So its a 2009 Chevy 3500HD Duramax 4x4 Crew Cab Long Bed LTZ… with 268k Overall probably a dumb purchase since I don’t tow anything, but basically I was looking for a 4x4 truck around 10k which a gasser of this body style truck would have around 100k miles. I got this truck for 6.5K but it definitely is a project… Luckily I have my painting setup still with all the tools to paint.
Overall when I drove it, it felt very peppy, and quick, it only felt heavy when stopping and turning. I really hope it will be reliable, because its not going to be easy to work on, I was originally going to go for a 3rd Gen cummins truck but everyone wants more for them than these, and they usually are in shitty shape, leaking all types of fluid and being rotted. This truck the rockers are still solid, same with cab corners, and it leaks ZERO fluids!
What I plan to do, and I already started doing some of it is, replace the bed since it looks like it got butt fucked real bad, color match the replacement bed, and fix all the rust. Also sand off all the rust from the inside behind the panels to give myself more time before it comes back. I’m going to apply a rust preventative under the bed and on the frame under the bed. We will see how it goes, white should be easy to do!
The replacement bed is not as clean as I was hoping, but I didn’t want to wait forever to find a white one, this one has some surface rust that I will sand off the best I can, and use a rust converter to neutralize it, and then either use a anti-rust coating like Chassis saver or Zero Rust, or just epoxy primer. Not sure yet, but today I started cleaning the bed with purple power.
The bed was $800 delivered to me, $50 for factory tail lights, I need to find a bumper still. The supplies to paint it will probably be around $500. I’m going to fix all the rust on the truck, and probably fix the hood too because I think the hood looks so sweet on these trucks!
IDK How clean of a look you’re going for but what about just using duplicolor match? I figured it’s just a work truck. With their clear my projects have always turned out pretty nice.
I believe it had to be the original bed. It was a work truck, the owner drove it the first 3 years and then a worker drove it for many uears. I really dont know how they got it that bad, the driver side i guess they accidently clipped it with another vehicle.
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Haha. It drives nice and straight. But definitely had a hard life, hopefully it wont give me issues mechanically because these arent veey easy to work on.
It was a work truck, I plan to not beat the crap out of it personally, its an LTZ with leather and heated seats, the interior is actually still nice!
I’m probably going to use nason paint to spray the bed and do the repairs on the cab.
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I almost thought of wrapping it, but then I i ever go to sell it, would probably be hard to do. KBB is valued around 12 I think for fair condition, so if I get it looking nice, might be worth a bit more.
EDIT: Nevermind, unless KBB is super wrong, KBB says fair condition its worth 11-15k. Great is 17l-23k
Yeah, they towed some stuff too, but the truck runs and drives great, its an LTZ so it has black leather heated seats, wood grain. pretty nice inside still, back seats are like brand new. I’m just going to spot repair the cab/doors, probably try to use some type of rust preventative on the back sides of the rockers and cabs, I might even cut into the cab corners since they’re starting to show a little rust coming through. I really just want the truck to look good for like 5 years are so, its not like you can really prevent things from rusting.
It won’t need 5k of work, well as long as it keeps running well and doesn’t have any mechanical issues.
Bed $800, bumper $200, tail lights $50. Needs tires $1k
so 8.5k before paint, paint will be probably $500 in total supplies. so 9k in truck maybe a little more, and its gonna be maybe a 12-15k truck afterwards, probably closer to 15k.
Well I was going to paint this truck myself but now that the weather hit, I got swamped this week, and if it keeps going, I’m better off paying someone else to do the work. But we will see!
