4 x 4 and V8 value

[mr48chev]

Originally Posted by joedoh

my friend had a truck that looked like the ones in miracles post and was just scary to get under and look how it was done. he drove it for years but I think some of the body attachment was done with step ladder pieces and expanded steel. the steering shaft was several steering shafts butt welded.

That unfortunately can be rather common with 4x4 body swaps. For a lot of those guys rude and crude can tend to be the order of the day at least around here. Basically some guy has a later model 4x4 that he rolled and messed up the cab and box on and he finds an older truck for a low price and swaps the cab and bed over to the 4x4 frame and uses some redneck engineering to make it work with what ever scrap he has on hand.

It's like looking at any other old truck you have to leave the rose colored glasses at home and look at it objectively. Condition of the body, condition of the chassis, OVERALL build quality. that means the fit and finish on everything on it and what they used to do it.
Then you get into the things like what chassis they used and what engine and transfer and axles it has.
after that the wheels, tires, interior and other peripheral items.

Years ago around here when body lifts got real popular some of the local goat ropers decided that they didn't need or want to spend the bucks for the lift kits designed for the truck and would go down to the plumbing section of the local hardware and get pipe nipples the length they wanted the lift to be and a batch of bolts the right length out of the bolt bins. pretty shaky when the bolts loosened up and the body started moving around. That is the kind of workmanship you want to look out for.