Yeah, lol, I've never regretted walking away from a deal. I have, however, regretted the one deal that I almost walked away from. Hehe. It worked out in the end but I got mom into a 7.3 Powerstoke F250 for what seemed a great price. I almost walked away when after the abs acted up on the test drive and there seemed like there a weird chiming in the truck that a quick google search turned up as a possible airbag issue. I agreed to give the seller a chance to replace the driveshaft speed sensor and that fixed the abs problem. On the drive to the auto parts store he grinded once between gears. I asked what happened and he quickly dismissed it as not pushing the clutch down far enough, which stupidly convinced me to overlook my concern.
Bought the truck with around 125k miles for ~$12k. Then, took it to my garage to work through the "minor problems". Well, turned out, the seller had pulled all the bulbs that were lit from the instrument cluster and that's why the airbag chime was sounding. The grind in the trans actually was a bad 2nd gear synchro, and the seller was pretty sly about the way he covered it up on that drive. Everything that seller touched on that truck, he did half-assed. I spent every night for 3 weeks under and around that truck going through everything, the electronics, drivetrain, etc to make up for my mistake to my mother. Bought a synchro kit for the trans and pulled it, but don't have the rig needed to tear into it. So we paid a shop for that. That was all last Summer right in the middle of getting ready to move out here to cali.
Even after addressing everything I could find, she had to go to a shop for oil consumption, the injector o-rings leaked and upon replacement, the mechanic found that the baffles were just completely removed from the valve covers. The alternator went out and wiped out the batteries. Mom's got $15-16k in it now. Right about market value, but I've got 40-50 hours of my own labor in it, and it sure would have been easier buying a nice truck without any concerns to begin with. I'm just glad she's got something reliable to pull her horses and RV around.
Needless to say, I will forever lean in the direction of walking from a deal and trusting my gut, even when I can't quite work out why I don't like a deal.
Now that the problems seem to be behind us, they (mom and step-dad) really love it. (yes, I removed the stickers)
My truck, on the other hand, seemed to good to be true at $6,500 with a little over 150k miles, but has been a dream. So far, it moved me across the country twice already and towed up to 19,200 lbs gross.