Bean counting aside. Do you love the truck? If yes, keep. If no, sell!!<br><br>Remember, we are men. We don't care about no stinking beans. We love the smell of diesel fuel in the morning. It's fun at stop lights when all the women roll up their windows because this unpleasant rumble is idling next to them. It's fun to fill the neighborhood with horrid smelling blue smoke on a cold day. And last but not least when that little punk next to you has his radio set at &quot;glass break level&quot;, you can always inch up so your exhaust pipe is in his window and kick your idle up to about 1500rpm. He'll put his window up!!!

 

Keep it - these things don't depreciate like cars - take a look in the paper and you'll be surprised - I was going-to buy one used but couldn't find anything with less than 150K selling for less than 17K - there seems to be a price floor around there for the diesel.. <br><br><br>As far as the tranny goes, pay someone to put a used/rebuilt standard in it when it goes south, and forget about it for ever.. <br><br>The lift pump is relatively cheap (have you ever priced a radiator for an import?), but the injection pump is $$$ - so don't let it get below 1/4 tank and you'll probably never have a problem... A friend of mine has a buddy he drives with for HotShot - this guy has put over 1MM miles on his Ram and has only had routine maintenance performed (i.e. valve adj, etc.) - he's probably gone through a bunch of lift pumps, but never anything worse... <br><br>All vehicles have common failure modes - ours happens to be the lift pump.... big deal - my '94 BMW 540I (which I sold to buy my truck) had failures like the transmission detonating ($4K for a replacement), sulfur-related deterioration of the cylinder walls ($5K block replacement / rebuild), etc... it's all there on all vehicles - you have one which has some pretty low-cost items which fail - and you have the bonus of being-able to buy from Cummins directly... try to do that with Toyota, Lexus, etc...<br><br><br>Joe...

 

Tenn, stop counting beans and start counting Horse Power. It's way more fun! Find a trann shop that's more High Performance oriented and has done a few truck transmissions. Most of the independants will use the aftermarket converters and valve bodies if you give them the info to check out first. You won't regret it if you do. The put on a box and set of injectors and you'll wonder why you ever thought of selling it. And don't forget the guages! The pusher pmp isn't that expensive, so don't worry your self to sleep over it.