Hey there, I'm looking into buying a 2002 cummins with 143000 miles and it has many upgrades. has a built 800 horse tranny that shifts nice and hard, has 300 horse injectors, 66mm industrial injection turbo, intake manifold, smarty programer and an edge chip. also has a air dog fuel system. The truck is really clean and seems to be in good shape, I'm just wondering if anyone can give me some tips on what to look out for with these kinds of mods done to it. i haggled with the guy and got him down to $12500 let me know what you guys think! thanks

 

they dont make an actual 300HP injector that actually makes 300 more HP. you want to look at alot of things. do a search on in the search tab for info on first time buying.

if you dont have alot of proof on what a truck has in it its hard to know for sure. usually there are reciepts involved when a person spends alot of money on a truck. so the seller should have this. check all fluids after its been driven and warm. if you are not to mechanical find a friend or someone that is to look at it with you. better yet talk to the seller and tell him you want it checked out by a certified diesel mechanic. you can just have him look at basic stuff or go as deap as pulling the valve cover and pull the injectors and use a scope to look at the pistons.

Do a search on hear on blow Bye and using the oil cap to test this. (not scientific) but works.

make sure all electric is working. check for codes. suspension parts, steering etc. it's not like the truck is new but you dont to buy a turd that was just shinned up.

 

Me personally, I would run away from any highly modified truck. I'm guessing it is a younger kid who owns it, and he didn't put all those mods on it just to drive it normal, I'm sure that truck has been ridden hard and put away wet. I purchased my 2002 with 200K miles on it and it was completely stock, it came from an older gentleman who took good care of it, with that being said this is what all I have had to replace in the last 2 years:

Wheel bearings
ball joints
tires
2 new batteries
injectors
Lift pump
VP-44
parking brake release
clutch
rear main seal
exhaust

My point being is that owning a diesel truck cost money, and if you buy one that has a lot of mods on it, you have to wonder how it was driven. To me the "cool" parts just aint worth the risk. But either way good luck with your purchase, let us know what you end up with.

 

I would have to disagree some. I know alot of members on this forum and others that have a medium to higher modded truck and do take care of the truck and up keep of it. I know me personally I have broke parts or when something was worn out etc I at that time did research and upgraded the piece with something better or stronger than oem. Just because a truck is built to handle x-ammount of HP. doesn't meant it gets driven like that. Me personally, I would rather buy a truck from more members on this forum than most other places. But really to the OP, I think a good top to bottom look over from someone that is a Mechanic or better yet knows about our trucks to look it over.

 

I have to agree dieselwrks, with this caveat. When looking at a modified truck, I look at how the owner represents it, if they blather on about how much coal she will roll, sorry, not interested. If, as with the case of some of the trucks of this very boards members, they know why the upgrade was done, and show the knowledge of the upgrade, then I would have no problem purchasing the truck. The real problem comes in when you buy one that the current owner bought already modified, at that point, you had better be looking hard, and wearing your rabbits foot.......perhaps a couple of them.

 

OP, curious if that's a 4x4, single cab, quad cab, etc...

And how clean.

(trying judge values).

I just bought a clean 02 quad cab 4x4, and paid a pretty hefty price, trying determine if i did ok or not...

 

Ok, sorry, I should have specified that what I was more or less referring to was buying a truck that has been heavily modded from your "typical" flat billed punk kid who thinks rolling coal is a cool thing. Honestly most the people on these forums I have dealt with have been very knowledgable and honest. Most the adds on Craigs list I see brag about how much black smoke it puts out, how loud it is, and then go on to describe a list of mods that in some cases don't even make sense or are not really a good thing. "gutted AFC", ".120 lines to make a cool loping sound" "12 inch stack"....etc. I never meant to say that buying a modded truck is bad, but some of these kids selling these trucks have really messed up a good truck and some work would be needed to fix the truck if it was purchased.

 

I know exactly what you mean. when I sell my truck it will be to a person that has knowledge and is not the dumb punk kid that is concerned only for smoke etc. because that is just going to break the truck put a bad mark on me the seller and cummins. Cause we all know when someone like the punk kid breaks things they will point blame to everything and everyone else besides self.

 

These are all good points, and living here in California does not go well with rollin' coal.... Unfortunately, we have to smog our trucks now and that is one major thing they look for because on my truck which is an '02 has no smog equipment.... So they look for aftermarket parts, codes and smoke....