Buying a fixer upper

ham hocks and hammocks are two different animal's.. hammocks arent really for human consumption

 

Anything can be eaten with ranch dressing or A-1.

 

Be a BUNCH of fiber in a hammock!

 

fiber ? I guess so, condiments would help out if thats what you wanna do.

 

Sounds like a good plan. You build in reliability . You rebuild everything at the start you know what you got! You can go buy a 50k money pit. It happens. Best of luck !

 

Allow me to throw this out there: I just bought a '99 Kenworth W900 for $18,500. Had to put an air dryer on it, some electrical work, and bunk heater valve, and an AC dryer. As well as a bunch of smaller stuff. Doing the work myself, I have spent maybe $500 on it so far. Planning to have it on the road by the first of the year. It's got 1.3 million on the clock, but I can tell the heads have been off, cam follower covers, etc. So I'm guessing it's had an in-frame at some point, but I don't know. It has some blow-by, but not excessive yet. It may need an in-frame soon, but may not. Time will tell. It drives nice and has been pretty well kept. If I do the in-frame myself, I can do it for just a few thousand, depending on what all it needs. When done, I'm hoping to have less than $30,000 in the truck, and it'll have a fresh motor, but still lots of miles on everything else. Then I'll just maintain it and fix things as they break. It's pre-emission, no EGR or any of that, so I feel like it'll be dependable after the rebuild.

 

I should add that I'm a big fan of buying older stuff and fixing it up. That way you know exactly what you've got. If you do the wrenching yourself, you'll be very familiar with your truck. So when something goes wrong, you stand a very good chance of diagnosing it yourself and being able to fix it right the first time, instead of just dropping it off at the dealer and let them throw parts at it at your expense. If my truck never sees the inside of the dealer's shop, that will be just fine with me.

I said all that to say this: I like your plan.

 

Oil consumption is the best way to gauge when she may need an overhaul . How often you having to add a gallon of oil ?

 

I'll know once I start driving the truck. As of right now, I've only put about 50 miles on it.