Apply parking brake, chock the wheels, put tranny in neutral and try wiggling the driveshaft at the tranny. If it's sloppy, the bushing in the tailshaft is shot. "Sloppy" is a loose term (pun intended) - it's going to move a little, but shouldn't be excessive.

The leak from the passenger valve cover might be the PCV valve, as in oil pushing up around it. Open the hood and find the leak

That's a really clean truck! Must have been a lot of highway miles.

 

What stinks is this truck is an hour and a half away so it's not easy to just go look. I gave the guy the ultimatum to lower the price again, fix the problems, or just tell me he cannot make it work. It's clean but has wear and tear of being up in the northeast. Best one I've found so far though. I thought about PCV valve too but was looking the whole truck over too. I feel like this may end up not going my way but that's ok as I don't want to rush anything either and end up with my money going up in smoke.

 

2004 should have a 2valve engine. Those are known to last a long time . I just replaced that transmission seal on mine. 4wd ,was 400$. First repair I had to hire out.

 

- no big deal just get it fixed
- its a used truck, good luck

It looks very clean. very low miles, the flatbed is probably a very good fit for your business. I would go for it. I am not a fan of getting my truck fixed at a dealership after it is out of warranty. Their prices are too high in my opinion. You should be able to get those repairs done much more affordably by a competent mechanic at a local garage, and many people could handle doing those two repairs (valve cover gasket and tail shaft seal) themselves, for around $50 in parts I'm guessing.

 

 

 

 

I understand and gave him my own script. Problem is the truck is and hour and a half away and I'm losing my patience with his lack of anything and really don't feel that compelled to drive down there again. I have my pickup for the time being and I will keep searching.

I've found a few 1 tons of different brands that look good but trying to avoid them if I can because once you put a body and a hoist on them they can't legally haul squat. But I'd also need a hoist put on that flatbed 450 because just a flat bed doesn't help so that's another $4-5 grand right there.

Take this truck for example. Yes I know it's a Chevy, whatever, I prefer Fords but I'm not limiting my search that much. This has a hoist and the bed I want and asking for what the reduced price of the 450 was and it probably has wiggle room. But it is a 1 ton which puts me off a bit. Probably only get about 2 ton on that bed for payload.





My goal is to have a material hauler to tow my enclosed trailer. I do have a dump trailer for the extra capacity when needed but I like having the enclosed with ALL my tools with me. So the solution needs to be a dump truck of sorts. A 550 could likely give me 4-5 ton after a body which means less trips. But ALL the 450/550 trucks are either absolute junk, questionably problematic, or I need second mortgage to afford. I cannot afford new so that leaves me with two options.

1.) a clean 1 ton with less capacity

2.) a questionable running higher capacity truck

The reason I'm super skeptical about all this is because of the Escape I bought that blew a transmission to the tune of $3200 that was a couple weeks out of the 30 day warranty period for used vehicles. I'm looking for a Unicorn which is all but impossible but need to be skeptical to keep me from working extra just to pay repair bills. My business isn't exactly printing money at the moment.





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