Am I overpaying?

I'm about to buy a 1st gen tundra.
2006 Toyota Tundra SR5 4.7L V8 Automatic Single owner 4 Wheel Drive
150,000 miles on the clock.
Truck is in overall good condition. Engine is great, body could be better. Multiple scratches etc. Pictures attached. Bed has dents on both sides.
$5500. Tires and exhaust system are new.
Frame is in good condition.
Am I going to regret this?

 

@shifty` will have useful feedback

But this will be a good thread to check for things to consider
https://www.tundras.com/threads/so-you-wanna-buy-just-bought-a-1st-gen-tundra-eh.115928/


I like the blue

 

Agree with @RobertD and @shifty` should be along shortly.
FGT I would worry abut the frame, others are most cosmetic, if you can deal with it, should be fine.
If you are more OCD that things need to be perfect then skip this one.
Would you be able to get under the truck and check? NY trucks are very harsh to the salt on the roads for winter..... Have the owner or yourself take some pictures of the underside and frame for further inspection.

 

I've got the guy sending me pictures of the frame. I'll upload them when they arrive.
I went to see the truck last sunday, but it was raining and I couldnt get under the truck.

 

I am from NJ so I know how bad those salt can be and NY state can be very up north so I have no idea where this truck is and has been.
If they had a frame recall done you should be able to pull VIN in the Toyota app and find out if it was done, but even that you should make sure the frame is not a rust bucket waiting to explode.....

 

Frame recall was not done. He missed it by a few months. Long island. No frame spray done either. He claims frame is solid, but I guess pictures will give a better idea.

 

Sorry, but I swear it is not. There is no way it will be solid if it was not sprayed/not replaced, and you know how bad those salts are up there. Long Island also gets the sea wind, double trouble.
I would highly suggest poking at the frame in person to make sure it is as stated, which I highly doubt. Unless it is a summer car but doesn't look like it.
That being said, @shifty` do you know if they can still get it done after missing the recall time frame?

 

I paid slightly more for mine several years ago with similar outward appearance and more miles, although mine was a SoCal truck (zero rust) and came with a bed cap. For a 4WD DC (assuming the frame and underside is solid) that sounds like a good deal to me, although I understand that price varies significantly by region.

I also thought that the frame recall did not apply to any DC models?

 

Any pictures of the engine?

 

Even pictures aren't enough. You need to crawl under there with a flashlight and screwdriver so you can poke around on the frame. I'd even consider dropping the spare tire for extra visibility.

 

This trucks an hour away from me. I think i'll have to back out. Its just not worth the distance and the risk.

 

LMAO only an hour?

take a magnet or screw driver. Drive the hour. Poke around. Check the LBJ's. Take a 10mm socket and ratchet and you can pull off the passenger side timing cover and check the belt yourself.

 

I drove 45 minutes to buy my truck and paid 6k. Similar overall condition. Mine was a New Hampshire/Maryland truck and has some surface rust that was coated and rusty holes in the bed. I had a bigger shitshow on my hands with a drive shaft issue among other things and am still glad I bought it.

I will say, it takes a certain person and mentality to buy and own a 20yo truck. You need to be relatively handy and comfortable with DIY jobs. Stuff WILL break and you will need to tinker with it. It’s not gonna be a turnkey, new car experience by any stretch.

 

Safety campaigns never end. Several people on here and on the Facebook groups have had their frame done in the last few months/couple years. I saw one as recent as last week on Facebook.

That said, I can already tell you, based on the amount of rust I'm seeing in the engine bay, you'd be a fool to buy that truck. If that's what painted steel looks like, and what treated steel looks like, that frame is gonna be fucked in all the wrong places.

$5,500 is too much, given the fact you'll need to fight every damn fastener you ever need to remove, the frame will be Swiss cheese OR it's going to be lipstick-on-pig'd up so hard to cover up how bad it is, and I can already tell you, someone who beats the shit out of the exterior of their truck as badly as that is, it's a surefire sign of neglect, and if they neglected the exterior that bad, rest assured you'll find a shitpile of other things neglected. Timing belt. LBJs. Radiator. All the hotspots in that thread linked above.

Walk away, dude. There's no amount of under-body visual that'll help. If you want to go look out of curiosity, whatever. You'll want to check the framerails under the brake master cylinder, since the frame tends to snap there. You'll want to look for delamination of the supports inside the framerail under the cab area. You'll want to look heavily at the rear axle housing for rust and signs of perforation, leaks. Also, the cab mounts, the leaf spring mounts, trailer hitch, and most importantly, the X-shaped crossmember above the spare tire, both the crossmember itself and where it connects to the framerails.

But if it were me, I'd walk away. Look for a southern truck.

 

This guy never changed his LBJ, water pump, or timing belt. I think I am walking away. There will be another one. I already have enough troubles with my e46 lol.

 

If you were to pay a shop to do that work the day after you bought it you’d be pushing $2k immediately. So that makes it a $7500 truck. Probably the right call

one of the only reasons I justified buying mine was I have another 40k to go on my timing belt.

you’re gonna have a hard time finding a 1GT worth buying in the northeast. You need to be willing to travel south for the right truck. And I am a good example that even trucks for sale in the south, could have lived a long time up north

 

You're in for $250-300 just for the LBJ if you do it yourself, 2x-3x if a shop does it.
You're in it for $300-500 for the timing belt and water pump if you do it yourself, depending how deep into it you get, 4x-5x that if a shop does it.

That alone is $550-800 in work if you do yourself, with about 10hrs labor.
OR if you have a shop do it you're out $2,200-2,500 easy on the light end.

Taking it on would be a fool's errand unless you're really passionate about it for some reason, or have money to throw away, which if you did, you'd fly down here and buy something nicer for a couple grand more.

Leave it for some other sucker who hasn't seen the community megathread.

 

If you want a gem, you'll have to travel. You won't find one in your area unless it just showed up there from a non-rusty area. Myself, even living in a non-rusty area, I was still prepared to travel. If you just want a truck, you can search locally. If you specifically want a 1st gen Tundra, be prepared to travel.

I flew to buy mine. Issue I ran into was possibly your line of thinking. If it's more than a few hours away, and I'm going to drive to look at it, I either need to bring someone along in case I want it, so I can drive it home, or I need to decide I want it, drive back home and figure out how drive all the way back to pick it up.

Once I came to terms with being 98% sure I was going to buy something without ever seeing it in person, it opened up the whole country. Then my search narrowed to places near an airport. Once I decided I was willing to fly, my search only narrowed to rust-free areas around airports. I decided not to go see a truck only a couple hour drive away, and instead flew almost 400 miles for another because it was less of hassle to fly to the city the truck was in than drive somewhere closer but that would have been a hassle for shuffling vehicles...

But this means you need to research. You need to know what to look for with these trucks. And you need to find a seller who's honest and knowledgeable. That's the only way flying/traveling to buy a truck is feasible.

 

Does the guy have twin trucks (last picture in the background)? Make sure he's sending pics of the same truck if so... no idea how you could verify that though.

 

Damn, good eye MrB! That's either a crazy coincidence or there's more to this story...

I'll bet he bought the truck he's selling for the bed and body panels, for his other truck, that doesn't have a rusty frame. Swapped his shitty panels over to this truck he's selling, so now it has shitty body and a rusty frame.

 

WOW

I love this forum lol

 

This ^^^

The exhaust should not have needed replacing unless there was a lot of rust. That makes you wonder about the frame

 

Funny story.
Thats his neighbors truck. They bought them at the same time from the same dealership. That truck just cracked its frame, so he purchased it from his neighbor for 750. Stole the tailgate off of it and put it on this truck. I wondered why he didn't go all the way and take the bed off.
Maybe he did, and realized his truck was rusted through on the frame. Now he's selling both. Theres no reason to pay $750 for a donor truck and just take the tailgate. This is all making sense now.

 

Good advice. I would be doing all the engine work myself, but I don't want to mess with a rusty truck.

 

Fishy is fishy, red flags are red flags, I'll admit, but let's not search too hard to find signal where there's just noise. The thread title changed too often for me to remember what it was, but there was another person who joined, asking questions about a particular truck. Initially he got kind of screwed out of the sale and all of us here started attributing all kinds of bad intentions, nefarious plots, scheming to the seller. Just short of insulting his ancestors.

In the end the new member ended up buying that truck, and forming (at least at the time, I don't know where it all stands now) a good relationship with the seller and everything was above-board and honest.

No way I'd commit to driving to see this truck without a bunch of photos of the frame. No way I'd commit to buying it without a very close in-person inspection. But while the story people are creating here "all adds up", that doesn't make true.

Not trying to convince you to buy it or go see it if you've already decided to pass. Just trying to provide a little counter-balance.

 

It would be a good deal out West where 150K miles is very low mileage, but New York miles means stop and start and bumper to bumper. If he took such poor care of the exterior, he probably neglected maintenance, too.

 

So, first things first, there are two identical trucks in these pictures, which one are you buying and are you sure you are getting the pictures from THE truck you are buying and not the better looking of the two?
Second, look at the bed liner and the amount of rust under it. I would bet a weeks paycheck if you pull that bedliner out you have basketball sized holes in the bed floor, likely in multiple places.
One of the missed areas that nobody thinks about is the front seat legs, notice in the second picture here, the mount that mounts the front seat to the cab floor, notice its rust and the carpet around it is rust. This is from walking thru salted sidewalks, and hopping up in the truck and splashing salt all over the seat mount. The under side of the truck is not going to be in good condition, unless you got a unicorn on your hands.
Also, the body was beat up pretty badly, man how does someone beat the bed up like that, typically that means it was a work truck, loaded with junk all the time and driven by people who didnt pay the note and didnt care, furthermore reason that the necessary things were likely not done to it like maintenance.
Also.... the exhaust system is likely new because it was rotted out, the exhaust is a direct reflection of what the frame looks like as well, when the exhaust is rotted out, the frame is saying "peek-a-boo" right behind it. You are likely going to find a lot of rust in all the bad areas.
AND lastly..... Thats a whole lotta oil stains on the driveway... Whats all those oil stains from? Something has been pissing its fluids and i hope its not the Tundra...

Good luck bud.

 

[x] two identical trucks
[x] neighbors truck
[x] live next to each other
[x] drive the same roads
[x] frame not replaced or sprayed
[x] neighbors truck frame rusted and broke in half
[ ] his truck frame is solid and clean <<-- much doubt

 

Yessir, this punch list pretty much sums it up. It’s your call but don’t say we didn’t try to talk the cat off the ledge.