Welcome aboard. The other guys in this forum know a lot more about the pluses and minuses with any particular year truck, but in general, they’re pretty durable if you do the routine maintenance. And you can get hundreds of thousands of miles out of them if you do a little bit more.
I owned an engineering company with some partners in the 90s in 2000s. At any point in time we had 250 or 300 S-10s, Rangers and a bad experience with some Dodge Dakota’s. The Rangers were cheaper and easier to fix, and we got more miles out of them than we did out of the S-10s. We did testing on construction sites, and my guys were really hard on them.
My build threads are in my signature. My 97 had almost 300,000 miles on it when I bought it. It’s got about 320,000 miles now. The guy did religious maintenance on it, one owner, and I think the only major thing he did was redo the heads after 200,000 miles. It absolutely runs like a top, and the only thing I did was put in a heavier clutch, but that’s because of my custom stuff and the load.
Coincidentally my 87 clocked about 300,000 when I got it. It was black primer, pieces from different trucks and Broncos, etc., with a blown engine. One of the reasons I bought it is because I knew where there was a 2.9 that was rebuilt 40,000 miles before by somebody I knew and trusted, that had been wrecked. I was surprised when I swapped out the engine with a new clutch assembly, and I’ve had to do very little to it mechanically since then. I put a new radiator in it at the time, and I think the only other Mildly serious problem I’ve had is the pinion seal and the axle shaft seal. They’ve been leaking for a year, and I’ve got the parts, I just haven’t gotten around to it. I put in a shot glass or two of oil in the rear end every three -four months, and I would drive it anywhere.
And never underestimate the value of rust oleum, and a roller!
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