Is it possible to keep truck too long?

[Gearz]

Reading the horror story's of the 2021 threw present I will be keeping my 2011 Tahoe LTZ. The drive train is excellent with the Range Technology connected plus I do as much of my own work as possible. No Rust and kept in a garage but I have replaced the dash panel from cracking, outer door handles, water pump and all the coolant hoses, bottom drivers seat cover, brakes, rotors. tires all grounds to frame and body and so on. Switches that wore out, but no drive train problems and it's never left me stranded. I guess my point is that all vehicles have there own issues but to be stranded so far from home then dealing with dealership personal is very stressful and uncertain. Good luck and I hope it all works out

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[88m53453]

I have a 2015 Silverado with a 5.3. Everything works as it should at … 271,200 miles. Trans replaced at 233,700. Oil changes at 10% oil life normally , sometimes 0%. I preemptively replaced , water pump , coil packs, hoses and shocks. Is like a newer used truck but the stories keep me thinking just to keep this one. All brake discs are original as are the rear pads. Front pads replaced one time but wasn’t really necessary when they were done. I do all my own work up till now, but moved away from the home place where my lift is. If the engine dies, I’ll be at the mercy of a shop and I hate that. I could take time off using vacation days and throw a motor in it preemptively but who want me do that at age 66 and use vacation days , but I’m sure it would save me a couple thousand bucks. I had a friend that got 340k out of a 2011 before it got totaled.

 

[SunnyInCo]

Great timing. I have been looking at different options if my 2008 (original owner) 130,000 miles needs a major repair. I have been thinking about a truck and looking at F 150 and Sierra's. We purchased a raft last year and tow 300+ miles a half dozen times a year. The trailer and gear are light, maybe 1200 lbs when the cooler is fully loaded but we live in Colorado and go up the "gauntlet" to drive to the rivers. Plus I would like a truck, although the 3 rows are nice. I installed Bilstein 5100 in Nov of '22, a new serpentine belt, and a few odds and ends but just the typical 100k maintenance stuff. The only thing I would really prefer is more gears as the 2008 only have the 4 sp and trying to keep momentum up the steep hills on i-70 is not fun.

A friend just told me his 2018 F 150 with 90k miles needs $7,500 of work. The cam phaser and something else needs to be replaced.

I have decided today that I will be keeping the Yukon but still look around at different options so if I do need to purchase another vehicle, I am not starting for scratch. It takes me a long time to make decisions this big.

 

[calsdad]

I have a 2010 Tahoe bought brand new. Runs great with 160k miles but starting to have issues .. nothing major.. like motor mount, oil leaks, transmission cooler leaks, side mirrors, heated seat. I take care of my cars and use them a long time. Last car had 160k miles too. Wondering.. do we cross a point of no return where car is of little resale value and we should just as well keep it till it’s worth nearly nothing? Or should we sell when truck/car still has a decent life remaining so it’s worth a decent selling price? Feel like I’ve crossed the point and little resale value left. Maybe I should consider the postponement of the depreciation hit I take when buying another car. Thoughts?

How much money do you feel like spending?

I have a 2010 Yukon XL 2500 - outside of the Suburban 3500 they manufactured during the next generation, which are extremely rare - there's no exact replacement for this truck for me. Plus the prices on new stuff is just totally out of my ability to afford now. Right now my truck has about 135K miles on it - and the worst thing about it is that here in New England everything gets rusty. So I'm at the point where I've got to start doing rust repair. So far I'm ahead of it - but this year I am going to have to do a bunch of work to avoid it getting any worse.

So yeah - I'm pretty much solidly invested in keeping this truck running for as long as I possibly can. I've got a Tech 2, I've got a good Autel scanner, a number of other special tools that help me work on this truck - etc. In the last couple of months I had to replace power steering cooler and hoses (rusted thru and leaking), replace the throttle body (it died), had to put in a new connector for the throttle body (broke when I was replacing the TB), had to recover some of the wiring loom in the engine compartment because it was all rotted away, fabbed up an adjuster for the parking brake cable so I could (finally) get the parking brake working, had to jack the truck up and inspect both rear parking brakes - trying to figure out why I couldn't get them adjusted, had to replace the rear fuel tank vapor valve, etc.

Yesterday I discovered that the battery was stone cold dead. The truck had only sat for one day - and had started and ran just fine the day before. Charged the battery up - and truck started just fine this morning to get to work. But the radio didn't work, and the parking sensor was offline. Turns out there must have been something loose in the Maestro module for my aftermarket radio. Had to take a look at that when I got home from work.

At this point I'm getting pretty good at fixing stuff and as already noted I've got all the scanners I need to pull any code that comes up. I get a little sick of constantly fixing things constantly - but that seems to happen in waves. I've been fixing things now on a constant basis for like two months now. But prior to that I hadn't had to fix anything for over a year.

One way to look at vehicle ownership is to consider the cost per mile. I don't think you're going to find a lower cost per mile by purchasing a new vehicle , it will take a long time to spread that extremely high initial cost out.

 

[calsdad]

I was in a similar sitch w/ my 08 YXL @ 140 clicks. I loved it but realized if I had to replace a motor or trans I’d really only do that if I had a non AFM, e85 Esky.

So I shopped for 6-9 mo and found the unicorn 09 Esky in TX w/ 140k. Sold the 08. After 4 years of ownership just replaced the trans, motor mounts, front diff bushes, pan gasket & oil pump O ring + a few more. $5.8k later it didn’t bug me a bit. It was what I really wanted.

With the swap options on your Tahoe, like a direct drop in of a 6.0L Reg gas 360hp L96 or LY6 w/ an e85 option or, if you don’t already have it, an upgrade to a hi/lo xfer case, you’ve already have one of the best platforms out there with parts and upgrades galore.

I have another vehicle I upgraded the supercharger on at 100k mi to add 80hp on a 150hp motor. At 200k I rebuilt the 1.8L to 1.9, ported, polished the heads & port matched the exh mani to up it to a reliable 250hp. I take care of my stuff too. If it’s what you really want then you’ll be ok keeping it.

Yeah - exactly.

I've lusted over doing a "Duraburb" type conversion on my Yukon XL 2500, but in my state that would be a problem because of the emission regs.

I've toyed with the idea of putting an 8.1L into a GMT900 for more towing power, but there's issues around that. Then - last week - I ran across the PSI 8.8L big blocks , which are available rather cheaply as school bus pullouts - and are using 58X so they can be run with an E38 engine computer. That should make it almost a drop-in swap.

So I could get some stump pulling diesel-like pulling power (along with the total crap gas mileage) - by swapping in one of these 8.8 litres.

It's really got me thinking........................

 

[Jack Treehorn]

I have a 2010 Tahoe bought brand new. Runs great with 160k miles but starting to have issues .. nothing major.. like motor mount, oil leaks, transmission cooler leaks, side mirrors, heated seat. I take care of my cars and use them a long time. Last car had 160k miles too. Wondering.. do we cross a point of no return where car is of little resale value and we should just as well keep it till it’s worth nearly nothing? Or should we sell when truck/car still has a decent life remaining so it’s worth a decent selling price? Feel like I’ve crossed the point and little resale value left. Maybe I should consider the postponement of the depreciation hit I take when buying another car. Thoughts?

Hi Rick, my '03 Yukon Denali turned 170k and it will probably live longer than me. I do all my own wrenching, if you do I'd keep the Tahoe going. GMT900 ('07-'13) parts are ridiculously cheap and plentiful. My wife's '16 Volvo needs a new engine at 83k miles.

 

[89Suburban]

Over my insignificant lifetime, I have always purchased dirt cheap used / new to me diamonds in the rough. I never made it more than 4-5 years TOPS before I got bored and something else caught my eye. Or I had no choice to do so.

This '07 Tahoe is the longest I ever had owned a vehicle. Going on 7 years now. Picked it up with 290K and sitting close to 355K now.

 

[j91z28d1]

Over my insignificant lifetime, I have always purchased dirt cheap used / new to me diamonds in the rough. I never made it more than 4-5 years TOPS before I got bored and something else caught my eye. Or I had no choice to do so.

This '07 Tahoe is the longest I ever had owned a vehicle. Going on 7 years now. Picked it up with 290K and sitting close to 355K now.

that's the good thing about being able to work on stuff and not being worried about being stranded because you understand what needs fixed and what really doesn't to get to work that day. I had a 91 rodoe I got for 300$ and it followed me around thru 4 states like a lost puppy dog over almost 20 years, never left me stranded, never got stolen in downtown Nola. hurt me to get rid of, but covid hit and was about to end up in Hawaii for a while, so lost a place to keep easily. off to the junk yard it went.
when I meet my wife, her and her family were deathly afraid of anything that could possibly break down on them. they thought they would be killed on the side of the road. Just riding around the block in the rodeo gave my wife panic attacks. I grew up broke with old junk cars that left me and my mom walking many times as a kid. probably why I learned to fix stuff, but I always think of them when people ask about this kind of stuff and being that way, I watched them getting taken for crazy amount of money any time they walked in for any service. they bought everything offered without asking. the fear and lack of any understanding or caring to understand drove me nuts. but it's how most people are.

so unless someone says they can and want to repair stuff. I can't honestly say it's a good idea for people to buy things with known problems like these. I can't be like know you like this truck, but to keep it, it's going to need the heads pulled, entire valve train replaced..ecm tuned(which the repair shop won't do for you) if it's 4wd the front axle will need to be dropped to get to o ring and oil pan gasket. if it's a 6L80 it needs the new upgraded converter (you'll have to research yourself which is good cause the shop will put junk in it for you) while the tranny is out do the rear main seal. oh and you should do motor mounts, cause they are all broken even if you don't know it. the only good ones are 600$ for 2 and a days labor to install them.

if I told what I consider a average person that and that it's a good buy knowing that, I'd consider myself a shit person.

so yeah, maybe I'm the wrong person to recommend vehicles without knowing the person haha. but I defual to average buying expecting their car to work like an appliance.

 

[Geotrash]

It seems we ran the OP off!

I grew up broke with old junk cars that left me and my mom walking many times as a kid. probably why I learned to fix stuff, but I always think of them when people ask about this kind of stuff and being that way, I watched them getting taken for crazy amount of money any time they walked in for any service. they bought everything offered without asking. the fear and lack of any understanding or caring to understand drove me nuts. but it's how most people are.

Similar story for me, except that my wife and I both came from similar backgrounds so she's happy riding around in a hooptie, lol. I was the last of 8 kids to working class parents. For most of my childhood my dad bought bargains and cobbled them together to keep them running. Once my older siblings were through college, he finally bought a new pickup truck, and then retired when I was 12, so if I wanted to go to college or buy a car, I had to figure out how to pay for it.

After working in Alaska in my summers during college, I scraped together enough to buy an '82 Toyota Celica in '90 with 100K on it and drove the hell out of it for the next 6 years. My car buying years peaked in 2014 when I bought a new BMW, because I could. After losing my ass on depreciation over the next 4 years and running the numbers for how much that loss would be worth in my retirement, I traded it plus $6K in 2018 for the 2012 Yukon XL Denali I still have, and vowed to drive it until the wheels come off.

But being able to fix my own stuff has always saved me from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous shops. And like you, I have to be careful not to apply my lenses for evaluating potential cars to purchase, to others. What's a great deal for me might be a horrible deal to someone else who will have to pay a shop do all of the work. I see Suburbans advertised all the time now in great cosmetic shape for less than 5 grand because they have an engine or transmission problem that I could fix for less than $1000 in parts and a couple of weekends.

I could probably make a decent living buying up AFM basket cases in the south, repairing them and selling them in DC or Philly as rust-free family haulers that'll run another 100K.

 

[vcode]

that's the good thing about being able to work on stuff and not being worried about being stranded because you understand what needs fixed and what really doesn't to get to work that day. I had a 91 rodoe I got for 300$ and it followed me around thru 4 states like a lost puppy dog over almost 20 years, never left me stranded, never got stolen in downtown Nola. hurt me to get rid of, but covid hit and was about to end up in Hawaii for a while, so lost a place to keep easily. off to the junk yard it went.
when I meet my wife, her and her family were deathly afraid of anything that could possibly break down on them. they thought they would be killed on the side of the road. Just riding around the block in the rodeo gave my wife panic attacks. I grew up broke with old junk cars that left me and my mom walking many times as a kid. probably why I learned to fix stuff, but I always think of them when people ask about this kind of stuff and being that way, I watched them getting taken for crazy amount of money any time they walked in for any service. they bought everything offered without asking. the fear and lack of any understanding or caring to understand drove me nuts. but it's how most people are.

so unless someone says they can and want to repair stuff. I can't honestly say it's a good idea for people to buy things with known problems like these. I can't be like know you like this truck, but to keep it, it's going to need the heads pulled, entire valve train replaced..ecm tuned(which the repair shop won't do for you) if it's 4wd the front axle will need to be dropped to get to o ring and oil pan gasket. if it's a 6L80 it needs the new upgraded converter (you'll have to research yourself which is good cause the shop will put junk in it for you) while the tranny is out do the rear main seal. oh and you should do motor mounts, cause they are all broken even if you don't know it. the only good ones are 600$ for 2 and a days labor to install them.

if I told what I consider a average person that and that it's a good buy knowing that, I'd consider myself a shit person.

so yeah, maybe I'm the wrong person to recommend vehicles without knowing the person haha. but I defual to average buying expecting their car to work like an appliance.

I really don't understand the disdain you have for these. There are hundreds of thousands of happy owners out there, many on this board. 99% of them don't have valvetrain issues at 250K miles as you claim. No way, no how. Thay all have issues. Expeditions have cam phaser problems, Sequoias have turbo issues. My friends BMW X5 blew an engine at 140K. $13K to replace. Go to any auto/truck forum like this and you will find they all have problems. Every.... single....one.