Well I have been a lightning fan for quite a while and have wanted for for just as long. Well last night someone rear ended my grand cherokee, and kinda hit my custom exhaust so I went to have it checked out. On the way back I saw a shiny Lightning sitting at a car dealer. So I turned around went to check it out. It's a red 2000. Looks very clean, lowered a little bit, has a K&N intake. Here's the catch it has 149,000 miles. It belongs to the owner of the dealership. He said he used to drive from nevada to oregon fairly often.

For a truck with almost 150k miles it looks fabulous on the exterior. One of the foglight covers is broken. The drivers seat has some holes in it though, probably from the fatass driver. The K&N is freaking black it is so dirty. I'm surprised the engine starts it is so dirty. I drove it for like 20 minutes and had the boost gauge pegged at 10 lbs, which surprised me considering how terribly dirty the filter is, he also claims that the previous owner put on some "ceramic headers" that gave it a "10% boost in power" It drove flawlessly and drove just as nicely as birdy111's lightning. Has brand new F1s and brakes. I let it roll out from a stop sign and then floored it and it hooked quickly and then took off to 40 in what seemed faster then my 5.9 grand cherokee which does 0-60 in high 5 second range, so i figure that the power is still there. He said he has maintained it very well. The supercharger whine sounded fairly loud conpared to birdy111's.


Here is where the dillema developes. I have a 98 grand cherokee with the 5.9 litre V8, I have quite a few mods on it, and could strip the easy ones off and get around $1500 pretty easily. The car dealership just opened about 2 weeks, and he doesn't know jack **** about selling cars. I asked him what he would give me on a trade in for my Jeep. He looked in his book for a while, then said stuff like... "It's a Jeep right?" I know that trade in value for my Jeep is around 7k most likely. He asked me how much I would want to get and I threw out 10k, he said he would give me 10k for my Jeep! Which is probably more then I would get for it from a private party.

The other thing is that I am a 19 year old poor college student and would need some money from my parents. He wan'ts $17,999 for it, which is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much considering the miles, but he said he would give me the 10k for my jeep at the price of 17,999.

The miles are really high, but I probably have no chance of getting 10k from my jeep if I were to sell it, so finding a different L wouldn't be too easy for me.

 

18 is too much. I think i read somewhere that someone was buying a Lightning with 120K miles on it for like 12 grand. Thats a lot of miles... probably driven hard. Also the guy says he takes good care of it right? Well i guess its up to u whether u believe that or not because a black dirty air filter is no exactly taking care of your truck. Holes in the seat i can understand and maybe that foglight too, which he should change, it would only cost him 20 bucks and 15 mins of his time. Personally I wouldnt go for it, cause if u think about it, who makes ceramic headers for the lightning anyways? If they did i dont think they would free up 38 hp from the engine, the exhaust for our near to stock trucks is great, only thing holding us back i believe are the cats.

 

I paid $27k for my "L" w/8 miles on it... Look around a bit more Bud, thats a lot of miles and high price..

 

$18k is a joke.

That will buy you a '99-00 L w/ 50-60k miles easily....and that's dealer retail price. If you can find a private seller, you could get a truck like I describe for $16+k.

 

hey rob... Thats a hell of a lot of miles for that truck! However, thats not too bad of a trade off. Figure its a 12k truck and you get 6 on trade in, you're still 6 in the whole. So i guess if you could walk away with it for 16 it might be worth it? (getting 10 on trade in for the jeep) That is an awful lot of miles though, and the chances of breaking expensive things is a lot higher with that much wear and tear. On the other hand an L is an L... What happened to the cam/rr's for the summers project? I think it'd be way cooler to have a high 13s jeep than a high 13s L. What dealer is it at by the way? Later.

 

It's just a small dealership in Eugene. I think if he calls me I will tell him I will do a straight up trade Jeep for Lightning. I figure if I work my *** off this summer I will look for a 2000 or 2001 towards the end.

I really am surprised how well it drove. Jon didn't you tell me you don't always get 10 lbs of boost on the stock gauge with your setup? Cuz it was pinned. Definitely felt faster then the niner

Supercharger also sounded louder then yours from what I remember. He told me right after he got it his wife was driving with him and thought something wasw wrong with the truck, cuz she didn't know what the whine was.

 

 

What's so funny about that? Not to get defensive, but my 5.9 ran a 14.4 before I got my custom chip and mopar performance intake manifold... I should be running low low 14s. many 1999 and 2000 lightnings run right around a 14.0 stock. Mix that with 4WD launches and I figure I can hold my own on the street vs a stock lighting with 150,000 miles on it. Or a lighting with a crusty black K&N air filter.

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/we...ZmQzMXk1NDE%3D

My 14.4 run.

 

I have decided that there is no way I am touching that L unless he goes under 10k, which is not likely.

I am going to work my *** off this summer, I am only 19, so I need to save up quite a bit of money. My dad is a project manager at a construction company and thinks he can get me a job basically being a construction janitor. He thinks the minumum pay for that job is around $12/hr, which is good for someone in my situation.

At the end of the summer I may be able to come out with $3000-$4000 depending on how many hours I put in.

Then if I sell my Jeep for say between $8,000 to $10,000.

I figure I could find an L in the $14,000-$16,000 range, and maybe my parents could loan me the difference, I really am gonna try for a 2001+ but I will see.

 

not to sound like an old fogey (i'm still well in the under 30 crowd), but don't get in over your head in debt at your age. think about it, you get the truck, spend all your left over money on mods (you know you will), then old motor goes kaboom and you shell out $$$$ to fix or put modded motor in, more in debt, etc etc. work your butt off to pay for it. that's the prime yrs of your life My advice is to drive something "nice" for a couple years, test the market when you get out of college, THEN you get the car/truck you've always wanted which won't have 150k on it. just think about it.... good luck whatever you decide.

 

good luck with that rob. looking for the owned smiley for scv8... Yeah those 5.9s can definitely surprise people.

 

FWIW. I bought my 99 Lightning with 90K miles for 12K in December of 04. You can find a better deal and if not, you can just fly down to Florida and buy my truck for what I paid for it. Just think of all the fun you would have driving it back to Oregon.

Cesar