450C in auction

[shinnery]

Found a 76 450C in an auction that is only 120 miles from me. Here is the link http://www.purplewave.com/cgi-bin/mnlis ... 57/showall I do have a gooseneck tandem dual trailer.
Bryce

[JD440ICD2006]

Not here to dampen your spirits, and certainly no where close to an expert on these.
Here is my take.
Auctions are fun, exciting, fast paced. The bottom line is these days, especially with the "big boys" in the auction business, it is very difficult to actually get a good deal. They know all of the tricks to run the bids up. After all, fish work for the bait. In other words, auction companies are paid a percentage of the "take". Their whole purpose is to sell each item at the very highest price. Higher the price, the more they make.
You cannot win at an auction. They have the control, the timing, and it is well known but seldom exposed they they use some of their own people as ghost bidders to run the prices up on a motivated bidder.
With that said, if you know cralwers, then you can ignore the rest of this.
However, a few tips. This is high hour crawler. High hours means wear. Wear means money. Deep pads are nothing compared to what you may spend if the rest of the U/C is worn past limits. It can "look good", but it means nothing until it is measured. When it is worn out based on measurements, it accelerates wear on everything else.
For instance, if everything but the sprokets are within spec, the worn out sprokets will ruin the bushings in record time.
Know what you are getting in to, an auction is not the place to buy your first crawler.