When to rebuild or give up and buy another?

[Tiger Joe]

So, heres my dilemma. My dad and I have lots of project going on that have a need for a dump truck. So back in the early 90s, my dad bought a 79 C-30 cab and chassis and built himself a dump truck. truck was finished around 1993 (I was only 7 years old then).

Fast forward to 2016. The truck has now seen better days. As they say, you can't stop father time, and he is certainly not going easy on this truck.

heres a short list of what the truck needs:
dump bed needs rust repaired.
cab needs rockers, cab corners
frame has already been repaired where it rusted.

on top of all this, the old 350 is getting tired.

Now, our original plan for the truck was to build a nice BBC and throw in an NV4500 (already have both). My dad then threw another wrench in the whole thing and said he would like to have a 4x4. We had a lead on a 4x4 cab and chassis frame we were chasing right now.


Last night while surfing the local craigslist I stumbled on what looks like a beautiful dump to me:
http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/cto/5577884420.html
1989 chevy k-30, 350 TBI, 4 speed 4x4. claimed only 30k original miles. for $9,500.

Now at first glance 9500 seems like a lot, but when I start adding up all the time and money it would take to get our truck looking like that, 9500 isn't too bad. Plus I figure we could still swap the BBC and nv4500 into this truck if we want to later. And if we did that we would end up with what we wanted to build, just skipping all the rust repair and body work!


I guess maybe I'm just holding onto the memories since my dad built our current dump truck? Maybe it makes more sense both time-wise and financially to "cut and run"?