Hi all,
I've read on here extensively in the past when considering the purchase of a T100 and now I'm asking for advice. I've found a 97 4WD SR5 X-cab here for sale. It has everything I want in a stock truck except a manual transmission. The truck is dark green with a tan cloth interior. It has bucket seats <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" /> which I'm pretty happy about.

The truck looks to be in excellent shape. The body is very straight and the paint even looks pretty good. Everything underneath looks dry, no leaks and the truck seems to run well. It was a little hard to start when I first fired it up but the lady said her son had parked it there a week or so ago and it hadn't been driven much even before that because he got a new truck. I was a little concerned with this at first but once it started it ran great, very smooth with no hesitation.

The guy says he has most of the service records and can probably fill in most of the gaps by getting the dealer to print them out. The shocks were replaced by the dealer about four years ago and the fuel pump has been replaced. Other than that he says there's been no big repairs, just maintenance.

The truck has 178000 miles and everything looks pretty nice. Even the interior is clean although it doesn't look like he had it professionally cleaned or anything. Two things concern me though:
1 - he spray painted under the fenders black "to make it look nicer"
2 - there's a slightly odd intake noise at full throttle. I don't know how to explain it. The truck seems to make good power and there's no hesitation at full throttle. It doesn't knock or rattle, it just sounds somewhat odd. Almost like there's a little piece of cloth flapping around in there or something. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> I know that's not very helpful but maybe you guys have heard something like this before, I haven't but I'm not that familiar with these Toyota V6s. He said the head gaskets were never repaired and have given no problem. He indicated that the head gasket problem had been fixed by the '97 model year.

The guy's asking $8200. I think this is a pretty fair price but I'd like to pay a little less. I've been looking for one of these trucks for a while and I see them around here all the time but I never see them for sale. A lot of the T100s around here seem to be work trucks now and are not in the best of shape but this one definitely does not fit into that category. I'm in a position financially to buy this thing without too much discomfort.

I know this is painfully long <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/sleeping.gif" alt="" /> but if you've made it this far, I'd appreciate any advice on whether this sounds like a fair deal and also possible pointers as to what may be causing the noise at WOT.

Thanks
Don Tibbetts