1971 Chevy Suburban Redux

Tracking numbers issued from each of those vendors… I’ll give you three guesses what’s coming…

Hopefully the blizzard doesn’t slow UPS down too much. I’ll post photos and info later this week.

I should also have an update on the diesel conversion soon too. Looks like I may have found a nice 6.2 GM diesel with the 700r4 overdrive transmission in a running truck. Oh, updates on the interior coming soon too.

Wow, lots of little updates on seemingly unrelated pieces right now. Hopefully this means that come summertime all those pieces will fall together. Stay tuned!

At work we’ve been doing some development and marketing for a diesel fuel system manufacturer. They make great performance products for diesel semi trucks as well as pickups. That got me to thinking… what about a Diesel in the ‘71 Suburban?

So I’ve done just a bit of superficial research and it looks like the 6.2 Chevy diesel isn’t computer controlled (so I don’t have to worry about an ECM and a wiring harness, and then the gauges, and then all that other stuff), and the 6.2 will basically bolt up in place of a small block Chevy motor. It will even bolt to the same bellhousing that I have on the TH350 transmission. From what I understand the TH350 will actually work with a diesel motor, but maybe needs a different valve body and torque converter.

So what do you all think? Swap out the 350 for a 6.2 diesel? Better fuel mileage, good durability, good low-end torque for the big Suburban.

AND… I can convert it to run on waste vegetable oil – I can build the American classic truck, travel the country burning WVO for fuel, all while sticking it to Big Oil.

If I do this I’ll have to paint it green work some “Green Machine” graphics onto the side.

This weekend I finally got back in the garage, and back to work on the ol’ 1971 Chevy Suburban. With the cold weather, I’m keeping the garage door closed while I work, which means I can’t move parts around and really spread out like I’d prefer. I did manage to clear out enough room to work though…

The real problem I have, is that in this normal two-car garage, I’ve got the giant Chevy Suburban, and all my canoes and kayaks (a 21′ surf ski, two 18′6″ race canoes, a 16′6″ touring canoe and my older son’s 14′ kayak), and the whole family’s bikes (two of mine are up at the office to make more room), and all my tools. And then the lawn tools — good lord, the lawn tools. If those don’t take up a ton of space, nothing does. Put all of that together, and it’s a lot of stuff for a normal sized garage. I guess I shouldn’t complain. I’m lucky enough to have acquired all this stuff, which is sort of a blessing, even if I don’t have enough room to store it all (but geez, the lawn tools… I don’t even like working on the lawn).

So back to the Suburban… about six months ago I left off working on the right quarter panel. I got the tail light section fitted in, and the wheel-arch pretty much ready to go as well. The last piece to wrap that section up was the lower section, behind the wheel. My plan was to shape and fabricate this part out of some left-over pieces of sheet metal, but I decided to go the easy route, and buy the section from LMC Truck. Here’s what it looks like:

It looks like a well-made part. Shipping from LMC was super-fast, as usual. The fit of the part was a totally different story though. Here’s what this section looks like in place:

You can see that the flat section on the rear is much, much wider than the sheet metal actually on the Suburban. I was afraid of this, as I had the same problem with the tail-light panel (see my post on Tail Light Repair Panel Shennanigans). Here’s another look at it:

You can see that the gap is pretty significant. Luckily the tail light panel is complete from top to bottom… I can just cut the tail light section off of the lower panel. A little measuring… a little cutting… a little welding… and the right quarter is essentially done.

After making some rough measurements, I start cutting, and that’s where the title of this post comes in. Into Retirement — that’s where my air compressor is going. If you want to truly test a man’s patience, put him to work with an air saw or a cutoff wheel, and a compressor that can’t keep up.

I don’t blame the compressor really… I bought this old 30 gallon Craftsman compressor when I was probably 18, maybe younger. Honestly, I am amazed it’s lasted this long. I’ve used DA sanders, cutoff wheels, even sandblasters with it, knowing full well that it couldn’t keep up. But I’ve kept pushing it. I’ve painted several complete cars with it, lots and lots of car parts, some airplane parts, a couple of canoes, a bunch of bike frames, a motorcycle, and lots of other miscellaneous stuff with it. I’ve used it to run the impact wrench on countless lug nuts. I should have known that working on this beast of a Suburban would finally drive it into permanent retirement.

I don’t think the pump cylinder really has much compression left in it. It just takes –f–o–r–e–v–e–r– to fill this tiny tank, and with an air saw, I am only getting a few seconds of run-time anyway before the motor kicks back on.

So as much as I really wanted to make good progress this weekend… I didn’t. And now I’m shopping for a new air compressor. That means once I do pick one out, I’ll have to get it all set up in my garage, which means I’ll have lost another half a day of Suburban time. I’m just hoping that a new compressor will help me work that much faster.

It has been nearly 6 months since I last posted, and we’re in the middle of winter now (so the garage is cold). I’ve had a nice Dayton space heater sitting, still boxed up, in my garage for about three years now, just waiting for installation. This heater runs on a 220v circuit, which is what’s prevented me from setting it up to this point. My breaker panel is in the basement, in the farthest corner of the house so it means running 100+ feet of romex, installing a new circuit breaker, etc. etc. Well I finally broke down and did it… and the heater works great.

Now the garage (and the Suburban) is toasty and warm, just waiting for some activity. But where did the last six months go? Well to my throngs of loyal blog followers, here’s what I’ve been up to for the past 6-months…

Back in July, I was preparing for this bout… I was the main event at a fight show at the Atomic Cowboy (not a clue how I ended up the main event). I’m the one in red…

Then we did a little night time orienteering the kids and one of their friends…

Then back in the ring at the Ringside World Championships in KC…

The ring doctor decided that the blood and the broken nose was enough reason to not let me keep fighting…

From the ring to the river — after Ringside I did a little training to get ready for the Race For the Rivers. My only canoe race of the season so far…

And while I was in a paddling state of mind, T and I prepared for the Chicago River Flatwater Classic. To get my paint and bodywork fix, I decided to restore our old Wenonah WWXX racing canoe. Here’s the before and after (below in grey is us at the Flatwater Classic two years ago, the blue-green is this year)…

While in Chicago we did a little vacationing…

On race day Taylor hammered… he’s a much stronger paddler every time we go out…

And we took 1st place again in the Adult/Child division…

At that point I couldn’t get paddling off my mind, so I bought Twogood Mako surf ski from former Olympian Mike Herbert…

I just needed a fast ski to round out my fleet…

Things have been busy at work this year in general, then a big project for Bud Light came up, so there were a lot of late nights building these kiosks for the Port Paradise III cruise…

We got to install three of these kiosks on each of two gigantic cruise ships…

While we were at it, we got to visit a bit of the Bahamas…

On top of that, I helped the St. Peters Boxing club turn this pile of steel…

Into this heavy bag rack for their new gym location…

So that’s pretty much it. Oh, and T started Junior High and was on the cross country team this fall, while still boxing. E started Kindergarten this year and he’s in wrestling now too. And now it’s the holidays so the weekends have been busy with family and friends.

Soon, very soon, I’ll be back to work on the Suburban. I’ve been inventorying my parts and doing a little audit of the work I’ve done so far. I think the next step is to continue on finishing up the right-side quarter. I’m definitely in the market for a clamshell tailgate instead of the barn doors I have on the Sub now, so let me know if you know of any for sale.

I expect to get a new post up with some actual progress, pretty soon. Stay tuned!

It’s been a busy summer. Lots and lots going on, so I’m trying to sneak a day or two away here and there to work on the 1971 Chevy Suburban redux. The right quarter panel has been time consuming, to say the least. I have new sheet metal for much of it, but other parts aren’t available for the Suburbans of this era, just for the same age pickup trucks and Blazers. That means lots of custom cutting, welding and fabrication.

After removing all of the rusted out sheet metal from the exterior wheel arch, I was surprised that there wasn’t more cancerous rust. After closer inspection however, I found that the inner wheel arch, at the rear, was very, very thin — thin enough to push through it with my bare fingers. So I start trimming away the rust, little by little, and all the sudden, I’ve got a great big gaping hole, and I didn’t have a pre-fab patch panel to fill it. Luckily I’ve kept healthy scraps of metal that I’ve cut from other parts of the truck.

Below you can see photos of where I cut, bent, and welded in three separate pieces of scrap metal to rebuild this section of the wheel well.

One thing I’m a little unsure of though (and I’m open for input here), is originally there was an access hole back there, that was about 1″ in diameter. I’m debating whether I want to add that back in or not. It was clear that the hole, even plugged with a rubber plug, was a major source of moisture and rust. Anyone know if this needs to be there for some reason? Seems like I could just run an access hole in from inside the cargo area if I needed to…

The rest of my time has been spent modifying a Chevy C10/K10 pickup truck bedside patch panel to fit on the ‘71 Suburban. The length is different, and there’s no edge where the quarter panel folds into the rear door opening. Surprisingly lots of other little fit issues as well.

First thing I did was cut the patch panel’s height down, so that I wasn’t welding a seam onto the crown of the curve in the shoulder area of the quarter. I used a masking tape line as my guide…

Then cut the patch panel, and the existing quarter panel to match…

Next I cut the panel to length, tack welded it into place, and started gently folding the metal into the door opening with a hammer and dolly. I did cut relief cuts all along the edge at roughly 1″ intervals…

After my door opening was roughly to shape, I removed the panel and went to work shaping up the crease. With masking tape as a visual guide, I massaged the sheet metal with a hammer and various dollies until I got the crease pretty much where I want it…

After again test-fitting the panel, I clamped it into place with vice-grips, and put a tiny tack weld on each of my relief cuts on the inner edge. Here’s an interesting note… in the photo below, you’ll see flat black finish on the lower door opening and on the inner rocker panel. That’s POR-15. Well after nicking it several times with a grinder, I didn’t grind through it to bare metal. And… even with pretty decent penetration with those tack welds on my relief cuts, the POR-15 seems unscathed. It’s definitely rock-hard, durable stuff…

Tack-welds in place, I peeled the panel off again, and finished up all of the welds. Then I ground them down until reasonably smooth….

Clamped the panel back in place, and we’re in pretty good shape. The door gap is nice and straight. Inevitably there’s some warpage and distortion where I made the crease, but it’s not bad, and should not require much body filler to get it perfectly smooth…

The gap at the rear of the patch panel is a little bit larger than I would have liked, but not bad enough that I’m worried about it. Should be no big deal to get it welded up, filled, and shaped nicely…

And that pretty much gets us up to date. Next weekend I hope to get the tail light section cut out and the patch panel welded in. And I’m fabricating the lower quarter myself out of some scrap panels, which could get interesting since there’s a big compound curve at the very back, and I don’t have any real metal shaping equipment. It’ll be an adventure .