Hi, my name is kwm5067 and I have an addiction. This vehicle marks my 23rd or is it 24th? vehicle. I have a background in automotive and enjoy buying older vehicles, fixing them up and then moving onto the next project. I currently own a fully built 2001 S4 as my weekend warrior, a 2009 Honda fit as a conservative gas saving daily, and now this 2005 Lexus GX470 for camping and road trips.
I had spent about 3 months looking for a decent example, as my neck of the woods equals nothing but rust. BUT, since I've lived in the Northeast all of my life, it's all I'm used to. The prices for these things are all over the place so given the fact that most are going to contain a small amount of rust and I wasn't willing to travel too far, I set my budget to $10,000.
I'll admit when I first came across this particular GX I passed it off due to its rear wheel well rust. I was willing to accept some rust, but not straight rot. This one had some great maintenance history, only 2 owners, and was in my 2nd preferred color. It also had slightly under my maximum preferred mileage at 192,030 miles. But, I am known to be somewhat impatient so I ended up circling back to it within 2 weeks. So, I arranged to see the car in person and drove the 3 hours to the owner's house. I did my thing, inspected trouble areas, threw my scanner on and it passed the basic tests. We made a deal for $8,000.
It made the 3 hr. ride back with zero hiccups, as expected. It truly drove like a dream and is 1 of the most comfortable vehicles I've owned so far.
Anyways, here she is on the day I picked it up:
My goals for this truck is to make is to first make it mechanically sound by completing all overdue maintenance. Then I'll move on to cosmetics by giving it a nice multi-stepped detail. After that I plan to throw on some chunkier tires, my RTT and see where it can take us.
Thanks for checking out my first post, I will be adding much more detail to it as time allows. I've already done a bunch of maintenance to it that I will be posting about soon.
I had spent about 3 months looking for a decent example, as my neck of the woods equals nothing but rust. BUT, since I've lived in the Northeast all of my life, it's all I'm used to. The prices for these things are all over the place so given the fact that most are going to contain a small amount of rust and I wasn't willing to travel too far, I set my budget to $10,000.
I'll admit when I first came across this particular GX I passed it off due to its rear wheel well rust. I was willing to accept some rust, but not straight rot. This one had some great maintenance history, only 2 owners, and was in my 2nd preferred color. It also had slightly under my maximum preferred mileage at 192,030 miles. But, I am known to be somewhat impatient so I ended up circling back to it within 2 weeks. So, I arranged to see the car in person and drove the 3 hours to the owner's house. I did my thing, inspected trouble areas, threw my scanner on and it passed the basic tests. We made a deal for $8,000.
It made the 3 hr. ride back with zero hiccups, as expected. It truly drove like a dream and is 1 of the most comfortable vehicles I've owned so far.
Anyways, here she is on the day I picked it up:
My goals for this truck is to make is to first make it mechanically sound by completing all overdue maintenance. Then I'll move on to cosmetics by giving it a nice multi-stepped detail. After that I plan to throw on some chunkier tires, my RTT and see where it can take us.
Thanks for checking out my first post, I will be adding much more detail to it as time allows. I've already done a bunch of maintenance to it that I will be posting about soon.
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