Recent content by spectre6000

You did pretty well! I was not quite as fortunate. USAA uses a third party to handle their appraisals, CCC. They only honor prices from dealer vehicles (which makes finding 13 year old trucks difficult), and will take anything similar (which unfortunately includes every stripped down base...

I got the phone call the day before yesterday stating it was a total loss (no surprise there). I'm expecting a call sometime today with the valuation. This is the last chance to dance. If you or anyone you know has purchased ANY 4Runner in the last year, it will be a very useful data point for a...

A single sample doesn't likely help much (otherwise they'd just give me whatever I found as the highest priced thing out there), but a whole bunch of applicable data points can help make a case for something better than the likely KBB/Edmunds. If you can find a truck like what I lost within 50%...

As long as it's remotely similar to mine, that sort of stat is very helpful. Please state though how it differs from mine (ie. Izzardking's being a Limited with high mileage and a wreck). Finding a rig substantially similar to mine for the purposes of convincing the adjuster to give me a fair...

That's correct. Insurance companies don't compensate you for what you had in the vehicle, they give you the amount of money that would be required to purchase a comparable replacement. If you were to purchase a brand new BMW (or some other vehicle that depreciates faster than others) with a...

What I paid six months ago doesn't exactly have any bearing on the greater market. I could have seriously over or under paid. As a single data point, I paid something like $9,400 off the top of my head.

I spent a good part of the morning looking, and have yet to even find a truck with the trappings that made mine what it was... I have seen prices for trucks that were CLOSE (fabric seats or no locker or auto, etc.) as high as $12K, but very few close to the $7,150 book value (and those were in...

Oh yeah! ~147K miles at the time of the accident. Location is Rocky Mountains west of Denver. KBB, NADA, and the lot all have it at $7,150... Then their own classifieds fail to list anything close to that... My own shopping around turns up high mileage base model 2WDs in that price range...

My wife rolled my truck late last week (not a scratch on her), and I'm waiting for the insurance company to tell me it's totalled. In the meantime, I know the insurance game from my dealings with older collector cars. I need to do my best to get a representative sample of the market price for...

I have a few 914/912E engines with my project car ('58 German market Beetle) in storage, and I'm on the lookout for a late '50s 356 project (same '56-'60 vintage as the aforementioned VW's) for the wife. I'm contemplating an early 914 or a new Carrera 4S (depending on how my company is doing at...

My main vehicular gig is old German cars (VWs and Porsches). Due to a recent relocation, my in-progress restoration and the majority of my tools are 1,000 miles away, and I don't have so much as a flat place to work on anything. I'm in the process of acquiring a '57 Karmann Ghia (do a Google...

I have a few fabrication ideas... These are the things I intend to build up once I (find the time to) find a house up here with a decent sized garage and enough flat area to build a shop and finally get all my tools and such out of storage and across the country... • aux fuel tank to replace...

Indeed it does! It won't be long before Whitson is the Slee of 4Runners!

Check your front sway bar linkage. They can break as they get older (and are sometimes just removed) and can cause some wonky handling. Only one needs to break for the sway bar to be rendered ineffective. It can have the net effect of pulling the front of the car to one side or the other when it...

I have a late 50's European AM radio I'll sell you! Super high tech: no tubes, no vibrators... It even has something like 5 station presets!