Is the 6.5 a bad idea if I don't care about MPGs?

[diesel4me]

A friend of mine bought a dealer plate that is from Washington state,he saw an ad on Facebook Marketplace for a guy selling them for about $1500,its completely legal ,even though it sounds hokey!..
I don't know all the details ,but he's been using it over 2 years now,before this one he had a dealer plate from Florida..

He uses it on his ramp truck and cars he drives to and from auctions ,I don't know if that would allow him to have several cars on one insurance policy,here you must have a lot in a commercially zoned area and apply for a used car licence if you buy & sell more than 3 cars a year,and you cant have more cars than the town approves the lot for..

 

[urbex]

It's not illegal, per se, just exploiting a loop hole in the laws, and largely based on "an officer won't be able to easily prove otherwise on the side of the road". Unless he's just buying the plates themselves, then he's really playing Russian Roulette, and keeping fingers crossed that an officer won't pull him over for some reason. Get into an accident, or some other incident that involves a deeper search into your documentation, and you're screwed. Here in Arizona, driving with fictitious plates is a felony. Certainly not worth saving a few hundred bucks a year.

I've looked into this plenty over the years. There are ways for me to obtain legitimate dealer and transporter plates, but the fees for them are hefty enough that I'm not really saving any money doing so, just making it more convenient in that I don't have to keep up on registrations for a bunch of different vehicles.

Insurance is a completely different ballgame, not at all tied to licensing in any way. The only realistic way to get around the insurance requirements is either self insure, which is exorbitantly expensive from a personal standpoint, or set up a commercial insurance policy, which is also stupid expensive, in the area of several thousand a year. Found that one out when I started looking into licensing a tandem axle semi-truck for personal use. In Arizona, a tandem axle automatically puts you into commercial insurance territory, regardless of how the vehicle is being used, unless it's registered as an RV, and a sleeper on a semi isn't enough to legally consider it an RV. However, cutting one of the tandems off brings it back to normal, personal, insurance, which drops it significantly. My single axle International costs me about $150/year to insure, whereas the same truck with tandems would be in the neighborhood of $3500/year.

 

[campfire]

I'm up to eight at the moment, plus the bass boat, camper, and two trailers. Honestly, the only thing that has really tempered bringing home far more has been insurance, in that it seems silly for me to have individual liability only policies on everything, even things I virtually never drive, and to a lesser degree, registration. Plates on old vehicles are dirt cheap in Arizona, so that's less of an issue. Ends up costing something like $10-$15/year for plates on my old junk.

If I ever found a fleet insurance policy, where I would pay the same amount for just liability whether I have 5 vehicles or 50, I'd probably have something resembling a used car lot out back, lol. Be even better if I could leverage something like the deals that car dealers get, where they could slap a plate on any vehicle in the lot, but without having to run it all through a business here.

Are you required to insure vehicles that aren't on the road?

I just add and drop vehicles from my insurance policy as my vehicles cycle in and out of use, and I've never had more than 3 insured at a time. I can do a similar thing with license plates, though it's more headache & delay (I wind up playing mail tag with the DMV, because I have no love for going there in person).

But your state is bound to have different rules.

 

[urbex]

No, but it's inconvenient to have to sit on hold with the insurance company for an hour to add a vehicle when I want to go pick up some junk I don't need right now at 8pm on a Saturday night, because it JUST popped up on Craigslist, and I KNOW it will be gone by the morning, lol.

Or when my GF's truck decided control arms were extra, unneeded, equipment at 1am on a Sunday morning, 200 miles from home. I don't want to be thinking "sure..I'll be on my way...as soon as I get the insurance put back on the truck". Because I know that eventually, I'll forget one time, and THAT will be the time there's an incident requiring insurance...

 

[RubberFloorMat]

I guess I’m weird but I wouldn’t tow with anything smaller than a 454.

I’ve seen several 8.1’s with lower miles. But I’d get your 7.3 back in shape, you can’t beat mpg and power of a Turbo Diesel.

I bought a 15 Powerstroke 4x4 King ranch f-350 with 38k on it last year, itl be paid off before it hits 75k. Sometimes you just have to make a investment. It usually works out if you buy right.

 

[GWeakland620]

My 6.5 gets about 14mpg while towing. And despite the really stupid old statement of "Kansas is flat", we have the flint hills and they produce some decent longer steeper grades. With out a load, I get about 18mpg's. I will also argue that the 6.5, in proper working condition, pulls way better than a TBI 350. The only upgrades my truck has is newer/better injectors and some good free-flowing exhaust, and my truck kept up fine with my buddies '01 7.3 just fine.

 

[urbex]

Well, I ended up putting in an offer, and seller accepted, on a '96 K2500 4x4 diesel. One bummer is that it's an automatic trans, where I would have preferred a 5 speed, but from what I was reading earlier, they're pretty rare beasts in general, and finding one with in an extended cab, with the power options, is like finding a needle in a haystack. I know the 4L80E is a pretty stout trans, so I'm not too worried about it, even if I do end up having to rebuild it.

There's some turbo issues that need to be worked out, and some other minor little things, but it runs/drives good otherwise. It's not quite the "get in and go"
truck I had hoped for, but I got it cheap enough that I'm OK with it. Should be going to go pick it up Saturday morning.

 

[GWeakland620]

Hit us up if you have any questions. There are quite a few guys here that can steer you in the right direction with most of the issues.

I've owned mine for a few years now, and have done quite a bit of work on mine.

Got any pictures of your new purchase?

 

[urbex]

Not yet...looks like any other basically stock K2500 out there, lol. Except where someone apparently forgot to lock the gooseneck trailer, and the tailgate caught it. But its no big deal to me, as I plan to flatbed it like all of my other trucks are.

Oh, and it's a G80 truck, which means I'll have to set up a new carrier in it. I'm 99% sure I still have the open carrier and Lock Rite left from when I put a spool in the last truck, so I should be good there.

Other than that, it should just be a matter of getting that waste gate working correctly, whether it's just replacing some vacuum line or going to a MBC, and some basic cleaning & maintenance things to be ready to rock and roll. It's almost a bummer that this is a IFS truck, as I don't plan on hitching my big gooseneck trailer to it, so I would be good to lift this one unlike the Ford. But I really don't want to deal with the wear that the front end components get when going with a big lift either. So it shall stay stock height.

 

[imiceman44]

Not yet...looks like any other basically stock K2500 out there, lol. Except where someone apparently forgot to lock the gooseneck trailer, and the tailgate caught it. But its no big deal to me, as I plan to flatbed it like all of my other trucks are.

Oh, and it's a G80 truck, which means I'll have to set up a new carrier in it. I'm 99% sure I still have the open carrier and Lock Rite left from when I put a spool in the last truck, so I should be good there.

Other than that, it should just be a matter of getting that waste gate working correctly, whether it's just replacing some vacuum line or going to a MBC, and some basic cleaning & maintenance things to be ready to rock and roll. It's almost a bummer that this is a IFS truck, as I don't plan on hitching my big gooseneck trailer to it, so I would be good to lift this one unlike the Ford. But I really don't want to deal with the wear that the front end components get when going with a big lift either. So it shall stay stock height.

I would not touch the g80 for what you want to do with this truck, it's better than open.
It is only the smaller 10bolt 8.6" axles that have the problems.
You should have either the 9.5" semi float or 10.5 full float and both are fine

 

[GWeakland620]

Yep agreed ^^^

 

[urbex]

It's the full float, and I've shattered a Gov-Lok in a 14BFF before. It didn't take much wheel spin on a set of mud tires to do it in, lol.

As I said, it will be an open carrier AND Lock Rite going in. I think the G80s are fine in totally stock applications when driven gently. Even general towing likely doesn't hurt them. But dragging a trailer down a muddy road, and getting a tire suddenly hooking up I think is what killed my last one.

 

[imiceman44]

It's the full float, and I've shattered a Gov-Lok in a 14BFF before. It didn't take much wheel spin on a set of mud tires to do it in, lol.

As I said, it will be an open carrier AND Lock Rite going in. I think the G80s are fine in totally stock applications when driven gently. Even general towing likely doesn't hurt them. But dragging a trailer down a muddy road, and getting a tire suddenly hooking up I think is what killed my last one.

What size tires did you have?
Never seen a 14bff blow a govloc with a 36" or smaller.

 

[urbex]

34" TSLs, pulling down a muddy road to get to a camping spot. Standing on it pretty good to maintain momentum, heard and felt a bang, followed by what sounded like rocks in a garbage disposal out back, followed shortly after by it locking up like a spool....shattered the spider gear, and eventually it lodged up tight in there. Better than it becoming a no-drive differential, I suppose

Granted, there was a few thousand pounds over the axle too, between the camper and the tongue weight of the trailer, which may well have had something to do with it. I just figured it suddenly caught traction on a rock or root or something, and simply shock loaded it apart.

 

[imiceman44]

34" TSLs, pulling down a muddy road to get to a camping spot. Standing on it pretty good to maintain momentum, heard and felt a bang, followed by what sounded like rocks in a garbage disposal out back, followed shortly after by it locking up like a spool....shattered the spider gear, and eventually it lodged up tight in there. Better than it becoming a no-drive differential, I suppose

Granted, there was a few thousand pounds over the axle too, between the camper and the tongue weight of the trailer, which may well have had something to do with it. I just figured it suddenly caught traction on a rock or root or something, and simply shock loaded it apart.

Well that is a one in a million chance and I will still have a Gov loc in my tow truck up to 35" tires

 

[urbex]

Which is fine...I'm not telling anyone NOT to use one, just that _I_ would feel better without one in there especially when it's a simple affair for me to swap it out.

 

[imiceman44]

Which is fine...I'm not telling anyone NOT to use one, just that _I_ would feel better without one in there especially when it's a simple affair for me to swap it out.

So have you towed with the lockrite?
I have and it's just as bad as the Detroit.

 

[urbex]

Yep, and a spool too....now THAT'S something I certainly wouldn't recommend, lol. Ideally, I'd put in an ARB, but I'm not dropping that much money into it until I'm sure I'm going to keep the truck around for a while.

 

[urbex]

Got any pictures of your new purchase?

Ended up paying $2200 for it. May have been on the high side, but everything else I was finding around that price was either 350K+ miles, or completely thrashed interiors.

Came with 1 year old Michilin ATs, that look like they have seen less than 1,000 miles of pavement time. Need to solve some power steering hose leaks, and a possible trans leak. God awful brush guard will be getting ditched along with the running boards, gooseneck will be replaced with a turnover ball, will keep the headache rack for light mounts. Eventually I'll likely swap the bed out for another flatbed though.

 

[GWeakland620]

Hey blue interior! Looks like mine.