Okay, I honestly can NOT decide if I want a truck or muscle car. I LOVE to go muddin more than I do driving on the street with a car, but I also LOVE the sound and feel of being in a car and working on them. So I have came to the conclusion that I should keep driving my parents work vehicle and work till I get more money since I will have a job n the summer and then at the end of summer buy a muscle car and a mud truck. If I did that I would get a stock sports car I could build up and a mud truck sorta like this:
1977 Chevy 1/2 ton with 9 inch lift
Do you guys have any opinions/thoughts on this?

That way I am getting decent gas mileage instead of 5-15 mpg and I also have somethin to mud in. And on an older truck like that insurance won't be high, so that is a +.

But I really can't decide because i'd rather have a mud truck but it'd also be my daily driver and everyone says not to do that because adding a lift n bigger tires is very hard on them especially when on the road.

(I currently have $6000.00 and over the summer will make approx $140.00 a week and my parents double whatever I put in the bank for a vehicle, so if I put all of it in the bank then $280.00 a week)

 

I think that someone your age should think more about secondary education or vocational training and save money, all the money you can, for as much of as you can get. Pissing money away on 30+ year old money pit trucks and "arrest me" muscle cars that are both going to need a constant stream of tinkering and money is not good sense.

You can prepare yourself for a career and position yourself to be able to, in a few years, buy anything you like.

Or, you can focus on the present, buy some POS, spend all your time an money on it, and guarantee yourself a lifetime of 30 year old vehicles.

JMO, you asked.

 

I second that. When I turned 16, I had to have a muscle car. Well I wound up getting a transam. She burned and drained more than gas. She tried to kill me and a friend of mine going to school one day when the throttle linkage in the carb stuck wide open. (Rotors were blue for a while) Trans blew up in it after I had it for a year and a half (my driving had some to do with it as did milage of car). Engine blew a year after that. That was the last straw. I sold it for parts, and bought a 88 Ford Escort EXP (looked like a Mustang) I loved that car up until I traded it in for my first truck. Nothing went wrong with it while I had it. I was able to save money to buy my first truck which was only 2 years old at the time.

Unless you are going to spend the time and $$$ fixing older muscle cars up or fixing mudding trucks up that WILL break something(I used to mud and race trucks) save your money for something else, like a better education or a home.

 

I wouldnt go so far to agree with the life time of old cars cause I wont buy new cause I dont care for them.

I have multiple vehicles but all of them has cost me under $800 a piece when I got them and I am restoring one of them right now its a slow process but besides that I agree on the education I got years of Automotive Tech training and I am doing alot of the restoration work myself which saves alot of money but bad thing is cars been sitting lately cause the auto shops are not hiring people right now so I have to resort to doing tune ups in my drive way for money.

But if you are like me and open and not set on one specific year/make/model of car/truck if you wait you can find lots of good vehicles that will eventually grow on you and are not bad. My 78 Cougar I got in Oct 2005, paid $500 for her and I wasnt that fond of her but had a 5.8L V8 and I had $500 and the car was big and roomy. I wouldnt sell that car for anything. Has given me no troubles AC worked when I got it the engine currently has 166k miles on it and no sludge build up,ect. So my advice would be if you have to get a vehicle dont rush into it and get a basket case cause you just have to have it. Its not worth it. I would like a 69 Charger or a 70 Challenger or a 70 1/2 Camaro but I am not going to spend over $1,000 for these basket cases that you find. I rather stick with my passengercars cause either way they have their own character.

 

I agree with you on new cars, I havent liked the styles, feel or quality of anything built since the late 90s........Buy something thats easy to work on, and parts are cheap for........Suggest a 87-96 F-series, or 83-92 Ranger, in cars you cant beat a 83-93 fox body Mustang for parts availability and kick in the rear performance...........I am never afraid to take on an older car, let someone else make payments on a new car.

 

Old, I agree like my 78 yea parts might be alittle more than on newer cars and dont have all that fancy stuff but alot of whats on all my vehicles are rebuildable.

My 78 doesnt have a idler arm like new cars with grease fittings its a idler arm with two rubber bushings (sorta like the conrtol arm bushings) and I can rebuild the orignal one for $12.95 compared to buying a new one (with zerk fittings and is nonrebuildable for $65.

My 56 for instance the water pump can be unbolted and be rebuilt (new impeller, new bushings, new seals, new shaft) for $25 compared to buying a new one for $90. The master cylinder can be rebuilt for $10 (new plunger, new spring, new cap, new gasket) compared to buying a new replacement cast iron one for $75 - $85.

I mean old cars are cheaper to maintain (long as you get one that was taken care of and not abused) compared to new because alot of the parts on the old cars are rebuildable not like new cars where you throw the part away and buy new.

Hell my 56 has very few wiring but does not have plastic wiring connectors it has bullet connectors (male connectors on wires) and it has wiring junctionboxes bolted under the dashboard or on the wheel well under the hood that the mal bullet connectors just snap into. How simple is that, you can disconnect one wire at a time to find a problem unlike on new cars where you cant you have to unplug the whole harness.

 

EXCELLENT post. Reps sent.

 

Remember we have a whole generation that has lived the high life. The rooster is coming home to roost. Kids will be kids. Sounds like mom & dad are rich. So doing anything that makes sense to us oldtimers is not going to make sense in this case I'm afraid.
I agree with buying new, (DON'T) We drive an 86 F250 4x4, 97 Chevy Blazer 4x4, 98 Grand Cherokee 5.9 Limited, & 06 Suzuki SV650S

 

No, I totally agree in buying used and an older truck. But my dad wants me to save up my money and get something that has lower miles and is newer. I personally would LOVE to get an older f150/250 or chevy 1500/2500 ect.. And it's my money and my dad will let me use it on an older truck but he just goes on and on and on about how many problems i'll end up having with it. And when I am older I would like to go somewhere down the automotive road (Not so sure yet, I absolutley love working on vehicles and i use to have rc trucks and i loved working on them, but I would like to learn more about vehicles and study them more to see if that is something i'd be interested in or not) so therefore it'd be nice to have something like that in a sense and when it did break down i could fix it or have our mechanic fix it and i help him so i learn..

 

I am not sure who you are talking about here "living the high life" If you are reffering to me then yes, my parents do have a lot of money, but when I was 13 they made me get a job and buy my own clothes, when i was 10 they made me start saving up majority of the money i got for college/a vehicle. When it comes to vehicles I pay for my own gas/insurance/vehicle, as of right now I am lucky enough to drive their work truck, but probably won't have it for much longer. Trust me I am no where near spoiled compared to 90% of my generation. Compared to some of yours maybe, but compared to mine i am not spoiled at allll. The only person i'm spoiled by is my gpa and gma, they will buy me clothes occasionally, but that is it.. Anyways, I just was sort of offended when you said that even though I should not be, but back on subject.

 

This comment is not to say that there is anything wrong with buying, fixing and running older vehicles. What it is meant to say is that if you goof up your education and start in life, you may end up in a state of poverty that limits you to junkers and beaters.

Given the subsequent posts by the OP, it does not appear that there is much danger that he will be sleeping under overpasses, consigned to the next abandoned vehicle he finds along the roadway.....

 

Buy old, buy new, but buy FORD!

 

The NEWEST vehicle we own is the wifes 97 Explorer limited, the oldest a 84 Ranger. They all run as good or better than new because I MAINTAIN them properly. I laugh at folks with 03s and 04s who are shelling out big money to repair stuff they cant work on or understand......... Warranties die,..... properly maintained vehicles don't.

 

How old are you anyways?

The problem with having fun stuff when you're younger is that those "fun" vehicles have a nasty habit of getting you in trouble or in accidents.

Trust me, I wanted all sorts of things when I was in high school, but my dad wouldn't let me get anything fun (sounds like your dad is similar to my dad- talking about how this or that will break).

My problem now is that I have a 22 year old car that has been very fun (and reliable) and I DO like it, except I've invested a lot of money in it, and it'd be worth a fraction of that if I sold it.

I've also had some regrets about buying my truck- I only paid $5000 for it but it seems like there's always something wrong with it! I think the PO did not keep up on maintenance so well, he had MS and didn't drive it hardly at all.

Just go over everything with a fine tooth comb. For example, I probably wouldn't buy that truck you posted because it looks like it's got a very large body lift on it and I'm not fond of them- plus who's to say the rest of the lift was done right?

 

We've all been through that stage in our lives and some of us never out grow it. Certainly I still like to go muddin'.

I'd go for the truck. Today I witnessed a V-10 F-250 Supercab 4x2 whip the pants off of a 90's camaro. I was in love and impressed.

Tim