Whelp. I did a thing today. My friend was looking to sell his Ram 1500 rebel quad cab while the getting is good, much like I did. The same dealer gave him a fair price for it. We walked the lot for 3 hours looking though the lower end of the lot. He just wanted something to commute 5 miles. Though the ability to fit drywall paneling and light towing was a plus.
We looked at a slew of Impalas, Malibu's, and other commuters along with a half decent 2001 Silverado. Problem being that here in flint, people like putting half assed sterio jobs in their cars while simultaneously not bothering to do maintenance/ repairs. Almost every car was super low on oil, one had chunks of something on the dipstick. All in all, not great.
I saw this avalanche marked for $3900 and jokingly told him we should look at it. . I hadn't even considered it when I bought my Tahoe as it has 300,000 miles. 95% of those up here are rust piles. Though, upon closer inspection, it was surprisingly clean. Like, the rockers are still solid and for the most part, it is just surface rust. There's a little bubbling paint on the hood edge and rear wheel wells, but nothing serious. This is moreso surprising when it's a one owner car and always registered in Michigan.
Test driving revealed that it shifted and ran perfectly. Just a few rattles that I consider normal for the age. The transfer case, however, shifts into 4-lo/ hi, but if you come to a stop, it will drop out and go to neutral on both shafts. Switching to 2 hi works and it drives great. Looking around, this seems that it could be anything from the encoder motor being iffy, the mechanism being sticky, or just needing a while rebuild.
The midgate is leaking and has a lot of crud that needs to be cleaned off the gasket. And the driver's seat could be replaced. Its a ducktape special.
The engine, surprisingly, has brand new headers installed. Like, they're still shiny and have new hardened bolt hardware. Which leads me to believe that it has a newer motor installed. New tires, newer suspension. Brakes work great. No codes other than the typical airbag light up here. Likely a corroded sensor.
Long story short, they accepted a reduced offer of $2500 for it paid with equity from the ram. If the transfer case can be figured out, I see no reason why he couldn't double his money on it in this area for the body condition alone. I was very tempted to buy it if he turned it down. Haha. He more or less got it cheaper than a blown out 230k mile Impala. As long as it functions as a 2wd truck at this point, I think he is pleased
Its a 2004 avalanche Z71 4wd(ish) with heated leather with a g80 other than that, pretty standard as far as I can tell, but i don't know what else you'd want really.
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