Buying a 2006 Columbia, $18000, good deal?

Or save up some more money and buy a pre-emissions truck that won't need a rebuild after 500k miles and won't shake itself to pieces running down the road.

 

Get him an Eagle. They are rugged as can be.

 

No cousins, uncle daddies or inbreeding involved. No websites that I know of.

 

Its not a bad price provided the rest of the running gear is solid. Cosmetics dont pay the bills,.. he mechanical things are what will make or break you.

Make sure the paperwork is legit,.. as in call the shop or mechanic that did the work and verify it and at what mileage it was done at.

Pull the cap off the differentials and see how much metal is on the magnet. Take it for a test drive and make sure the transmission shifts right,.. minimal slop,.. no grinding,.. high low works with out grinding etc. Check to make sure the AC and the sleeper AC is working good. Look at the wiring harness,.. and look it over good,.. the ECM is on the driver side,.. check the wiring harness going into it. Then check the condition of all the wires,.. chase it back to the batteries. I ended up replacing the entire engine, ECM and chassis wiring harness due to constant shorts, 2 fried ECM's ($2600 a pop plus $1000 for injector programming) and chasing down sensor codes only to discover it was the plug or wiring. And dont bother taking a Columbia with a CAT under the hood to Freightliner. They dont have CAT mechanics in house anymore. So find your own mechanic or if you are inclined,.. learn how to repair it yourself.

I have a 2005 with pretty much the same engine. If everything checks out,.. I would offer between $14 - $15k at most. If it turns out there was no new engine,.. that truck is worth more parted out than whole.
These Columbia's are dime a dozen,.. but not many with a CAT under the hood. There is no EGR or DPF,.. its a very reliable engine as long as you keep up with preventative maintenance. Take it to CAT and have them pull an ECM dump file and see what the lifetime MPG is for the truck. If under 5 mpg,.. dont bother with it. Its more than likely going to nickel and dime you to death. If 5.5 or better,. that should be a good truck.

I bought mine in 2013 and its not much to look at,.. but its a money making truck. I bought mine with 825k mi,.. and currently its at 1.6 million.

Hurst

 

The first truck shop I worked at for a decade, we had ‘Binders. They ARE tough. We hauled sugarbeets to Western Sugar with em. Legal was 124000. When we weren’t crossing the scales we were always around140000. We didn’t have truck drivers we had truck destroyers. They seen the inside of an anvil with a rubber hammer.

 

I'll see if the place I used to work will sell "The Thing".

It's like 06 Century, full sleeper, not a straight body part on it.

Runs great. Rebuilt 60 with about 300 or 400 thousand on it.

Tranny blew up though.

I thought about getting it myself before they part it out.

It passed a level 1 in Arizona when I drove it lol.

It had 1.2 million total on it when I left.

 

Hurst—- I get that cosmetics don’t pay the bills. Like I said after though, everything else already has a million plus on it.....