Dalefan
Full Member
Sadly, I no longer have my 2004 Avalanche that I have owned since new (Nov 2003).
It hadn't run for a little while, so I recently put her in the shop to fix that and figured I would throw some coin at her and get a good mechanical refresh. She had 125,000 miles.
My list was extensive, essentially everything you read about on here that fails. I was planning on spending 7 to 10 thousand, but hey, new trucks cost 50 or more. Dealer called me up the next day with bad news. They put her up on the rack to start looking around and I had terminal frame rust. There was one spot near a body mount that was all the way through. Their guesstimate was if I took it to a body shop I might be looking at 5000 or more.
So I had to make the hard decision that our relationship needed to come to an end. Started looking around for a 4x4 in the 15K range, but all those had 150,000 to 200,000 or more miles. My need for a truck is limited to weekend work and occasional commuting/errands in bad weather, but at the same time I need it to be reliable for a 70 mile one way commute if needed. So I upped my target dollars and found a 2016 Certified pre-Owned Silverado Double Cab 4x4 with only 39,000 miles for 27K.
Here's a quick picture of the "new" truck. Notice the Avalanche bed panels leaning against the garage? Look in the For Sale section for info on those.
It hadn't run for a little while, so I recently put her in the shop to fix that and figured I would throw some coin at her and get a good mechanical refresh. She had 125,000 miles.
My list was extensive, essentially everything you read about on here that fails. I was planning on spending 7 to 10 thousand, but hey, new trucks cost 50 or more. Dealer called me up the next day with bad news. They put her up on the rack to start looking around and I had terminal frame rust. There was one spot near a body mount that was all the way through. Their guesstimate was if I took it to a body shop I might be looking at 5000 or more.
So I had to make the hard decision that our relationship needed to come to an end. Started looking around for a 4x4 in the 15K range, but all those had 150,000 to 200,000 or more miles. My need for a truck is limited to weekend work and occasional commuting/errands in bad weather, but at the same time I need it to be reliable for a 70 mile one way commute if needed. So I upped my target dollars and found a 2016 Certified pre-Owned Silverado Double Cab 4x4 with only 39,000 miles for 27K.
Here's a quick picture of the "new" truck. Notice the Avalanche bed panels leaning against the garage? Look in the For Sale section for info on those.