Hello beautiful T4R world. Newb here seeking advice. Looking at a 06 SR5 V8. It's well appointed, everything seems to be in great shape, and the belt, water pump was replaced recently. Was feelin great until they sent pics of the undercarriage. It's 500 mi away so one can't simply swing by and have a poke. Is it salvageable without cutting/welding or should I just let my love die and keep fishing? Any help is greatly appreciated

Not at all. You should make sure all of the bolts are there the sway bar clamp bolt is missing. An hour or so with a wire brush and some por15 will work wonders. Phil

From the photos the rust doesn't look to be real bad....BUT there could be other rust not shown that could be bad, if the rest of the frame is about the same then it's worth at least going and getting a first hand look at it, you really won't know without seeing it in person and poking and tapping the worst areas with a big screwdriver or similar, if all is good and solid it will take some work (way more than an hour IMHO) to clean the frame to put some rust preventative on the frame.

I would try and get them to replace any severely rusted, missing or broken bolts...the "missing" bolt for the sway bar clamp is BROKEN off (the rest of it can still be seen in the threaded hole)and will need to be drilled out and a tap ran through the treads and then a new bolt installed, there could be other broken or frozen from rust that will need to be addressed in a similar fashion or if your lucky and can get them out without breaking them before replacing with new ones, the skid plate bolts will all most likely be rusted in.

This is great advice, and I definitely agree that making the trip would be worthwhile before plunking down the balance, even if you just send an initial deposit to hold it. If putting a deposit, I would be sure an agreement was in place that you would be able to get your deposit back if the in person inspection was not satisfactory. Depending on the part of the country you are in, or the vehicle is in makes a huge difference, which you didn’t mention in the first post because that amount of rust, while normal for the age in parts of the country that use salt, would be a hard pass for folks living in places like AZ, CA, etc. where they aren’t used to seeing any, or very little corrosion. You also never mentioned price, or mileage which are also important deciding factors. If for example they were asking $10-$13k with that rust AND the miles were over 150k, then I’d say it would be a hard pass.

not bad at all!