever I leave pavement. I've gotten stuck in parking lots a couple times after big storms in the mountains, and while I haven't gotten stuck off road, I've had some sketchy situations, both clearance wise and with tires slipping uphill.
 

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