Just got the first new clutch yesterday in my older Nissan Hardbody. Not ratty at all in fact looks much the same as the day I bought it for cash ($5200) in December, 1985.
How many miles on that truck?
A couple of years ago I discovered another benefit to having a heap. I was coming out of WalMArt and noticed a pair of suspicious characters going from car to car in the parking lot, looking in the windows and trying the door handles. They just walked around my car and didn’t even look in. There is tinting on the windows and that on the back window is in pretty bad shape. You can’t see through it from the outside at all. I can see out, though. When we had a wave of auto break-ins in the neighborhood my car was left alone. I maintain the motor and running gear but have declined offers of my body-shop bud to paint it. So long as there is no rust it is fine.
I once had a Datsun B210 that lasted for years. I got it with already over 200k on it. It didn’t die until my daughter blew a hose on it and drove it on almost home. I tried to teach her to take care of a car and she could change a tire but once when the oil light came on she put a quart in the radiator. It survived that one but the seized engine did it in. Daughter couldn’t figure out anything mechanical but sheis the only college grad in the family and went on to make 150k a year with an Inet company in the .com boom and it survived the crash.