Price-check (Reality Check?) ‘83 D150 pickup

AngryCorvair said:

Yeah but is it 4wd?

It's got the NP-203 transfer case so it's AWD.

Edit:

I had the  same truck once in a long box; 225 slant six stick, bench seat.  It did EVERYTHING I ever asked it to.  Put two sand tubes over the axle in the winter with good snows and you're all set.

Cannot kill the engine!  Buy it.

If it's not rusty, it's a carb rebuild and a valve grind away from being brand new.

914Driver said:

I had the  same truck once in a long box; 225 slant six stick, bench seat.  It did EVERYTHING I ever asked it to.  Put two sand tubes over the axle in the winter with good snows and you're all set.

Cannot kill the engine!  Buy it.

Was it 4WD though?

poopshovel again said:

914Driver said:

I had the  same truck once in a long box; 225 slant six stick, bench seat.  It did EVERYTHING I ever asked it to.  Put two sand tubes over the axle in the winter with good snows and you're all set.

Cannot kill the engine!  Buy it.

Was it 4WD though?

Dodge- Dem Old Dudes Go Everywhere!

2wd or 4wd... 

Good trucks, and as dependable as the others from the Big Three. Dead simple to wrench on. They make more for those trucks than they do for the 1972-80 trucks, so that's a good thing. I wouldn't stray far past $3k, especially in your area. That thing would be a steal at that price up here!

Obviously, I love Dodge trucks.    I have 7 (?) including a '78 D100 shortbed with a 318 that was a $1400 Fly n Drive from Hesperia, California.  

From the photo, I see $2200-2500, tops, unless it is in nicer shape than it looks or has something really special about the drivetrain.    Decent $2K shortbeds are still out there, as my saved list on FB Marketplace will attest.   If you don't want to pay  the shortbed tax, really nice longbeds can be still found under $2K.  (But not with a Cummins; that ship has sailed)

 

Six cylinder with manual trans is the truck nobody wants. Unless you are the guy who does, then the world is your oyster and sellers should bend to your whim.

I kind of dig Dodges but just don't know enough about them. My comfort level is Fords. Can't wait to kick my leaky Lightning out of the garage and replace it with a 300/stick F150 eventually.

I concur, $4k is a bit steep unless it's have a V8 upgrade.

Six cylinder with manual trans is the truck nobody wants.

Or secretly the cream of the crop among $2k old-ass pickup trucks.  

Recon1342 said:

Buy it. Old Mopars are cool! If you absolutely must upgrade the running gear, throw a 5.7 Hemi in it. 

At that point is it just money to go ahead and do the 6.4?

This just popped up too. Doesn't ooze "cool," bit it's local & checks boxes.

And This

Out of those two, whichever is in the best condition. The 4x4 and V8 kind of cancel each other out.

The 4x4s had manual hubs. I don't see that on this Dodge.

I suspect that the Roadkill MMT has driven the value up on those a bit. 

In reply to Woody :

It's from the Cummins truck values skyrocketing. (Including Cummins swapped D100s, D150s, Ramchargers, and even Little Red Express Trucks)   The '72-93 D/W series has had a strong following for the last decade and has grown exponentially recently.  Ramchargers now can sometimes pull over $20k at auction.


One of the other things driving the prices is the fact that cheap "cool" RWD MoPars are drying up.  Even the A and F bodies are getting expensive, and when you are done, you still have a Duster or Volare.

Brett_Murphy said:

Out of those two, whichever is in the best condition. The 4x4 and V8 kind of cancel each other out.

Not in the case of a fuel injected Ford 300 with a manual trans.  If the body is rust free, that Ford is really tempting.   Get him down to $25-2800, lose the topper, mount some gnarlier ties and a lift, and that would be a great Vintage Daily Driver.

The Chevy isn't too hateful, either.



It's a little weathered, but that nothing a 2/4 drop wouldn't cure.

After rereading your original post, the Ford looks like the best of the bunch.  

It ticks off more of the boxes for you, and that 300 is a glorious engine, offering both decent fuel mileage and very good torque in the same reliable package.

In reply to Cooter :

I still maintain that the 300 is the best engine Ford ever made.

My two cents....you want to buy a truck simply because it has a truck bed, so buy the big bed. They are cheaper and everybody that buys a short bed wishes they had a long bed, even if they don't admit it. Don't buy a 6 cyl and swap it. 6 cyl trucks have tons of character and there are too many v8 trucks available to bother with that. Buy a 2wd. I live in the frozen tundra of ohio and I engage the front axle maybe twice a year, but I have the front driveline in the way every time I work on the truck. Plus old 4wd's ride like farm wagons. If you find yourself getting stuck put a lunch box locker and some knobbies on the back. 

On a final note, I am super jealous of how clean and rust free the trucks are down there. I want an old truck, but here anything over 15 years old is rusted out garbage.

In reply to gearheadmb :

Everything this guy said.  I have only ever bought 8' long bed equipped trucks.  My answer when people ask me why I get trucks with an 8 foot bed is, "Because they don't make one with a 9 foot bed".  

(Yes, I know there were some longer beds made in the way way back, but you get the point.)

I saw a long bed Dodge of this vintage in worse shape near me with a $5995 ask.  That's....wildly too much.  The one you listed has the short box tax, so it's probaby not too much off the mark.

The 6 cylinder Chevies of this vintage are probably the worst of all the 6 cylinder trucks.  In my experience, the inline 6 Chevy was weak, and not terribly reliable.  The Ford 300 or Mopar 225 were better sixes.  But of course, a General Motors V8 is a whole other animal, and by far the cheapest to maintain and hop up.  

I've only bought 4WD trucks for the past 15 years, but I have been told that, in the pickup world, I am a "super user".  One friend informed me that I'm in the 1% of owners who uses a full ton truck up to, and probably over, it's rated capacity.  We have property, and it rains and snows, and I sometimes end up driving to the bottom of the hill in the mud and need to pull something like a tree or a car back up. For most folks, a locking rear, knobbly tires, and some ballast is probably all you ever really need.  

For what it's worth, my current workhorse is a '93 Chevy K3500 crew cab dually, with a 454 big block and a NV4500 5 speed.  I never thought I'd own a dually, but now I kinda love her wide hips.  

I would look at this one.

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

I'm in a similar spot. We've got 2 steep hills, and while pouring slag on said hills helped a lot, the 4WD in both the disco & pathfinder are definitely working after/during a storm. I had a guy deliver a bunch of landscaping stuff in the rain last year and had to pull his big fancy new Ford 2WD out of the mud with the Disco.

The dodge looks nice but $4K is way too high for a 2wd. At least around me nobody wants 2wd trucks.