4×4 trucks

Custom trucks for sale are often presented to potential buyers with a fine sheen. Learn to look past that sheen with these clever tips for inspecting used diesel trucks.

When you analyze customer trucks for sale, make sure you to take a good long look at how hard the previous owner pushed that vehicle. This can be subtle sometimes, especially if you are looking at a truck at an auto dealer. Dealerships often sanitize the truck with things like a nice cleaning on the interior and pressure cleaning of the engine.

So here are some things you can look for regardless of how well the dealer tries to hide them. Take a close look at the used diesel truck’s brake pedal. How worn is it? In particular, how worn is it on the right edge of the pedal? Wear there indicates frequent stop and go driving, which is just another way to excessively aging a truck and burns it out.

Diesel Truck Tires

Another thing to look at is the tires. They may seem superficial, but in fact, tires tell a lot about the truck’s past and recent history. For example, if you are looking at a used truck and it has brand new tires, you should be very suspicious. Tires for a diesel truck are expensive and not at all a wise investment for a seller. If they put new tires on the truck they are probably hiding something.
What is the size of the tires? People often like to put extra big tires on their trucks. What they often do not realize is that this puts extra stress on the transmission. Transmissions are tuned for a certain size and weight of tire at the factory. Go beyond that size and weight and you need to change the transmission, which is a costly change so most owners don’t do it.

So if the truck you’re looking at has over-sized tires but the owner doesn’t have any record indicating transmission work, then you are probably looking at a truck in need of expensive transmission work. You are also looking at a truck that has been owned and maintained by someone who either does not know what he is doing or is too irresponsible to do it right.

Examine the Exhaust System

One last and an almost full-proof way to check how hard the truck has been driven is to get underneath and check the bolts on the exhaust system out from the engine. If any bolts are broken or missing, then this truck engine has been driven hard and hot. A sign of wear here can mean heavily stressed valves and piston rings, even if you can’t see or hear signs of it yet. Stay clear of such a truck. There are better ones out there.

I hope this helps you better understand how to look past the superficial gloss of how that dealer tries to present his custom trucks for sale. There are a lot of trucks for sale out there, so you don’t need to invest your time or money on one that has been driven and burned this hard.