When purchasing, how old is too old and how many miles is too many miles?

Might be in the market pretty soon. I love first gens but the 200-300k miles on most of them really scares me away.

Even for a cheaper one I’m still looking at 125-150k miles.

How high mileage given the age have you guys gone in the past?

I also enjoy working on these trucks and have no problem doing basic maintenance to get them running better when I buy.

 

Try to stay under 400k if you plan to keep it a while

 

I’ve seen so many people around TW with 1st gen’s that are well over 300K miles, I don’t think buying one with up to 200/250K would be a bad idea at all. Even getting one with 300K would probably be okay if it’s been well cared for and you are handy with maintenance.

 

Really depends on the overall condition and maintenance history.

I'd much rather buy a closely maintained 300k mile version than a 100k model that "hasn't needed a thing(foreshadowing, it's about to)" it's whole life in the salt belt as a winter beater

 

There really is no specific answer to your question. Mileage and age are the main killer of vehicles. The higher the mileage and the older the vehicle the more chance you’re going to have problems no matter how well maintained. Good maintenance makes your chances of reliability better but no matter what things just wear out and break (from age and mileage). So basically find one with the lowest mileage your budget affords and be sure you can see maintenance records. If no proof of maintenance, walk away.
And remember because someone else got 300,000 or 500,000 miles out of a certain vehicle doesn’t mean shit as far as the truck you get. You ain’t hearing from the people who had tons of problems with their trucks before 200,000 miles and sold them because of that. Get lowest mileage you can afford with maintenance records.

 

Maintenance records are so hard to come buy. I just helped my girl get a car and every car we looked at had like an oil change at 10k if we were lucky. I wish more people kept detailed maintenance records like I’m sure everyone on this site does lol

 

I have an Excel workbook with 10 years of data including every drop of gas.

You mean like that?

#1 thing is checking the frame health properly. Not just sticking your head under or looking at pictures.

After that, it's just like any other used vehicle.

The more miles the more it's worth paying a quality independent mechanic for a pre purchase inspection. And include a compression and leak down test.

Use the list he finds of pending issues like tires, shocks, brakes, etc to negotiate a lower price

 

Yeah, I use Google sheets to track all my maintenance. I also keep all receipts. Thinking of making them digital. This for my own peace of mind and for private re-sale. I think most dealerships don’t care about all my receipts other than what CarFax spits out.

Buying used can be so hit and miss. Luck of the draw sometimes. Even when doing your due diligence. Can also be very exhausting. Here in my part of Canada used prices are still high.

Especially any decent used, older Tacoma. I actually wanted a good used 2nd gen when I finally purchased my 3rd gen new in 2020. Prices for the few used 2nd gens were damn near the price of a new 3rd gen. This is still the situation here. Applies to the 4th gen too now.

 

I stopped asking for paperwork and let the vehicle speak for itself. Carfax is a great starter for understanding the 'global/birds-eye' view, but won't give details. Trust it like a 3rd cousins promises. At this age, logged accident history isn't a deal breaker, the importance is the quality of the repair. Can you see where it was repaired, or did they do well enough to bring it back to prior condition? Non-logged damage is far more dangerous to me.

Take a bright flashlight. This is dual-purpose. First. It gives a consistent light source to compare things under, but it also draws your eye to the small area the flashlight illuminates, which makes it far easier to see details.

200k mi, it's guaranteed to have used some parts. Look in the engine bay. Is it clean? Clean-ish? If clean-ish, does it have the kind of stuck on dirt that looks like 200k miles since it was last really cared for except for the frantic cleaning everything gets right before it was offered for sale? Are there any newer/shinier parts? How's the fluid colors?

Look inside and underneath, same story-- no one can go 200k miles without changing things from that kind of mileage. What's new? Did they get the cheapest new tires they could or are they 20 years old and checked?


I just helped my parents go through this with a new vehicle for them. The first one had repo's in it's history, but had food packages still in the trunk, and had 300k miles of dirt under the hood of a 120k mile vehicle. The final killer was it had an addon dirt cheap aftermarket alarm on a vehicle that came stock with a key fob(why'd they change it, and who did the work if they got the cheapest offering available?), and baked on brake dust on the wheels, meaning they were cleaned only after it was repoed. The second vehicle had different paint tints on the same parts(important, plastics take paint differently than metals, so many plastics will appear discolored in direct light, but should be a consistent tone across the panel) and a masking line around one of the windows like it had been broken out and damaged the area around the window.

 

I don't necessarily look at that as a bad thing... If an owner does his own maintenance, that's not going to show up on Carfax or dealer service records (and given the level of incompetence sometimes demonstrated by oil-change techs where high turnover rates are common (both at dealerships and quick-lube places), it might actually be a good thing).

You could ask the owner for receipts for purchased oil, oil filters, and other supplies, but I'd be willing to bet more owners don't bother to keep them than do (we here on TW are not the same as the population at large).

Like said above, the overall condition of the truck should be your primary guiding factor (how well the engine runs/sounds, any noise/slippage from the transmission and/or axle, oil leaks, etc.). Asking the owner as many questions as you can can also be telling too (any inconsistencies in their responses would be a red flag).

Agreed, have an independent mechanic check it over if you're not mechanically-inclined enough to know what sounds are bad, don't have tools to do compression checks, etc. If the owner balks, that's an immediate red flag as well.

 

You didn’t mention a budget. Buy the newest, lowest mileage truck you can afford doing your own do diligence on checking it out very well before purchasing.

 

i used to support this mentality. i don't really anymore. some of it is facebook culture. i've been trying to buy 'an'(plural) '78-79 f-series 4x4 trucks on marketplace. seems like a fun project for me. my maximum current spending is $5k. because i figure i'll need to put at least another $5k into anything i get. anything in the market under $10k, everyone--buyer and seller, balks at the idea of spending extra time having to go to a mechanic for a report when there's another dozen people asking if the vehicle is still available.

simply put, ain't no one got time for that anymore.

look at it this way-- i've decided to sell a vehicle. it's 20 years old, and not a special, rare, or limited prestigious brand.

i could sell to 'buyer A' who's asking for a detailed mechanics inspection report that means i need to bring it there and back, consuming my limited time, potentially extending my time trying to sell a vehicle from 1 weekend to at least 2-3 weekends on a single buyer. for the same potential asking price, despite me putting 3 times the effort in dealing with the person, and assuming they won't haggle the price even further on whatever that report comes back with on a 20 year old vehicle--because NO ONE sells a perfectly working vehicle.

or, i could sell it to the 'buyer b/c/d/e/f' that agrees to show up the following day with the cash in hand, 'haggle' me down $1k, and the worst case, they need to borrow my pen to sign the title over.

vehicles over $10k start to get into the specialty market. anything new enough to be that high in price should have been gone through and will be apparent in their condition. anything old and still commanding a price in excess of $10k is only deserving for the most well-sorted examples that are very apparent in their condition.

 

I can agree with this on something that is rare/unusual and/or in high demand, or if it is obvious what you are getting.
OP however is asking for a truck that is no more than 30 years old, and still relatively plentiful. True, it does take up additional time, but such a vehicle also isn't as likely to have a whole line of buyers stacked up either.

Another thing OP can do is simply bring a vehicle-savvy friend along to assist in looking it over (I just did this for a buddy myself, looking at a 1st-gen Ford Explorer).

 

If it tan, has Michelin tires and the owner is over 60 years old, the rest of it should be solid.

 

But why!?!

He must already have a bronco II in the garage

 

In the beginning we actually looked for a BII (he was drooling all over mine with it's Wrangler TJ-like dimensions & off road ability all while having literally 2× the interior space of his CJ-7), but couldn't find one in reasonably-good shape (I dunno what it is with owners of American vehicles... So many who don't take care of them / don't do the required upkeep on them... It's little wonder so many people complain about their reliability lol), so he went for a 2-Dr Explorer Sport instead.

 

High miles don't scare me if I'm the one who put those miles on it. My 2007 is at 256,000 miles and I'm planning on keeping it for at least another 100,000. It's a 3rd vehicle at this point but is driven almost daily. I have a newer truck with a lot fewer miles that gets taken on longer trips but it's still getting about 10,000 miles/year.

It should bring about $8000-$9000 locally. Even knowing my trucks history, I wouldn't pay that much for it if I were buying. Maybe 1/2 that.

 

Yeah with my old first gen I have documents in the truck the detail the date and miles of every service done to the car. It blows my mind how rare this actually is to come buy and honestly gives me respect for the engineers who design these things to work knowing people don't take care of them. Anyway thanks all for the input I really appreciate it

 

I'm not buying any high mileage vehicle, no matter how well it's been maintained. Vehicles wear out, and Toyotas are not completely impervious to this. If the price is just too good to pass up then that's another story. I guess it really comes down to your financial situation. In my mind it's easier, less risky to plan your budget around a new car payment than it is to deal with a 6 to 9k bill for a new transmission out of the blue.

 

My 2013 had Michelins, and the prior owner actually made an appointment just to get the cabin air filter replaced. Since all the work was done in Santa Fe NM, I figure he worked at Los Alamos (compulsive anal scientist capital of the world). I also owned a 2005 Honda S2000. It had Michelins. If a young guy had owned it, it would have had Falkens and a rear wing.