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Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, December 08, 2007 at 13:06:34 :
In Reply to: How do you tell? posted by Mark S. on Saturday, December 08, 2007 at 11:23:21 :
I haven't bought very many trucks, so I don't have any great experience, but my thoughts go like this. If the price is cheap to free and it can move around under its own power a little bit, I'll get it no matter how rough it is. If it costs real money, I want a good and complete body. Mechanical parts are easier to get and easier to fix than sheet metal. Dented sheet metal is easier to fix than rusted-out sheet metal. You don't say how the body was on the truck you looked at, or how much the guy wanted for it, but a worn-out part of the A-frame wouldn't bother me since it would be easy to fix. What it would tell me is that the winch might very well be worn out. My M37 had been used hard with an A-frame to set up tents at the state fairgrounds at some point in its life and the big gear in the winch is worn down to knife edges on the teeth. It still turns the drum, but I know if I ever took a hard pull on it, it would strip out. When I took the drain plug out, I got about a cup of water and bronze dust out of it and little sign of oil. In general, the more visible worn-out or jerry-rigged things are clues that there are related worn out or broken things in less visible places. For example, if any body panels in obvious places are rusted through, the bottoms of the doors are probably also rusted through. An cobbled-on aftermarket fuel filter might indicate a rusty gas tank. Any home brew wiring that isn't strictly limited to running a new accessory means somebody was trying to fix an electrical problem and has now pretty well messed up the whole system. One of my trucks came with two fuel senders in the tool box. Obviously the gas gage never worked right. Any quantity of parts or fluids that one wouldn't expect to find in the tool box is a clue that something is wrong, but then again to me mechanical or electrical problems are a lot easier to fix than a bad body.