cbrahs

well we had a customer come into the dealership in October with a check engine light on his 96 Mazda b4000 2wd pickup. diagnosed it with best case scenario as a head gasket (he did not want to pay to have it torn down) and worst case a motor. 146k miles, auto tranny camper shell painted to match. nice little truck. well he declined repairs, charged .5 hour diagnosis and took another 2 months to get a hold of him. Just after thanksgiving my boss is on my tail to get this truck gone so I called 1 more time before we had it towed off. he answered and told me he got a new car and was going to donate the truck. i asked if he would donate it to me since my daughter is going to be driving in 2 years and he said yes and I agreed to pay the bill at the shop. Met him at Starbucks and he signed over the title (his grandfather was original owner and gave it to him while he was in college).

long story short, went running to the shop, reopened the ticked to change labor rate to employee rate and ended up buying the truck for $42.

YES FORTY TWO DOLLARS.

bought all the gaskets, water pump, t-stat and new head bolts (torque to yield) for $240. Tech at work is going to fix it for me on the side for another $250. SOOOO $530 later and the cost to license and register and I have me a daily driver. its not worth even turning my dodge over in the mornings since I only live 1.1 miles from the shop and now I can remove the body lift, install my new 100 gallon tank in the bed, do the manual transmission conversion with SB dd3250 clutch and a few other little things i have been wanting to do to it but never have time or a spare rig to drive. 2011 has been pretty good to me so far and now I can finish the black bucket

tankeryanker

Good deal. I too live 1.2 miles from work & bought me a Toyota Tacoma for a daily driver. Didn't want to fire up my 01 Dodge I had at the time & it's still going strong while my 05 only comes out for camping & pleasure.

Colo_River_Ram

Sounds like a good deal there buddy!

I intend to drive the buggy to work when things warm up a tad myself.. the 19.5's x 6 are a bit on the expensive side!

madhat

Rub it in, ya butthole!!!!

Sounds good, brother. Congrats.

cbrahs

Colo- Anything x6 gets spendy

Mad- HAHAHAHA!


Its a pretty clean truck. new radiator and this weekend will be on the road. start driving it monday. going to wait to start tearing my truck down until beginning of next month since I am going to Durango for a 3 day ski trip on the last weekend of Jan..

cbrahs

might have to find me a 4bt.

Colo_River_Ram

What? This is the daily driver..I repeat this is the daily driver save the mods for the BB..

Understood?

cbrahs

yes dad lol

Bark

Neat stuff! My luck is if I got that good of a deal, there would have been a pound of cocaine behind the seat and an FBI tracking device on the frame.

Justwannabeme

they know you....

staarma

A six speed conversion? My new truck is going to have a slush box. I'm tired of shifting every second. I live about 2 miles from work. Truck never makes it to 120 water temp and that's in the Summer. When it's below zero it doesn't make it into triple digits at all. I now have a Honda Accord or I take the OL's Yukon. Nice to have instant heat. I just turned 56k on the old truck though. I'd keep it but I need a long box bad.

cbrahs

I am a snap ring away from the conversion. clutch is ready to ship along with the tranny. i got everything out of a wrecked 05 and got a SB dd3250 clutch and hydros. then a coupld days to git the swap done. Thanks to Bob, smarty is taking care of the programming

staarma

Sounds like a project. Hope you like it. You going to pull with it or something?

rockcrawler304

Nice one Chris!! Lucky sob.

Let me know when the swap is ready and I'll see if I can make it up there to lend a hand...... or at least hand you the tools

cbrahs

for the deal I got on the parts I can't pass it up. compared to a built auto I am about a 3rd of the cost including tranny.


Chad- will do brother. will be a fun couple days!