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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Tuesday, December 27, 2011 at 20:13:28 :
In Reply to: Re: checked out a PW today, 2 questions posted by Jerry in Idaho [69.59.83.175] on Tuesday, December 27, 2011 at 18:41:31 :
On the one hand, for $25K, a PW had better be "drive it all over town and show it off" perfect. There's really no excuse for trying to sell a real nice looking truck, with probably petty mechanical issues like that.
On the other hand, some guys are great with body work and not so good with mechanical or electrical things. If the body is truly in great shape (not bondoed all over), that's worth significant money. I would rather do mechanical work that body work any day, and mechanical parts are a lot more available than rust-free bodies. So, if something has to be wrong with an expensive truck, better to be mechanical issues.
On the poor running, oil pressure tells you something, but compression tells you more. An engine with poor compression can run pretty funky and still have good oil pressure. For example. Maybe it was a good strong engine when it was parked in farmer John's field in 1972. It sat for 40 years, with moisture getting into the cylinders, especially if the carb was off, whatever oil film was once on the cylinders dried up, and some of the cylinders got pretty rusty. Along comes your seller who buys it from farmer John's son. Seller puts a battery and gas in it and fires it up. Runs pretty good so he starts driving it around. Rusted cylinders and rings start wearing fast, compression goes down, and various problems appear. However, because the engine was RUSTED out rather than WORN out, the bearings are still tight and the oil pressure is still high. Seller pulled the head for some reason. What did he see when he did so? I would ask for a wet and dry compression test before buying. That's a good way to separate potentially serious problems from potentially easy to fix ones.
If compression is good, the problems are probably minor. Could be various things like an accelerator pump that doesn't pump, advance weights (or vacuum advance) stuck or non-op, spark problems (a whole new set of everything spark-related is cheap compared to $25K), etc. Maybe the poor running would justify a price reduction?
Or if you really want a nice truck in turn-key ready-to-drive condition, keep shopping. With your budget you should be able to find quite a few good ones worth looking at.