top kick

[rick]

Hi just wondering if anyone can help me out on this .I found a 88' Top Kick with a 3208 Cat with 60000 docuemnt miles on it. As for condition its an 8 outta 10 was used to wheel horses to kentucky and back to Ontario>Was built for highway driving.It has 24' feet of frame behind it.
Question is is this a realiable power plant to turn into a Toterhome, and big enought to pull lets say a 10000 pound trailer economically?
Asking price is only $2000 with new tires to boot!
Thanks in advance

[Bob86ZZ4]

Wow, sounds like a pretty low price for starters. BlizzardND is the resident expert on this truck. Hopefully he'll get in here with advice. So, you plan to build a box for the living quarters and then put a deck on the back for a fifth wheel or goose neck trailer?

[blizzardND]

We would need a bit more info on that truck before I could help you. I would look for a full size HDT if I was to get a do-over. The little 6500 of mine is great for just a road trip fly down the highway type RV. With 10,000 lbs back there, I'm thinking I'd need more gear. Then the economy would go out the window.

whats that truck have for gears tires air conditioning? cruise? air brakes or hyd? clean rust free? 88 is getting kinda old. but at 2,000 bills I'd buy today and put a dump box for snow and triple my money.

The trouble is, is, you are going to put $10-15K on the back of a 2,000 dollar truck. for 10-12 you can buy a bunch of those already done on RJ. Good luck post pictures, if she is a 60K cream puff it might be worth it.

A quick thought to make a econo hauler out of that would to shop for a 20' used travel trailer and mount it to the truck with some storage boxes below. that way the camper is light enough to help with the pulling of the 10,000 pounds.

[#90-GTSC]

What is the objection to the Top Kick? Horsepower? Or size, mass, and stability of the truck.

A good friend has a Top Kick toterhome that he pulls a 5th wheel 32 foot or so stacker trailer, huge pit box, 4wheeler, extra V-8 racing engine, and lots and lots of stuff. Based in Wisconsin, he was in Sebring, Toronto, east of Montreal, and Road Atlanta with it this year. He does say that in the mountains and big hills he wishes he had more HP and torque. Otherwise they get along just fine.

Clarify ... is a Top Kick one step down from a Class 8/HDT? or Two steps.

I sincerely appreciate all the information and advice. This has been very, very valuable.

Dick

[Bob86ZZ4]

I think you might find a full class 8 truck might not be as expensive as you'd think. Now, if you could go class 8 for not much over a 5/6 (I think that's about where a 5500 or 6500 Topkick would class, isn't it?) you would get huge advantages. Obviously bigger motor, torque, h/p. Transmission is another huge advantage. More gears is better. Brakes are in a different catagory completely. Air is just so so so much better than hydraulic. You can't boil air brakes. The brakes are going to be much bigger and more capable too. Now, I think your service options are going to be more available than the smaller truck too, aren't they? I don't know, Blizz, will all the truck centers work on your truck? Certainly I think we can all agree that a Topkick/Kodiak is a huge advantage over say an F350/3500 p/u. It's just that if you can score a full semi tractor for close to the bucks, it might be worth shopping for one. A friend of mine has about a 2000 Volvo 730 truck that he bought for $15k, DD series 60 12.7 motor, 1st Gen Autoshift 10 speed, huge sleeper, and it already had a nice deck on the back with a drom box. There is a concern tho that you might have some licensing issues, both veh. registration and operators d.l. The Kodiak/Topkicks are under 26k lbs and that keeps you in the "regular" driver's license class in most states.

Yes, like I said, that $2k sounds like a great deal to me. And it would kick behind over a F350/3500 p/u that's for sure.

[jmlloar]

Not all kodiak's and topkick are rated that low. my 91 is air brake and 33,600 gvw so it needs a cdl.