Looking at a 98 Topkick 6500 dump truck for sale. It has the 190 HP Cat motor and midrange eaton 6 speed. Does anyone have any input or a place I can go to do some research. The truck only has 38,000 miles and has hydrolic brakes.

We have some at work, they are junk. Now that could be because they are a company truck and everyone treats them like whores at a whore house. They dont turn for shit, they rattle like all hell is breaking loose. I mean literally the dash shakes up and down about an inch. Like I said though, it could be because people treat them like whores and dont take care of little issues when they come up, wich then turn into bigger issues.

The 6500 flatbed topkick I drove for a wrecker was an absolute DOG... it was an auto, but had hell just pulling itself away from a red light. The door hinges would NOT stay adjusted and were always sagging, dash board bounced all over the place, everything rattled.

i drove one as a rollback. again, it rattelled like a mofo, constantly, like all the time. annoying as fuck. would not get out of its own way. dont even think about not starting out in low gear, every single fucking time.

JUNK JUNK JUNK! I spent part of a summer in one... no power, shook, rattled, did I mention no power? shitty gearing in the 6 speed as well..

the internationals we had were 5 times the truck..

Come to think of it, we had an old 70's ford L-8000, with a 370CI GAS engine.. and it made significantly more power..

my 94 6500 is 366 gas powered and is great. decent power w/ gearing (6.17's) and very very comfortable to drive. no squeaks, rattles or anything described above. zero maintenance issues, i love it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i do agree an international w/ dt466 is a better powertrain...

had one as a flat bed with wheel lift. dash shook soooooooooooooooooo bad at idle and iver bumps that the guages and switches would work their way out of the dash. it was horrible.

if you think the 366 was powerfull you have no idea what real power is..........
the 366's are junk
topkicks are junk, they are a "fake" medium duty truck that are not built well or heavy enough for most applications.

the cats bring the major suck when it comes to repair parts and bills. atleast that one will have an electronic heui injection system, the older MUI's are the ultimate gay!

i never said powerful, but w/ gearing it does fine....mine never ever shakes and drives pleasantly down the road probably smoother than my 06 cummins...

Somehow, it appears that it's not a good choice.

We paid CAT to rebuild ours :shaking:
it shakes even worse now!!

Even the techs at CAT say they are junk.
GM 6.2 has more power:barf:

the 6 spd and a 2 spd rear end would be essential. Gutless rattling costing SOB. Nothing is cheap on them and everything is difficult to aquire when it breaks. at 220k miles mine looked like a logging truck after 900k miles. Good idea but cobbled together by GM in typical GM fashion. Look to an IH for a better platform that is cheaper to service and will provide comparible power but much longer life.