Buying a cheap, old cabover.

that Pete cab over seems a bit over priced the freigliner, i would be afraid of if the millage and story are true you will be likely looking at replacing everything rubber on the entire truck. and probably a rash of seals threw your first year with that truck.

 

As I said "standard production". You can still buy a limited production (they have to shut down the normal production lines to produce COE's). But for the money its not worth it. California does NOT have a 65' length law Double Yellow. They stopped that in 2005. Do you think those bed buggers with 144 ARI sleepers are stopping at the border still? I had to run cabovers until 2005 because of length laws and was faced with the possibility of paying $144K for a new 362 when I could buy a new 379 for 130K. I went to 379's. Paccar said they would only produce 362's when they had enough orders to shut the 387/389 line down... They never did and have not built a single COE since 2004. Freightliner does still produce COE's because they ship them to Europe/Asia/Australia but I do not believe they have a standard U.S. production truck. If they do its not an easy truck to order.

 

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...s-and-trading-post/224924-94-flb-cabover.html

Now thats a nice CO

 

California still has a 65' foot law. I deal with it every week. HHG haulers are exempt. You can't get to or from Eureka if you are over 65' to give you one example. Ditto Fort Bragg and I believe Quincy and Chester as well, to name a few small towns that still have lumber mills.

The dpf law has exemptione for certain configurations. For example, a COE, truck and trailer with livestock bodies does not need a dpf, also COE's configured to pull a 57' trailer are also exempt.

 

I'd roll in that

 

I found a 1991 Freighliner with 400 cummins the other day but the guy never called me back and won't answer my call's so,,whatever. It was nice but needed inframe and a tranny but the interior and exterior was in great shape. $4k I would love to have a cabover, and may still get one. Would love to be the 1st to get 7mpg out of one...

 

This is my old cabover. I could get 6.3-6.5 running it flat out all day long and 43k loads. Fuel was cheap, so I ran, but if I had slowed down I could have easily went 7+, and did a few times. I found this picture under google images. How it got there I don't know. The only time I posted that picture, which was taken in my driveway, was here when there used to be a "my photo gallery", or something like that, so I guess that's where I was lifted from.

 

I had a 1986 Mack cab over that I bought off of LJ Kennedy when they switched to conventionals in 1996. I paid $6100 cash for the truck and it was mint. It had all new tires , new clutch, new drivers seat and 2 full fuel tanks . I ran that truck for 2 years and it only broke down once, the rubber impeller in the air compressor went and fixed it on the side of the road. That truck made a consistent $4k a week doing hardly any miles running grocery loads from Carlstadt NJ to NYC and the 5 Boros back when fuel was $1 gallon and the GW bridge was only $20 to cross .I sold it to a Mack dealer for $3500
2 years later who exported it and it's probably still running strong somewhere in South America! Lol !

 

If your mechanically inclined an older truck is not bad. If you think you would have a problem going as far as say swapping out a turbo or an injector at a truck stop I would steer clear. Tows and mechanics bills will bury you fast. They call it highway robbery for a reason.

If the truck has been sitting for a while I would also expect lots of little annoying problems at first like air valves, switches, air and fuel lines electrical.

I prefer and older truck if something breaks I can always get it fixed good enough to deliver my load and at leased limp her back to my yard and fix it right.

 

i completely agree with you on that. my truck had a lot of sitting time before i bought it and iv had a lot of issues like that, airline between the compressor and the dryer blew one day in stop and go traffic low air buzzer starts going off. got off the road holding my break buttons in. fuel line split on the suction line between the tanks and the water fuel separator making it suck air and die out while pulling a 7% grade. (this one really annoyed me cause not only did it take me a couple hours to find the problem, a few hours to figure out a solution that worked. the week before it happened i had replaced almost all the fuel lines except for that one) heater hose running to the sleeper split dumping all my antifreeze out down the highway. i fixed all these myself on the side of the road no service calls ect. but sure frustrating. i think i have replaced just about every hose and line on the truck now. still a couple old hoses left but over 90% have been changed some i got to before they put me on the shoulder others i didn't. some visually looked fine but were not. actually the ones that left me on the side of the road looked fine from the outside but were eroded from the inside out. the ones that looked bad from the outside got replaced before they blew on me.

carry a lot of fittings and misc hoses ect in the truck as well as about 10 gallons of antifreeze. carrying several feet of different size heater hose has actually come in quite handy many times for things other than heater hose, when i split the fuel line i took apart the re-useable fittings (not easy to do when they have been on the truck for god only knows how many years) and used a piece of heater hose to replace the line to get into town to have a new fuel line made. iv used heater hose for temp repairs of airlines as well, cut the heater hose wrap it around the split if you don't have the right size compression fitting and hose clamp it to stop or at-least slow the air leak. use it to wrap lines where abrasion is likely to occur or is occurring ect.

every time i have to get a new airline of a certain size or a compression fitting ect i always try to buy twice as meany as i need for the repair cause if i needed one ill likely need another later and throw it in a big tote. when i get time when i don't have other repairs to make to the truck but i have time to work on it i normally spend that time replacing lines and hoses.