Cole Sanger
01-24-2006, 01:27 AM
I have a quick little story to tell you about. I recently was looking at trucks. Specifically GMC/Chevrolet trucks, and one awesome Dodge. Anyway, I go to a dealership and test drive a really nice looking 2005 GMC dually (Bell Ford in AZ). Anyway, I get home to show the wife and call my cousin in Havasu that works at the GM dealership to ask him what to look for on this truck. He asks me for the VIN so he can lookup the "VIS" which is a vehicle maintenance history report. I owe my cousin big! He said the truck had been towed a total of 4 times because of a wiring problem with the injectors. The most recent time was only 400 miles previous to where the odometer read. So basically the people got pissed after getting it towed for the fourth time and traded it in on a Ford. Understandable. So I go back to the drawing board and look at 10 trucks. I give him all of the VIN's (which I got off of Autotrader). He looks them up and there were major or possibly major problems with all but 2 of them. Anything from the injector issues to transmission rebuilds. One of the two was sold, and I bought the other. My cousin is able to tell me where the truck was purchased, serviced and what trim package also with the VIS search (helpful if it was sunk in the hurricanes and not reported). All of these trucks had under 25000 miles on them and all were 2004-2005 trucks.
Now some recent information I got from a buddy at work last night is that there is a website by the name of Dieselplace.com that has really good forums. These forums have people visit them that work at GM dealerships and will run the VIN for you and post it back on the site. Heck, that is good for looking up your own VIN to see what is really going on at the dealership. My buddy said that there are other sites that will do the same thing in the forums, but I was only interested in the GM one...sorry Dodge/Ford guys. I know that it really helped me when looking for a used truck. I hope that this can help someone else in the future.
Now some recent information I got from a buddy at work last night is that there is a website by the name of Dieselplace.com that has really good forums. These forums have people visit them that work at GM dealerships and will run the VIN for you and post it back on the site. Heck, that is good for looking up your own VIN to see what is really going on at the dealership. My buddy said that there are other sites that will do the same thing in the forums, but I was only interested in the GM one...sorry Dodge/Ford guys. I know that it really helped me when looking for a used truck. I hope that this can help someone else in the future.