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…

I’ve got some work to catch up on at the office this weekend, but the weather’s supposed to be pretty nice, and if I can squeeze some time out in the garage, I’m gonna. Last weekend was great too, and I did manage to get a few things done.

Last week I mentioned that I got new wheels and tires. I got two of them mounted to the rear axles, and they look pretty good. I had cleaned and painted, and replaced a couple of gears in that GM 14-bolt semi-floater several months ago, and the only thing remaining was getting brake lines bent and connected.  Last weekend I did manage to get that done, so the rear axle is really ready for gear oil, and install. Now I can set that one aside until I’m ready to put it all back together.

I still need to rebuild the front axle. it’s a 3/4 ton GM 10-bolt front end. I have bet to pop the cover on it, so I hope the gears are all good. I’ll probably go through the same rebuilding process with the front that I did with the rear eventually, replacing bearings and seals, all the brake hardware, and putting a nice coat of POR-15 on it. That’ll probably come in the next few weeks. Here’s a shot of the 10-bolt axle:

I actually had a hard time confirming that this was a 10-bolt axle. It looks similar to a Dana 44, and most of the pictures and diagrams online show the differential cover as a pretty rounded shape. Mine looks like this, with a flat spot on the upper right:

Anywho, that’s gonna need some work, and I’ll get to that soon.

What I’ve also done in the meantime though, is remove and sell the Dana 44 and the HO72 rear-end from under the Suburban. Those were 4.10 gears, and just not what I wanted on for a highway truck. With limited parts available for the HO72, I figured it’d be easier to just swap the axles out entirely. the new ones have 3.23 gears… and that should get me good fuel economy.

Here’s a pic of T pumping the cherry picker to get the Dana 44 lifted up and in the back of my pickup:

Any now the Suburban is completely immobile:

The only other big news from last weekend is about the interior… I got a new one, from a late-model Chevy quad-cab pickup. The rear seats appear to be flip and fold just like in the Suburbans, so these ought to work perfect:

It’s the nice dark-grey velour, with the center jumpseat that folds into a console. This’ll give me 6 seats in the first two rows, and I’m thinking I’ll make some fold-up jump seats in the cargo area, rather than the third full bench.

All of that stuff’s going into storage this weekend though — the seats, the axles, the wheels, and the miscellaneous body parts that have been cluttering up my garage. This weekend I’ll tear down the front clip, and start preparing to pull the engine, tranny and transfercase. The SB 350 is got to go to make room for a 6.2 GM diesel from an ‘89 Blazer. We’ll see what kind of progress I can make this weekend.

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!

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!