Hi everyone. This is my first post on the forum, and I am hoping to get some good feedback/help with a purchase I am considering. This past year my wife and purchased a camp in Maine, and it has become eminently clear that having a pickup truck to haul the family and our stuff to and from the place would be really convenient. Since I'm going to put relatively few miles on the truck each year, a higher mileage older truck that is relatively cheap (<$7K) will be fine. With that in mind, I've been scouring craigslist for an F150 super crew cab that is in good shape, and which is in the 2001-2003 model year range.

After seeing a lot of trucks in really bad shape (I live in the rust belt, i.e., new england), I finally came across 2003 F150 supercrew XLT that has ~160k miles but is overall in very good shape. The only thing holding me back from buying the vehicle is that a ford mechanic who performed a used car check on it said that the radiator core support is rotted out and needs to be replaced. Local body shops have quoted anywhere from $1000-1500 to do that repair.

Seller's asking price is $6600, and I've been unable to get him to move the needle on price at all. So I'm left with two choices - keep looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, or buy the truck and have it repaired (making the $6600 good deal an $8000 "so so" deal).

So what say you guys? Would you buy a truck at that price point with a rotted core support? Or would you pass?

Thanks in advance for your consideration and comments.

 

Hello, When this happened to my friend's son's support, the radiator itself was also a corroded, leaky mess. Is the rust damage just local? Kira

 

I have changed the core support out on my 93 Flareside. It's a lot of work time-wise, but if you are handy, it's really difficult. You just have to remove a lot of the items on the front in order to get to it.

Take a look at this picture. I still had to remove the header panel right in front of the core support.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-U...3+19.20.37.jpg

 

I've been in the car business for many years.

I'd pass, there are too many of these rigs out there for you to have to settle.
******** type="text/html" id="overlay_tmpl">
*********>

 

If You Can't fix it Yourself, Keep looking. You will find one nicer. Like Fox Fader said, There are a lot of these trucks out there. Get what You want.

 

Mixed message or typo?

What may actually be "really difficult" to deal with is aggressive rust hiding in various other places.

IMO nobody is ever "handy" enough to defeat Tin Worms.

 

Typo. Sorry about that. It's not difficult, just time-consuming.

 

Thanks for the replies. I came to the same conclusion as everyone else, and that is to pass. I'm relatively handy, but I don't have the time or the welding skills to take on a core support repair myself.

So the search continues. I've seen 30+ F150's (and a comparable number of Chevy's, GM's, Dadges, etc.) over the past few months, and all have been in various states of "bad" shape. Just the peril of looking for a cheap older truck in the rust belt, unfortunately.

 

maybe you need to take a vacation to virginia or north carolina ???

 

I have certainly thought about it! I have relatives in Virginia (I grew up in Alexandria), so I could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.