1971 Chevy Suburban Redux

Last weekend I picked up my GM 6.2 diesel motor and matching 700r4 transmission. More info and a few photos to come on that. But when I say I’m going green, I mean, literally going green. I was driving through an industrial area in town, and I spotted an old Chevy pickup that had been restored, and it’s just the color I’ve had in mind… I popped in and talked to the guy that built the truck and he was nice enough to give me the paint code. Score!

The color doesn’t translate great on-screen, but it’s a really desaturated green or olive color. This is actually a late-model GM under hood paint code.

Here are a few pics of the truck. Not a lot of long straight panels on this truck, but the doors were STRAIGHT. This truck was slick as glass…

The significance of the date in the title of this post, is that after removing the 1971 front clip, this classic Suburban will never look like at 1971 again. When I put it back together, it’s getting a 1967 front clip. That’s not the topic of this post though… the reason I’m removing the front clip right now, is to make it easier to pull the gasoline powered Chevy small block 350, and replace it with a diesel powered GM Detroit Diesel 6.2 liter engine. Since my garage is small (for a Suburban at least), and since I don’t have any axles under the truck right now, pulling the front clip makes things worlds easier.

Pulling off a front clip on full-framed trucks like this is pretty easy… just a lot of nut and bolt work. My older son even spent some time helping run bolts out with the air ratchet.

The hood came off first…

Then the grill and bumper…

The grill is actually in pretty good shape compared to a lot of these that I’ve seen. The aluminum grill frame isn’t great, but if you were creative, you could fix it probably (which is what I was going to do before deciding to go with the 1967 front clip). The egg-crate grill insert is really nice, with no missing sections, which seems to be a problem with these older inserts.

Moving on, then came the fenders. Most of the nut and bolt work is here — on the fenders. Each fender mounts to the radiator support with several bolts, and to the cab, and to the fender liner. Then, once you’ve got them off, you still have to remove any accessory brackets, and the hood hinges (which I’m doing here)…

The radiator support comes next, but I’ve left that attached for now.

This weekend I’ll pull the radiator support off and get the engine out. I have yet to confirm whether the radiator support for the 1971 is the same as the 1967. I have one from a 1967, but the lower half is rusted out, so I may end up cutting and grafting the two together if I need to.

When I get a chance, I’ll also post some side-by-side comparisons between the 1971 and 1967 Chevy fenders and hood when I get a change. It seems like I see a lot of questions online about interchangeability of these parts.

Otherwise, that gets us pretty caught up. I loaded a bunch of the extra parts into the back of my pickup to get them to storage…

And E helped me move the hood back in the garage for the time being…

He needed to take breaks every few feet, but he’s still a good assistant…

All of the parts from the 1971 Chevy Suburban front clip are for sale, by the way. I’m also going to sell the front fenders from the 1967 front clip. Make me an offer if anyone is interested. None of the parts are perfect, but all of them are workable. If noone wants the 1971 hood, I’ll probably make some wall art out of it… which might be kind of cool…

This weekend the motor and tranny come out, and things will get really interesting. Here’s a little teaser: body-off…

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 .

Earlier this week I polled my friends here at work. I was trying to decide between Cameo white and a classic metallic green. The responses I got included words like “horrific,” “refrigerator” and “murder.” Back to the drawing board now, with 5 color choices. Either way, I’m going with a white roof and grill from a ‘68 Chevy. Submit your opnions… now!

So it’s official, this weekend, the bodywork begins. I ordered some new sheet metal from Raybuck Autobody Parts (www.raybuck.com) this morning: getting a new drivers door skin, new rocker panels for front and rear right side, and a new cab mount for the left. That’s certainly not all the sheet metal I’ll need to get this thing done, but it’s a good start.

And, I gotta say, Raybuck Autobody Parts just got on my “nice” list. Late this afternoon a rep from there called to double check that I was certain that the door skin from a 67-72 Chevy pickup (which is what I ordered) will fit the 67-72 Suburban. He said he thought it would, but his system didn’t give that cross-reference.

Well, I think it does fit, so he’s shipping it. He also mentioned that they have a direct fit right-rear rocker panel that’s not listed on their website. I was going to buy two right-front rockers and just shorten one for use in the rear… but Raybuck just saved me some time and headache.

Obviously the jury’s still out on the quality and fit of their parts, but their customer services has an A+ so far.

Things are gonna get good. Stay tuned.