1990 pete 379 yes/no

excellent post kitty foot! Sounds like my exact plans, buy an older rig (late 80's early 90's) and sit it for probably 3 years while I work my current gig fixing it up. On a side note, you could try to haggle the guy a little bit and for 5k or so you could probably scrap the darn thing and get half of your money back if worse came to worse. My rough math estimates at crushed car rate you can scrap that rig for 3k.

 

First off I have an older truck myself, 93 Freightliner and its just as solid today as it was back then and its got probably 2 million or more miles on it. Now with an older truck you will have some issues such as doors not shutting solid but thats a simple fix and a common problem with newer trucks also. There may be some other small things but they should be easy to fix.

As for the motor swap..... The 444 was not a red top motor and not electronic, in the early years. Even the first red top motors had fuel pumps on them just like the Big Cam motors did. The first 444's that came out were plagued with injector problems and from what I was told was just a POS motor unless you got lucky with it. I knew of a few guys who actually had good luck with them, but there didn't seem to be many. So replacing it with a 400 Big Cam IV was a smart thing to do. It should've been just pull out and put in deal also, no changes to the truck.

The miles on it wouldn't scare me, depending what they used it for. My cousin just bought a 98 WS cheap and the owner only put 80k on it in 5 years, it was their spare truck. It was well taken care of and washed after each use before parked.

I do agree with the last part about keeping his job and making sure everything is ok with this truck before trying to run it.

 

You ought to do a little better than 4. My truck has 4.11's and tall 24" rubber and will run at 60 at about 1750-1800 rpm with a non overdrive 13 speed. I do a lot of city driving most of the time but when I spend any time on the highway I typically get right around 6mpg with my 3406B, though my motor does seem to be turned down quite a bit and I usually stay right at 58 mph or so.

 

The price is right, and if the frame is clean and the body/interior is descent, then I'd say go for it. Start off hauling locally for the 1st month tho, that way if anything gives, you are close to home to fix it since you don't know the truck that well yet.

Just my .02

 

what rears are in it? and you said it hauled a low bed so is it set up with a wetline kit? if so see if you can run a end dump locally make some cash work the bugs out of it. If its $6K with a wetline i would buy it in a second.

 

I agree the 400 swap from the 444 was good. 444 had good power but had their problems. Mileage i think it is doable, Since it was a lowboy tractor and contractor owned there is a good chance a lot of days it wasnt used. I know contractors around here that dont run their lowboy tractors daily and when they do, maybe a 100 or less a day. They are just running around local moving their equipment. I got an 86 IHC with 800,000, second owner