Need a "grandpa" truck, need more ideas.

In reply to BoostedBrandon:

Dude, your gigantic animated gif is messing up my intarwebz! Stop breaking the forum!

This is tempting (for me anyway)

1989 crew cab with 66,000 miles and never seen salt? Unicorn.

http://akroncanton.craigslist.org/cto/2733509746.html

mguar wrote: In reply to slefain: For cripes sake! Most well maintained pickups will go 200,000, 250,000 even three hundred thousand miles with very little maintenance. The pickup in my driveway has 297,000 miles on it.. it's cost me nearly $1000 to get it here.. One alternator, a set of intake manifold gaskets, and normal maintenance. Of course I know my truck got proper maintenance because I bought it new and did it as needed myself. That's the flaw with buying used.. Oh by the way at 297,000 miles I still get 17 MPG in town and 19 on the highway.. it's a 4X4 V8 auto with the usual stuff.

For cripes sake what? So you bought a new truck, took care of it and have put a ton of miles on it. This helps me how? I am trying to find a good USED truck for a decent price. I used to flip used cars so I am well aware of what buying used means.

Thanks for the input everyone. I'm going to keep my eyes out for an Explorer Sport Trac. Ideally one owned by a Dunwoody soccer dad to tote mulch on the weekends.

+1 on the asto sarari AWD,I picked up a clean 99 full load for 500 bucks and it takes anything I can throw at it short of all out 4x4 trails,parts are cheap when you need them.My kids do bug me about owning a van now,till they need to move something.

N Sperlo wrote: Just want to point out that Miata is not the answer.

I disagree.

Add coil overs, raise as high as you can

add knobby snow / rally tires

LSD or welded diff

no top, roll bar w/extra lights

remove trunk lid for tiny pick-up bed.

Extra seats could be added to trunk area, Subaru Brat style. Fancy fab work could make a nice rumble seat as a second choice.

I wouldnt want to load my grandkids into an 80s anything.

I would be looking at mid to late 90s Tahoes and Suburbans. They are just getting broken in at 150k, parts and repairs are almost free. And since they are old body style, you can get a nice 4x4 for $4k or less.

I feel obligated to note that the 3 cam chains in the 4.0 v6 of those exploder sport tracks only last like 90k. The 3rd one is on the back side of the block. They make really mean slapping/ grinding noises when bad. I really do not like that 4.0