Hiya P38'ers,
I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction for diagnosing a 96' with about 230,000 miles on it.

The current owner has had it to a couple of shops and has been quoted from $800 to $3000+ to fix his problem of "sometimes not starting". The dealer was the most expensive and quoted that the computer needed replacing. His local garage was about 1/2 price but also said his computer (but a different one?) needed replacing. Another local garage was cheapest and said the fuel pump needed replacing. The fuel pump has been replaced once already. Now he's fed up and just wants to sell the car to me really really cheap.

A buddy of mine bought an under hood computer off of eBay for $100 and hooked it up with no change. I believe there is an under seat computer or relay box as well but not sure if it will have anything to do with this.

Any ideas what could leave a P38 cranking over and only sometimes it will fire off and run?

I'm not sure if this will be a good deal to pick up or not. I'm assuming that since it's got 230,000 miles under the original owner that it has been a good truck but now that it's got that many miles, how many could be left in the thing?

Cheers,
Tim