The Find!
I could write a fairly long post about my search, but I don't want to bore you. Instead I'll summarize my journey into a few short tips.
Patience
Basically I was very patient, waiting for the right rig to come along and ready to snatch it up when it did. I was searching from Excursions in my home state of Utah, as well as Colorado, California, and spent a lot of time looking at southern states where no salt is used on the roads. I spent a lot of time scouring eBay, Craigslist, and Autotrader.
Price
As I mentioned before I had set my price range around $20k as most of the clean diesel rigs with about 100k miles on them were selling around that price on eBay which gave me a good indicator of what I should be willing to spend. NADA and Kelly are completely wrong by the way. They aren't accounting for these vehicles becoming rare and in demand and prices have stopped depreciating on them from what I can tell. Age doesn't matter much, only condition and the number of miles on the odometer.
Avoiding Rust!
One massive issue I had with Utah and Colorado Excursions is they looked like a rust bucket underneath. The entire suspension, axles, hitches and other components are typically covered in rust from the roads being salted in the winter. I wasn't too keen to buy one of these examples and was fairly determined to buy from Texas or Arizona where they almost look like they are brand new on the under side.
Stock or Modified?
This was a tough one for me. I was open to either option, but picky at the same time. I either wanted one that was completly stock, or one that was built up (the right way) and "bulletproof" for reliability. If it was modified I needed proof that it was done right and done for the right reasons. I'll have to tackle this in another blog post some time, as there are so many opinions of what to do to an Excurstion to make them "bulletproof"...well mostly this is for a 6.0 Powerstorke, the 7.3L is pretty solid.
I have a huge list of modifications that I want to do to my Excursion, so in many ways starting with a bone stock Excursion is probably easiest for me. I'll be publishing my wish list of future mods soon...stay tuned. :)
If I could have afforded to buy this beauty off eBay I would have, but this thing sold for $50,000! It happened to have many mods I plan on doing such as Kelderman air suspension and a large custom roof rack perfect for lots of mountain bikes up top!
The Find
As luck would have it one of the cleanest Excursions I saw in the 5+ months I was looking showed up right here in Utah at Watts Automotive. Other than a 5" lift and 35" tires it was completly stock. I already had intentions for a 4-5" lift and 35" tires, so this was a perfect modification. It had spent its life in Las Vegas in a garage, had 110k miles on it and not a spot of rust anywhere to be found. On inspection of the receiver hitch I determined it had never pulled a trailer in it's 10 year life, shocking!
It looked good, drove good, mechanically looked good. It's only downfall was price, it was almost $5000 more than I had intended to pay. A little negotiation brought the price down to 23,900, not as low as I had hoped, but for a Powerstroke Excursion made in the last year they were built, with low miles, and super clean, it wasn't an unfair price. SOLD!!
Patience
Basically I was very patient, waiting for the right rig to come along and ready to snatch it up when it did. I was searching from Excursions in my home state of Utah, as well as Colorado, California, and spent a lot of time looking at southern states where no salt is used on the roads. I spent a lot of time scouring eBay, Craigslist, and Autotrader.
Price
As I mentioned before I had set my price range around $20k as most of the clean diesel rigs with about 100k miles on them were selling around that price on eBay which gave me a good indicator of what I should be willing to spend. NADA and Kelly are completely wrong by the way. They aren't accounting for these vehicles becoming rare and in demand and prices have stopped depreciating on them from what I can tell. Age doesn't matter much, only condition and the number of miles on the odometer.
Avoiding Rust!
One massive issue I had with Utah and Colorado Excursions is they looked like a rust bucket underneath. The entire suspension, axles, hitches and other components are typically covered in rust from the roads being salted in the winter. I wasn't too keen to buy one of these examples and was fairly determined to buy from Texas or Arizona where they almost look like they are brand new on the under side.
Stock or Modified?
This was a tough one for me. I was open to either option, but picky at the same time. I either wanted one that was completly stock, or one that was built up (the right way) and "bulletproof" for reliability. If it was modified I needed proof that it was done right and done for the right reasons. I'll have to tackle this in another blog post some time, as there are so many opinions of what to do to an Excurstion to make them "bulletproof"...well mostly this is for a 6.0 Powerstorke, the 7.3L is pretty solid.
I have a huge list of modifications that I want to do to my Excursion, so in many ways starting with a bone stock Excursion is probably easiest for me. I'll be publishing my wish list of future mods soon...stay tuned. :)
If I could have afforded to buy this beauty off eBay I would have, but this thing sold for $50,000! It happened to have many mods I plan on doing such as Kelderman air suspension and a large custom roof rack perfect for lots of mountain bikes up top!
The Find
As luck would have it one of the cleanest Excursions I saw in the 5+ months I was looking showed up right here in Utah at Watts Automotive. Other than a 5" lift and 35" tires it was completly stock. I already had intentions for a 4-5" lift and 35" tires, so this was a perfect modification. It had spent its life in Las Vegas in a garage, had 110k miles on it and not a spot of rust anywhere to be found. On inspection of the receiver hitch I determined it had never pulled a trailer in it's 10 year life, shocking!
It looked good, drove good, mechanically looked good. It's only downfall was price, it was almost $5000 more than I had intended to pay. A little negotiation brought the price down to 23,900, not as low as I had hoped, but for a Powerstroke Excursion made in the last year they were built, with low miles, and super clean, it wasn't an unfair price. SOLD!!
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