My daughter has decided she wants a vintage truck. We have found a 1981 C-10 with 37,500 miles on the 305 engine. A/C and automatic. We've never bought from a private individual so looking for advice to make sure we don't get scammed or overpay. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Not sure. Planning on taking a local mechanic with me to take a look. It does look fully refurbished on the exterior.

what are they asking?

Aside from all of the unsolicited advice it sounds like you're on the right track. Take the mechanic with you to look it over. Research similar trucks all over the country because there probably won't be too many local ones. Ultimately you'll be able to narrow a price but in the end it will come down to if you/daughter love the truck.

Thanks everyone for the advice. Really appreciate it.

EFI conversion.

80's 305s ended up as mosquito foggers right about 75-85k miles. Had an 83' GMC Sierra Classic. Loaded and had the new to the world overdrive transmission. Put a 350 in it, and it was too much for that trashmission and had to rebuild it. The 350 was a new crate GM motor. After the trashmission rebuild, it started leaking oil out of just about everywhere to some degree. It too was garbage. Of course all this happened in early 90 AFTER I left it at a buddy's body shop and he stripped it down to the bare body and repainted it to better than showroom quality and new factory striping. Stripped the bed down to metal kind of detail. Not a scratch or ding anywhere. Beautiful mosquito fogger when it happened. That truck was a black cloud that followed me until the day I got rid of it a couple years later. Damn that truck.

Had an '84 with that engine. Amazing that it could develop so little power given the prodigious fuel consumption. At just over 100,000 miles mine developed an ever increasing transmission fluid leak so I traded it in on a new one. Love that body style though. Good luck.

Just because newer vehicles require more than a Phillips head screwdriver, 1/4"-9/16" sockets, and a ball peen hammer doesn't mean they're harder to work on.

Tumble Weed said:

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I was stopped 4 times yesterday on my lunch break with people wanting to ask me about my truck. I have owned a bunch of trucks over the years, and this one is my favorite.

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My neighbor across the street parks his 67 Chevy stepside in front of my house all the time. A couple weeks ago somebody stopped by asking if I wanted to sell it, or if I knew who owned it.

I told my neighbor and he said that he gets unsolicited offers for his truck all the time. He said he's been offered $10,000 cash for his truck in the parking lot at our grocery store.

Tumble Weed said:

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It is reliable enough that I would drive it across the United States. It get 11 mpg, so it would cost me a pretty penny to do so.

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In 2020, my daughter and I drove my 1999 4x4 Expedition from Lexington, VA to Los Angeles via the U.P. of Northern Michigan. I think it was about 3,000 miles. That Expy with the 5.4L V8 gets 13 mpg no matter what you do to it.

Anyway, the only problems we had were a flat tire before we left Virginia and a tire blowout just as we arrived in Salt Lake City. Luckily we were in SLC when we had the blowout so we were able to get 4 new tires and get back on the road within two hours. And only had to dodge one Black Lives Matter march near the Mormon Temple.

Nothing wrong with old vehicles, you just gotta be ready to do some maintenance - regularly.