mrsmoos

I saw an ad locally for an 95 Tahoe LT. It has 200,000 total miles but had an engine rebuild that now has 35,000 miles on it. The owner says everything works fine. It has nice new wheels and tires from an 07 Tahoe (woo-hoo)and sound system (gotta have that)but from the pics looks pretty nice. Had a custom paint job. We are looking for a vehicle for our soon to be "learner's permit" son. This vehicle looks safe and "cool" but are those 200,000 miles going to turn into a money pit? They guy is asking $7500 for it but is "negotiable"--how negotiable should he be? Should we and if so for what price?

uraijit

KBB.com is your friend. I did a quick run down of some standard options, and in "good" condition, it puts it at about $5000. I don't know what all options is has exactly, so you should just go there and punch it all in yourself. If will give you a good idea of where to go with barganing. Also NADA is a good resource, and you'll often find KBB and NADA have some fairly large gaps in their pricing. I would put the value somewhere in between. KBB usually lowballs it. NADA tends to be a little higher.

07avydriver

$7500 is a bit too much. You may want to do your research on it. KBB.com like uraijit said. Also edmunds.com.

mrsmoos

Thanks for the advice guys. I am wondering though, how much "life" does this year Tahoe have at 200,000 miles --even with the rebuilt engine. Can you make them run forever without going broke?

schorner

My biggest worry would be the tranny if the engine has been taken care of.

McGuireV10

Another vote for edmunds, I find their prices tend to be closer to reality than NADA or KBB...

In addition to the tranny, I'd think about the rear-end. If it's four wheel drive, the transfer case is a potentially big expense, too (I replaced one in my Ram pickup two years ago and it would have cost about $1650 if it wasn't for the extended warranty coverage).

I'd also want to know what exactly prompted the rebuild, and what exactly was done. The term "rebuild" isn't very specific and can mean very different things to different people. Are the accessories (such as the alternator, water pump, oil pump) 200,000-mile components, or were they refreshed with the rebuild? I would guess they're approaching the end of their service life by 200K. You get the picture.

Down here in Florida a friend of mine just picked up a 2000 Suburban with only 75,000 miles for $10K... personally I'd keep looking unless he wanted to come way down off that price.

black96

yeah i would keep lookin i picked up a 96, in great great condition, clean and all with only 63k miles on it for 10k