I can't believe I bought a 13 yo truck!

omg! I can't believe I bought a 13 year old truck!!!


1996 Tacoma LX xcab, 4x4, 3.4l V6. Dark green.

We have been Taco shopping for the past couple of months so I have been lurking on TW. Finally found one so now it's time to join the fun.

We wanted a 1st Gen Tacoma xcab to replace a 1994 Toyota 4x4 reg cab (It's for sale now!). We kept gravitating toward 96-99 models.

This area had been experiencing an economic boom due to oil and gas drilling, money flowed like water. It went off a cliff in the past year, but even older Taco's were still priced ridiculously high. We looked at a 1999 Taco with 130k on it they wanted $12k for..... it's been for sale since June '09.

We looked at this 1996 Taco on Oct 31 at a local Chevy dealership. It's not the type of vehicle that they usually sell. They were asking $9300, a bit less than most we'd looked at. It has 132k on it and the tires were replaced just before the last owner traded it in in Sept. We were impressed with it, it's in beautiful condition inside and out. We drove it quite a lot, on the highway and on a bit of 4wd road. We even swung by our mechanic's shop and he took a quick look at it. The carfax said it had 3 past owners. Ouch. The heater didn't work when we drove it.

We finally made a lowball offer because it was so old, had 3 owners, and cars weren't selling here nowadays. They told us they'd fix the heater and get back to us. They called us back the next week and counteroffered, splitting the difference. We'd lost some interest by then and didn't follow up.

I kept seeing this truck in the classifieds, they had lowered the price to $8300.

A couple days ago, after looking at a few other Tacos elsewhere we stopped by to see the 96 again. They remembered us and told us $6700; more than our first offer, but far less then other asking prices we'd seen. We took the truck home overnight to think about it. The sales slip for the new tires was in the truck, with the name of the last owner. We called him up. George was kind enough to answer a few questions about the truck, he owned it for the past 4 years. He said, "oh yeah, it's a great truck!" He told us what the dealer gave him for it so we knew the dealer was cutting their profit to the bone to finally move this truck.

We drove it some more and had another mechanic look it over and didn't find any major problems. Over the two test drives we drove it over 100 miles! It drives very nicely, a lot like my 2001 Subaru Outback, but taller. I'm aware of the frame rot problems. This is a Colorado truck so rust is not usually an issue. We went all over the frame with a hammer and only found a small amount of surface rust at the very tail end of the frame, well behind the leaf spring mounts.

So we bought it.

It's set up almost exactly as we'd like: 5 spd manual, manual door locks and crank windows, but it has a/c and cruise. Bucket seats. We'd like manual hubs, but it has auto locking hubs. A topper was a must, we haul a lot of gear.

Hoping to get another 100k out of it!

We don't know exactly when the timing belt was done last, so that will get done ASAP.

 

Nice looking truck and it has a Snugtop Camper!!!! Sounds like you did your homework... And welcome to TW!

 

looks nice! My truck has almost 134K on it now, but it rides like a sportscar since I replaced most all the bushings in the front end..Congrats on the purchase

 

Welcome to TW from TX. Dude you got a Toyota it will last till the engine falls out.

 

Nice find and not a bad price!

 

Thats a great lookin truck. My 98 Tacoma has around 145K on it right now and it is still running great. I've owned it since it had 100K on it and there has been zero problems.

Welcome to TW

 

welcome to TW.

 

nice find, and welcome to tw!

 

How much for the '94???

 

nice!

 

Great first post. Welcome!