How much truck for $900

[occupant]

The horn sounds like a dying moose. Hence the name.

So my wife and I were facing a choice of putting an engine in her Lumina (camshaft broke from cam bearing wear when it had an intake gasket failure, long before we bought it), or buying something else. The car lot absolved us of responsibility to pay off the note (we only owed $1800) and we took our cash and picked up a Suburban. Now we aren't stuffing four kids in a back seat which isn't even comfortable for three. Now we can put the noisy rowdy 5- and 7-year old kids in the third seat under the very loud rear AC unit, put the babies and the older quieter 12-year old kid in the middle seat, and my wife and I can sit up front in peace.

The $900 paid for it includes a fresh inspection sticker, fresh tags, clear title, and sales tax. $180 in freebies. Not a bad deal, considering the Goodwrench 350 4-bolt under the hood is worth more than the truck itself. The Warn hubs, chrome grab handles, stainless running boards, and Class IV receiver are bonuses, too. If it dies tomorrow I'll double my investment in parts alone!

The truck also has new exhaust including a converter and a correct tailpipe angle! Finally, a muffler shop that knows what it is doing! It needs a mirror glass for the passenger side mirror (those low-profile mirrors are cheap), one turn signal bulb up front needs to be amber instead of clear, and the brakes are squealing (pads). The steering wheel is a bit loose, the headliner's falling, and it's rusty to the point I'm afraid to open the tailgate! But it puts out amazing heat, all the power windows work, the power locks work, the tailgate window works, and it runs well. A little rich, but I can tune that. It wasn't so rich as to fail state emissions testing on a dyno, so I'm not TOO worried.

I've got 19 pictures up on CarDomain, so here's one teaser picture and a link...

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2534514

The scary thing is it's almost as tall as the house. Forget fitting it in the garage, we're just lucky it doesn't hang out over the curb into the street! And the $1000 '82 International 24-passenger school bus we looked at an hour before buying this would have done just that. The kids already think it's a school bus with all the yellow exposed metal inside. Scottsdale package doesn't cover it all!

[Camino LS6]

Good buy!

[occupant]

*joy* I found the hood ornament under the front seat. Will have to put that on if it ever stops raining here. Also scrubbed it down while it was pouring. Got all the dirt out of the paint except for the parts of the roof I couldn't reach. Was raining too hard to climb up there, I would have fallen off and probably broken my neck. BIG truck.

My wife looks like an Oompa-Loompa hopping out of the passenger seat.

[76ChevyTrucker]

An outstanding buy! The 73-87 model 1/2 ton, and the 73-91 3/4 and 1-ton pickups, Suburbans and Blazers were all outstanding vehicles with little problems, except for the rust problem, but most of that can be fixed. As far as replacement parts, they're readily avaiable from 99% of your parts stores within your area. If you need stuff for the truck other than normal, check www.LMCtruck.com, you can practically buy the whole truck from them. I admit the prices are a bit much, but its all Original Equipment Replacement parts, made by the same manufacturers that popped the parts out when those trucks were new.

[deftonesfan867]

Love the old burbs dude BTW, North Fort Worth huh..hmmm...thats where I live, well I live in the northside area near 35W and loop 820. Alliance airport area is where you reside??

[occupant]

well, we're in that little corner of 35W and 820, off Mark IV...

but I must update this thread to mention the sale of the Moose, $1300, to finance buying my wife a POS Taurus for work. Good news is I got a 1997 Intrepid out of the deal. Bad news is it had two blown head gaskets. That's fixed (took me 3 weeks to do it though, with all the busyness we've been dealing with), and it will be my daily driver until it sells.

Moose is headed for a deer lease down south of San Antonio.

[deftonesfan867]

Wow, Marv IV Parkway isn't far from me, I live near Meacham Blvd. and Long Ave. Sorry about your loss with the Burb

[Sixty8panther]

Damn... I'm jelaous. Great looking truck. I even like the colors.

Congrats!