I'm getting closer to the time I can buy. Just found a truck on Truckpaper that really caught my attention. It's almost identical to the truck I drove at my last job (spent 2.5 years in the truck). The truck is well within the price range I'm looking at - $16,490.

One thing that really makes me consider a truck at that price is that the payments would be low enough that I could look more at the more 'local' companies that could give me more hometime than 2-3 days per month.

2003 VOLVO VNL64T770 Heavy Duty Trucks - Conventional Truck w/ Sleeper For Sale At TruckPaper.com

 

There are a number of things you will want to look at before you sign your name for the truck. How many miles on the clutch? Age of the truck versus companies that will put a truck on of that age. Past history of the truck and how many maintenance problems did they have, and a whole lot more.

 

I would worry about the autoshift. Even though it's a cheap truck, get it checked right out. I would even put it on a dyno. If you don't that 13-15k truck could suddenly turn into a 30k truck and you haven't made any money off of it. Considering you want to finance it, I doubt you have much money laying around.

 

As for the autoshift, the style of that one is, in my opinion, the best. It's a 3-peddle setup, so there's no torque-converter or centrifugal clutch system. The clutch is only used for starting/stopping. The transmission, other than having an electric shifter on it, is the exact same as a normal Eaton 10-spd from that year. If you pull off the x-y shifter/computer and replace it with a normal shift mechanism (plus cut the hole in the floor), it becomes a manual transmission.

I definitely want to dyno the truck prior to buying, no matter what. The Truckpaper ad says 992 miles, so unless I call, it's hard to tell how many it actually has.

 

I have a huge list at my truck of things to look at, but the list would be modified to be Volvo specific. I can post it sometime if you want. I'd start with an oil sample and an ECM printout, the dealer shouldn't charge you for a printout. Get the sample from a third party. Both of those will have lots of information, and if everything is good proceed to the stuff that costs to test. I wouldn't have a problem spending $500+ on this truck checking it out, then you find something really bad (cracked block, pitted liners, etc..) and just walk away.

Didn't know that about the autoshift. I know lots of people have problems with the x-y shifter.

Two things to look at on the Volvo are the slave cylinder on the clutch, and the cab bushings at the front.

 

When I was at my last company, driving a 2002 version of the same truck, the mechanic was just finishing a transmission overhaul on it when I was assigned to the truck. While he still had it torn apart, I started picking his brain about the difference between the auto/standard, which he explained/showed to me (which I mentioned above). The newer ones, with a 2-peddle setup, use either a torque converter (most common) or a centrifugal clutch. The torque converter is where you lose your power, while a centrifugal clutch will wear out much faster.

Anyway, the company didn't replace the x-y shifter during the rebuild. I think at the time, the chassis had in the range of 750k on it, and the X-Y shifter, from what we could tell, was the original. That finally went out roughly 200k later down the road. I was lucky and was able to get to our own shop to get it replaced - it was just 'sticking', which a tap of a hammer on the tranny would let it pop loose.

Thanks for the info on what to look at with the Volvo. I can tell when cab bushings look bad, but what do you look at for the slave cylinder?

Also, what kind of price range can I expect to pay out to take the truck to a 3rd party shop to have a really good go-over on it, including the dyno? Same for the oil sample.

 

Just look for the slave cylinder dripping.

Oil samples are around $20, inspection price totally depends.

 

With the miles i bet its 992,000.