Kittitas, Cle Elum, Ellensburg Off Road Forum

Hello to you all out there, I lurked around for a while and liked the kind of people that are here and thought I could contribute. I dig those 67-72 4x4 GM's but settled on a 71 2x2 & have kicked myself for years. I'm finally cutting myself free and want to move into the next model series; finally a crewcab. And wouldn't you know it Ron is into them & feeding my addiction; so I'm going to jump into one soon. It's a late 80's K3500 crew with a 20kmi on rblt454TBI/rbltTurbo400, dually running 4.10's in Dana60/Dana70HD. If it drives good & has low mi's & minimal rust is $5,000 a little steep? I'm thinking closer to $3,000. Then I could bring the whole family out 4x4'n & leave the '99Mountaineer & '54 3100 at home. BTW, is wanting 10-15mpg too optimistic for the above rig. If anyone interested in the '71 I'm itching to sell.

IMO: It better be REALLY spectacular if they are asking $5000 for it.

I've seen some of them selling for less than $2000 with the Dana 60 fronts still in them. Granted most of them had some rust but Chevy rust is easy to fix. I have a few rust free doors, fenders, hoods, tailgates, etc. laying around here for them.

The price of the mid 80's crew cabs has plummeted over the last 2-3 years. I gave my blue/purple 4x4 crew cab dually away for around $3500 and most everything on it was brand new or rebuilt. I had nearly $4000 in receipts for recent work on it!

They are gas guzzling but way cool and way fun to drive. Not to mention easy to work on.

FWIW: I saw a 2005 crew cab Duramax on Craigslist the other night. Full leather, On Star, the works. It had gotten hit in the side and was an easy fix. If I did the work I bet the parts would run me less than $1500. They wanted $10,000 for it. It had only 69K miles on it.

$5000 for a 20-30 year old truck that gets less than 10 mpg when gas costs $3.00 per gallon?

You will be very lucky to see 10+ MPG out of that truck unless you drive it under 60 MPH and never tow with it.

The 4.10's and TBI will help but I bet even if you baby it I'm betting that you won't see anything like 15 MPG.

<10mpg, I was afraid of that and yes, although I've just started looking, I noticed that 3-5,000 will buy a really nice old truck no matter what make. Easy & cheap to fix is why I'm focusing on 73-91 GM's; parts are scattered everywhere. A Cummins 6BT would be nice but add a few more thousand bucks let alone finding one in a pre '93 4dr 4x4. I think 3-4,000 should find me a nice 1ton 4x4 SRW. I'll keep you in mind as I'mlooking.
Thanks