The 90's Trucks Were Bulletproof

[swtrailboss]

From the way I remember in the import world the late 80's brought good cars(body rust was the biggest issue) the early 90's brought great cars(as one mentioned earlier "too great") where they soon realized they would go broke if they maintained this quality(from lack of parts sales) and late 90's brought the decline in quality which subsequently the car manufacturers started to integrate technology with the quality decline. 2000's was a slow downhill slide in quality(but still good) where import manufacturers were starting to hire back room bean counters to figure if they bought so many cheap parts what failure rates would still pull a profit under warranty repairs. Then from that point on the car market almost evened out in quality from domestic to imports and hasn't changed much since. I know there are a large number of loyal domestic owners that swear against imports but this is just the one side. Ive had many of friends that worked on domestic vehicles in the 90's and 2000's and 80% of their paychecks revolved around warranty work where as the import world they strongly pushed owners on maintenance schedules and in a way trained them to care for their cars and id say 20-30% of your paycheck was warranty. That was the biggest difference between then and now as most imports and domestics have now started to introduce maintenance minder systems and began a race to sell the car with the cheapest maintenance schedule. Now the waterfall of quality and the volcano of cost to repairs happens.

And its all about GREED!

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[NotSo Bright White]

I am not sure how bulletproof the 90’s vehicles are. I have a 1994 Ford F350 with a 7.3 diesel. The Ford dealership refused to work on it because it is more than 25 years old. I could not believe it. It seems like I just bought it.

 

[Jteakus]

Find an independent shop that specializes in diesel trucks, I'm sure they would love to work on your 7.3

 

[Stan H]

I am not sure how bulletproof the 90’s vehicles are. I have a 1994 Ford F350 with a 7.3 diesel. The Ford dealership refused to work on it because it is more than 25 years old. I could not believe it. It seems like I just bought it.

Take you truck to that Dave's In Utah they are big 7.3 diesel enthusiast they just did a video where they rebuilt a 7.3diesel.

 

[FrankFrqnkFrank]

My 6.0 2006 Suburban was mechanically fantastic. But it completely rusted out very very fast

 

[davesparky6]

90s cars were not that reliable. I grew up in the 90s…. It was very common to see cars broken down on the shoulder. There’s exceptions, most of the Japanese imports were very reliable (I’ve had many civics and integras, but also an RX7 lol).
But, when the 90s cars did break, they were easy and cheap to fix, and so stayed on the road a very long time. Compared to modern cars, where they don’t very often leave you stranded on the road side, but do have many issues which are all expensive to fix, and so get pulled off the road sooner.
There’s also a survivor bias here… you see your one neighbor in a 90s accord and think how reliable it is, but there used to be one in every second driveway, 99% of them are gone.

 

[Chasm]

but also an RX7 lol

I'm going to assume the "lol" is because the RX7 was your least reliable. I knew multiple people with them in the 90's and they spent more time up on blocks than on the road!

My truck sequence went (multiple 70-80's) 1981-1991-2004
The 91 was by far the least reliable and the second most expensive.

 

[DanJT]

They were, but the 70's truck were the $hit.. I had a 79 Dodge Ramcharger and put that thing through hell and back and it just kept going and going and going.........
When I sold it several years later it was still going strong.

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