Major issues in a 3rd gen? They are serious work horse trucks with tons of them pushing more than a half million miles. Ignore the posts about the half tons, because other than the body panels they are different trucks.
The Cummins is the best part of the truck, well maintained they will last a million miles with very few issues. The automatics have a reputation for blowing up, but those are usually in tuned trucks being driven by hoodlums. If you keep it stock and treat them right they will go 150k mi or more without trouble.
The heater box design is **** though. Plan to replace a heater core and blend doors if it hasn’t been done.
Other than those issues they are the most reliable of that era diesel trucks. They make gobs of torque and there are still tons of them on the road. There’s a reason they were appreciating in value before the covid used car market went nuts. Expect to pay north of 20k for a nice one.
I picked up a really nice 04 last October and it’s been great. It had a few deferred maintenance things I had to fix, but that’s to be expected of any truck with 100k miles. I’m going to do the heater box job now because I get an occasional smell that would make suspect of the heater core, and I don’t want to blow that on a trip. This is the second 3rd gen truck in our family, and we had a few second gen diesels as well. They are great trucks.
