Ahh you paid the whole $3500.. then you shouldn't walk away.

For $500, I would have walked away.

for future purchase when you test drive beat the balls off of it.

"Dually" noted. Haha!

holy fuck that was brilliant.

The good news is that between my tax rebate and next months pay I should financially be back up to where I was before I bought the truck.

honestly.. if you put in the work.. i don't think it would be too hard to put another powerstroke out of a wrecked truck in there.

True. But I'm not the best mechanic. I know a friend who might be able to do it. Either way, it would still be money. From what I've seen, even used power strokes go for a lot.

Really? I see them all the time for around a grand.

I've found a few locally on CL for $2000-$2500. I don't have the means to install it myself and have no idea how much labor would cost for someone else to.

The lawyer says I have a good case. It's costing me $200 dollars for the lawyer to draft and send the letter to the seller saying we'll take him to small claims court if he doesn't pay back the $3500 in return for the truck. If we do go to court it will probably be for breach or contract or fraud. If we get him for fraud it might end up that I keep the truck and he pays my legal fees and to fix it.

Sounds like you might survive this! Hope you get your money back dude!!
And please, take time to properly test drive/beat on your future purchases.

I think a good way to test is to pretend that you're Andy and the car is a rental. If it survives ten minutes, you should be good.

Lol.

Or you could do what I did and wrap it around a tree .9mi into my test drive. Check all steering components before leaving the lot.