Beelzeburb, The Story More Than a Decade in the Making

[low'n slow]

Take a full size shovel. If you wonder why, take one of those folding shovels and dig a hole with it. You'll soon realize they look cool but aren't worth spit when you have a lot of dirt to move.

[72blazer_mud_bogger]

awesome thread

[Nothinghead]

Well, it took me several hours to get here, but I finished your entire build. Pretty crazy stuff! Awesome looking truck. I can't wait to see the interior and body play out.

[Beelzeburb]

Originally Posted by low'n slow

Take a full size shovel. If you wonder why, take one of those folding shovels and dig a hole with it. You'll soon realize they look cool but aren't worth spit when you have a lot of dirt to move.

Aha, you must never have seen me wield one of these 3 lb 1960s surplus German Army folding beauties before.





Those cheap Wal-Mart / REI / Cabelas folding “shovels” have nothing on these fine, solid pieces of equipment. The length of the handle combined with the nice, hefty weight makes for a truly excellent chopping / scooping / digging implement. I actually have used these to dig very big holes in sandy soil as well as clay and even goopy mud when out stuck somewhere too.

Originally Posted by 72blazer_mud_bogger

awesome thread

Well thank you.

Originally Posted by Nothinghead

Well, it took me several hours to get here, but I finished your entire build. Pretty crazy stuff! Awesome looking truck. I can't wait to see the interior and body play out.

Cool, glad you made it through. I guess it does make for a long read in its entirety so far. I was recently trying to make a quick overview explanation, flying through all the pages here and it still took me 10 minutes. There will of course be plenty more to come eventually though, what with all the appearance improvements and creature comforts that still need taken care of.

Well, by now I suppose another update is in order. I was invited by board member 1legance to do a little wheeling in the Kingman, AZ area with some older 4x4s last month. We were planning to have three 67-72 4x4 burbs all in one spot (together with Mosesburb from the forums here), but 1legance couldn't make it at the last minute because of some kidney stones. Before we get into an overview of that trip though, perhaps I should cover some of the small improvements that took place in the month beforehand.

In anticipation of encountering unknown terrain, I finally added a simple transfer case skidplate.



I had a few laying around, and this one seemed to contour closely with my existing crossmember. I do need to take it back off eventually and heat/bend the other half so that it can be held on with more than two bolts at the front. I'll clean and paint it then too.

Another small, but important improvement involved adding those '73-'80 front tow hooks I mentioned a while back. I mocked up their positioning with the front bumper in place and very carefully measured a number of times, making certain each one was in the same spot and would at least clear the Big Bubba. Then I used a center punch to mark the holes that needed to be drilled. Lastly, they were secured with some mile long, 5/8” diameter bolts. Now I have solid recovery points both front and rear.



This year I finally ponied up the cash and bought a Caster/Camber gauge. Should pay for itself pretty quickly now that I can do my own alignments on the 4 vehicles I have currently. This way I was finally able to measure the actual caster on the Suburban instead of just the installed angle of the axle. Turns out I was only running 2° positive with those shims on the front axle, so out they came. Doesn't seem to have made any difference in steering feel though.

Another minor fix was necessary when the intake manifold bolt I'd taken out and gooped up with thread sealer a while back started weeping coolant again. This time it got a hefty wrapping of Teflon tape together with more thread sealer goop and hasn't been a problem since. An additional engine bay modification / fix was necessary on the driver side inner fender. I had been noticing for some time now that it rubbed and/or impinged on a couple of items. Out it came, and with a ball-peen hammer, then some light hammer and dolly work I created extra clearance for both the transmission cable shift linkage and the power steering lines. Now I could finally shift the transmission into 2nd gear, but there's still some more pounding and adjusting to do before it will engage manual 1st. The last bit of exterior work was another round of bleeding the rear brakes which brought them back to normal again.

Moving on to the interior, I cleaned up the grime that had built up on the white paint and the gray vinyl pieces inside during the many years the Suburban sat around in various states of disassembly. I also reinstalled all of the door and interior panels along with the front arm rests. The kick panel leg vents went back in too, which has helped keep my legs warmer during what is left of the cold weather. Those two things knocked down the interior noise level quite a bit. There still isn't any carpet, sound deadener mat, heat insulation or headliner though, so it isn't exactly “quiet” inside. Oh, and I also bolted the Halotron extinguisher's mount directly to the transmission hump so that it is in a very easily accessible and highly visible area.



Now I want to get a 10lb unit for the rear too.

Time for a quick overview of the trip down to Kingman and back. It was planned to be a short Saturday and Sunday outing around the Hualapai mountains. I left home on Friday afternoon with approx. 610 miles on the rebuilt drivetrain. On the freeway between here and Vegas I kept the speed at around 80 mph which put the RPMs at about 2500. I also kept my foot down for the grades and spent plenty of time with the torque converter clutch disengaged while traveling uphill which raised RPMs even more. Still, the transmission temperature never exceeded about 185° despite the external temperature climbing higher the closer I got to Vegas. That driving style didn't lend itself to fuel economy though, as my first fill up yielded 9.3mpg. I was expecting the Suburban to be more of a handful handling-wise in a crowded place like Vegas. It wasn't though. It took corners just as fast as everyone else, could keep up with traffic no problem and really has excellent road manners. It tracks perfectly straight if you let go of the steering wheel, and the visibility is great with all that glass too.

Saturday morning I met up with Nick's family (mosesburb) in his orange Burb as well as Mike and Melissa who are a forum member & his wife from over at Expedition Portal. They'd put together this trip and were piloting a '71 F250. We ventured out after breakfast, were on the trail (with periodic stopping points) until the afternoon when we reached our camping spot. At that point some stormy weather was beginning to make its presence known, so we decided to head on back down the mountain ahead of it. I stayed the night in Kingman again and turned my rig back homeward on Sunday morning. Despite the rockiness of some sections of the trail, the bouncing and a little 4WD action, my Suburban performed flawlessly the whole trip. There were no fluid leaks or drips, no hiccups, no binding or chafing, nothing. I never saw the transmission temperature over 195° even out on the trail, and the engine temp never topped 190. The only casualty was my unsecured inner grill which bounced out on the way back down the mountain. I ran over it without knowing until miles later. Nick was kind enough to pick it up and hand me back the pieces later. I actually zip-tied it into a recognizable shape and threw the thing back in on Sunday morning for the ride home.

Just a couple of pics from the trip:




For the highway jaunt back to Southern Utah, there was no hurry at all. I decided to keep the speedometer at 70 mph (tach at about 2150 RPM and TCC locked the whole way) and enjoy the scenery a little more. Between Kingman, AZ and Mesquite, NV the suburban returned 11.5 mpg. My goal has always been 12 mpg highway, so it seems entirely possible that once the motor is a little more broken in it'll achieve those numbers. Still, for a heavy vehicle with a 4 in. lift, such horrible aerodynamics, 315 section width tires filled to 30 psi and a 454 running 14.5 psi fuel pressure at idle, it did really well in my opinion. In fact, it managed to return better highway fuel economy than a new 454SS 2WD pickup was rated for back in 1990. I finally got the odometer into quadruple digits on the ride home, and it is up to 1,300+ miles so far. I've been driving the Suburban around town quite a bit recently (I get people looking and pointing just about every time), but my mind is still somewhat incredulous that this mass of steel, glass, plastic and rubber that was essentially a large pile of yard art for about 10 years is a vehicle I can hop in, turn the key and go whenever & wherever (within reason) I'd like.

The next little things I'll be taking care of now will be getting the A/C system charged and having the front driveshaft shortened. I'd have liked the ability to switch on the A/C down through the Vegas area the first time. On the way back I actually had the heater on (which works really well by the way) because of that storm which rolled in the night before. Nick was the one who pointed out that my front driveshaft was a little long and that the slip yoke could possibly bottom out, so it'll be at the local Six States soon. Other than that, I might get out and do some light local wheeling / exploring this weekend.

[1985-GMC]

Man those are three awesome looking trucks sitting next to one another!

[jbclassix]

You're running LT285/75-R16 right?

[Beelzeburb]

The old setup was 295/75-R16 BFGoodrich All-Terrains mounted on 16" x 6.5" Dodge steel wheels.
The new setup are 315/75-R16 Mickey Thompson Baja ATZs on 16" x 10" Wheel Vintiques Steelies.

[thirdstreettito]

Updates?

[Beelzeburb]

Originally Posted by thirdstreettito

Updates?

They'll be coming soon hopefully. Been getting ready for a really important, non Suburban related event. Having new adventures and fun in the 'burb all along though.

[Beelzeburb]

Okay, seems I left off back in April with a quick summary of the Arizona Old Iron run. Well, plenty has happened since then. In that post I mentioned that the Suburban might be exploring a little of the local area soon. That weekend my then girlfriend / now fiancé (see, really important and non-Suburban related event coming up) and I hopped in and drove out to the tiny town of Lund, then beyond, into the mountains in search of some managed herds of wild horses. Unfortunately, we didn't find any of the Sulphur Springs herds but there were plenty of snaky dirt roads and the old Arrowhead mine.



I did find this fun sand hill to play on.



We tried following this sign that pointed the way to something called “Pinto Spring”



Which turned out to be a horse trough.



When we were turning back to head home, the Suburban began to manifest a funny hesitation and/or misfire every so often, but other than that it drove fine. Once home, the whole vehicle was absolutely full of dust. I had to open all the doors and blow it out with compressed air. Now I know why mosesburb had all of the small openings on his Suburban covered with masking tape.

A short while later a blind old man backed into my Suburban in a grocery store parking lot while I was waiting for the truck in front of me to back out. How do you miss seeing an 18' long, 7' tall, 6000lb lump of SUV?



After that I didn't drive it very often because there wasn't much time to investigate the misfire problem fully. Plus, I was kinda bummed about that huge crease in the side. Instead I drove one of my other two registered and road legal vehicles, but then they all developed their own difficulties (clutch hydraulics went out in one and the CTS failed in another, making the ECM think it was -45 degrees out and flooding the engine until it stalled). Frustrated with them, I started driving the Suburban again. I did find a little time to push most of the dent out from the inside with a big pry-bar.

Later on I exhausted a few easy to test theories regarding the persistent engine stumble, but no insights came until late one night on my way back home. I decided to try an old trick I'd read about online. In the middle of nowhere I pulled off the highway, opened the hood and shut off the headlights. Looking closely I repeatedly revved the engine and watched the spark plug wires. The passenger side seemed perfectly fine, but once my attention was on the driver side I could see crossfiring and grounding happening.

The next morning I swapped out plug wires #1 and #7, then took it for a test drive where it didn't stumble anymore. Looks like next time I need to order some plug wires with better angled ends.

At the beginning of July I took my fiancé and her brother on a quick overnight camping trip. The Suburban was loaded up with all of our supplies and we set off toward the mountains. I love that such resources exist only 15-20 minutes from my house.



Nice little trips like that were pleasant, especially because they involved heading into higher elevations. Nearer the end of the month however, I had a family reunion scheduled on the east border of Zion National Park. It gets plenty warm there in the middle of July. After months of having it on my to-do list, I finally took the Suburban in to get the A/C system charged. Oh how lovely it is now to have cold air blowing in the summer heat.

Family reunion time! We loaded up the Suburban with our clothes, some guns, a skeet thrower, fishing poles, bikes, chairs and food then drove straight to Zion. It was a hot and muggy day, just between big thunderstorms. The temperatures varied from the high eighties to nearly in excess of 100 °. Despite having the A/C on full blast, climbing switchbacks and needing to idle for extended periods of time while waiting to travel through some tunnels, the engine temperature never once exceeded 200°. It normally stays right at 180°. The air conditioning was just adequate enough for us in the front seat. Keep in mind that there isn't any carpet on the floor or sound insulation or heat barriers anywhere in the vehicle. Oh, and it only has the factory installed green window tint. I can see that if there had been back seat passengers that they wouldn't have felt any effects from the cool air though.

While at the reunion, my Grandfather asked if he could use the Suburban to ferry family up to where we had set up to do skeet shooting, so all of my uncles who had ridden in and learned to drive with their '72 Suburban from post #183 got to ride in mine. I saw some more pictures of the '72 when they had a DVD presentation of old family slides that night too.



I didn't take time to use the Suburban for exploring the back roads around the ranch where we stayed. Had too much fun running them on ATVs instead. On the way back from the reunion, the Suburban continued to run cool in the sweltering weather.



Even coming up the 'black ridge' on Interstate 15 in the middle of the day, neither the transmission or engine got hot.

Later that week I visited another '67 - '72 Suburban in town. Part of the wedding plans involve holding the reception in my Mom's backyard. She and I have visited every single nursery in a 70 mile radius to pick out just the right plants for the occasion. Pulling out from one of the nurseries in town, I spotted a familiar shape on a hill right across the street. It was a '69 or '70 Suburban that I'd lost track of about five years ago.



During my freshman year of college, I ran across a girl driving it through a grocery store parking lot at the same time I happened to be driving mine. We of course stopped to chat. She was nearing completion of a nursing program if I remember correctly, and the Suburban had been in her family for quite a while. We each shared some 'burb stories, but I saw less and less of that particular Suburban in the coming years. Now, the license plate tags have been expired for about seven trips around the sun but it still looks good from a distance. I checked it out for a minute and the thing is very original inside and out. 350, TH350 and no A/C. My own Suburban would have looked pretty similar to it when they were both new.

This last weekend we actually went back to Zion. The $25 National Park entry pass is good for seven days, so we decided to make good use of it and do some hiking. After a hot day in the sun and then cooling off in the river we made a side trip to an old ghost town I'd visited as a kid. The place is called Grafton and it was founded around 1862 but hasn't been inhabited since 1944. There never were even 120 people living there at any one time. The light was pretty spectacular when we arived though.




There's also a neat little cemetery a short ways off with headstones that contain inscriptions like “Killed by Indians”.



So there you have it, our adventures since April. The Suburban now shows 2,500 miles on the odometer and the last tank of mixed city/highway driving yielded 10 mpg.

[jbclassix]

Those are awesome pictures man! I am so jealous!

[Beelzeburb]

Originally Posted by jbclassix

Those are awesome pictures man! I am so jealous!

Well thank you.

Here's one from our picnic spot this evening.

[hgs_notes]

Nice pics and story. Beautiful scenery. I'm hoping I can finish a few more items off my punch list so I can do a road trip in my C-10 yet this year. Back when I was in the navy I drove it from MN to Idaho and back again, in the winter, through the mountain passes. This was back before the days of digital cameras, and it wasn't all that unusual to see these trucks still used as daily drivers and work trucks.

[exoticmetalworx]

uh you just killed any hopes on any one posting any pictures they ever thought were mere good

[mosesburb]

Looks like some good times!! Glad you are finally getting to use it. I would imagine the "to-do" list is growing with every trip. I know my list still grows after trips, then I'll update/modify whatever, the list shrinks, then another trip re-populates it. It is kind of never ending.
Glad to see it out and about. Looks alot better on the trail than in the shop.

[DirtyLarry]

Great thread, Beelzeburb. I don’t know how I missed this thread before but the other night I stumbled upon it and read it from beginning to end. WOW, great work and even neater that you have stuck with this project through thick and thin while balancing life, school and work. Great trucks are not built over night. I am also sorry to hear about the loss of your dad. I lost mine about a year after you lost yours although my dad was 20 years older (65), still too young to go. I can relate with the cleaning up his shop, etc. Been through that myself.

Hopefully someday, you and Mosesburb and I can take a trip somewhere around UT or AZ.

Keep up the good work!

Subscribed!

[jbclassix]

Any updates?

[Beelzeburb]

Thanks DirtyLarry! It'd be great to get together some day for a trail ride. I've read many of your trip reports and buildups myself and you do some great work.

Originally Posted by jbclassix

Any updates?

Just one or two, nothing too exciting.

I have been quite busy. Last year I got married and decided to put an end to my rambling, freelance work style. Eventually I settled into a fulltime position at a company in my particular field. Still living in the same town with the same great scenery all around. Then winter came. Two weeks before I got hitched, I sold my daily driver Jeep XJ to help fund the honeymoon. For six months now, the Suburban has been my regular use vehicle. Only very recently have I been riding my bike to work now that the weather is warm. No, not my 49cc Honda Z50 (though that would be kinda awesome to license and ride), just a vintage Huffy 18 speed.

Last fall I spotted a single 35x12.5 tire mounted to an aluminum 16.5” Centerline wheel on Craigslist. It was 50 miles down the road, but my Mom was going to be in that area, so she paid the man $20 and brought it back to town. Now I've got a fullsize spare which is never a bad idea.



I managed to take care of one or two small issues last fall. I wrote in post #210 about some spark plug wires that I'd routed badly and temporarily bypassed. I did wind up ordering some new wires with 45˚ angled plug ends to replace my 90˚ ones on the driver's side of the motor. I got a universal kit and purchased a vice mount crimper to get the lines the exact length I wanted. This was the worst of the old wires:



No wonder it hadn't been running right. At the same time I also discovered another culprit. The vacuum hose to my MAP sensor had rotted away at the ends so I replaced it with better quality material.

All winter long I've driven the Suburban through sleet, snow, salt and muck. I absolutely love the Mickey Thompson tires. They never feel squirrelly in deep puddles or slick slush. The nearly 50/50 weight distribution on Suburbans is also great in the slippery stuff. Even my brakes seem nicely balanced when traction is limited. During the worst storms I never felt uncomfortable driving at reasonable speeds. Many people here freak out in snowstorms and drive 20 mph no matter the actual road conditions. I can never bring myself to do that but try to maintain a good distance from others and always wind up passing those slow pokes because they seem so frighteningly unpredictable. I tried driving my 240Z one day on unsalted roads, but with the manual trans, revvy motor and summer tires it was all over the place (which was fun in its own way). I did go out with the Suburban and do some doughnuts in a big box store's parking lot a few times this winter. The engine's torque makes for very lazy, relaxed revolutions.

I'm not afraid of a little snow. Sometimes I wish it were a little deeper and more of a challenge.

Its the salt I have a problem with. It keeps making my rusty stuff rustier and my non rusty stuff is now becoming all orange and oxidized.

The Suburban only let me down once this winter. There was a nasty cold spell for about a week. I had to leave for work at 5:45 a.m. and on this particular morning it happened to be -10˚F (overnight low of -16˚F). The Suburban absolutely refused to start. The starter would spin the motor and it coughed but never ran. I tried different approaches in vain for 20 minutes (jumper cables from my wife's running car, starter fluid, etc...) but eventually had to get a ride from a coworker. Daytime temps were still single digit, but I did manage to get it to start later in the week by holding the throttle wide open while cranking. After that I installed a battery blanket and purchased a block heater incase I need to put one in in the future. About a month later the Suburban started up just fine when the temperature was 0˚F with just a turn of the key and nothing more, so it may have simply been a fluke. Other than that one instance, it has been dead reliable.

There you have it, most of the stuff that we've been up to since my last post. One other thing I did do was take my wife out for a little wheeling in the rocks from post #188. I put a little dent in the gas tank, bent an ear on the hitch chain loop and tested my transfer case skidplate, but nothing at all serious. I also still get people occasionally who come out of the blue to talk to me about the Suburban. I left work one day to find a couple in a minivan taking photos of it in the parking lot. We wound up chatting for a while about our individual project vehicles and how cool older Suburbans are. I pulled up alongside a lifted square body 'burb with tube bumpers a few weeks ago and we each called out to the other about how we dug each other's rides.

Now we need to plan some summer trips. The Suburban only has 4,000 miles on the odometer and is ready to be packed up with supplies for some wheeling. Hopefully it'll soon be time to break out the maps again...

[Beelzeburb]

A few things I forgot to include in my last post:

I did take one little trip in the Suburban around Thanksgiving with my new bros-in-law. We headed out to an abandoned mine and disintegrated an old tube TV and a few other targets with some choice handguns and assault rifles. I snapped one low quality pic of the Suburban with my cell phone.



I also bought some new parts and installed them not too long ago. I've had my horn wire disconnected for a while because it completes the circuit when the wheel is turned. With the steering wheel off, I had noticed that the plastic turn signal switch innards had cracked in one or two spots. It seemed like a good candidate for replacement, plus that flex in the old switch could be a contributing factor toward my inadvertent audible alerts, so I bought a new switch and carefully wiggled it into place.



Unfortunately, that didn't help. My newest theory is that the backside of the cracked, 40+ year old steering wheel is so sun damaged and warped that it makes contact with the turn signal stalk screw at certain points while turning the wheel. I even tried filing down the head of that stalk screw but it didn't help. I just need a new wheel instead.

In that same parts order I received my new repro inner grille and grille fastener set. Last weekend I popped the pieces of the old one out. Some of the zip-ties had succumbed to UV damage and it was only held firmly to the outer grille by one remaining band of black nylon.



In with the new:



There, now I'm up to date. Well, then today when I get home a new AC Delco coil should be waiting on the doorstep.

[Beelzeburb]

Coil didn't solve anything. Checked all spark plugs and they look decent. One did smell like fuel, so I'll look into that plug and plug wire more later.

Bigger news: I put the Suburban to work and got to tow something!

I've switched over to working on my 1970 Datsun 510 lately. A common suspension modification involves switching out the front struts for beefier 280ZX units, so I've been on the lookout for a set of complete ZX spindles. Even better than just some strut assemblies though, I found a whole parts car a little less than two hours away.



The Suburban pulled it fine, despite the car not having a windshield and the closed rear hatch acting as a giant air brake. The engine temperature never exceeded 210 degrees, and the A/C blew cold the whole way up despite ambient temperatures above 95 degrees. My wife was watching the transmission temps with the COMPUSHIFT controller on the way back when we came to steep grades. It never got above 220 during long hills in 4th with the torque converter out of lockup. On the longest and steepest mountain pass, the highest the controller indicated was 248 for a minute while climbing in 3rd gear. Meanwhile the fuel gauge needle sank alarmingly fast. Tranny fluid still looked and smelled good after the trip.

Last week I finally got around to wiring in the trailer brake controller from my Grandfather's '88 C3500. Its a 90s vintage Tekonsha 2030 Mark 12 unit.



It did the job just fine. I'd pulled the lighter 510 around town on the same trailer before adding the controller and the difference in braking performance is well worth anything necessary to have it.

Previously I had already taken care of all the 7 way trailer wiring itself. The Tekonsha is powered from the '88 distribution block, through a 20 amp circuit breaker, and the auxiliary power to the trailer is done the same way, just run through a larger circuit breaker then routed up, inside the a-pillar, along the roofline and back down through the rear pillar to the trailer connector behind my license plate.



Now I'm all set to tow whatever comes my way in the future.

[Mr Pops]

Love all the pics!

[Beelzeburb]

Let's see... When we last left off I had replaced the coil on the off chance that it would help the intermittent stumble the engine had. It also gave me a good spare for the future. The engine's symptoms were as follows: when it was warm, at low RPMs there was a stumble on acceleration but it ran fine at higher RPMs. When the engine was cold it ran great. In my mind there were two possibilities, mechanical and electrical. The engine computer never logged any error codes that would have been related to a failure on its part. I had made sure that the spark plug wires were routed better where they couldn't rub and had less likelihood of crosstalk. I had even begun to add extra insulation to critical system wires in case they were getting interference from their proximity to the spark plug wires themselves.

Then, while traipsing around on a Datsun related website I came across something that hadn't crossed my mind. The chap there was experiencing some coolant seeping out between the head and block. Wait.... the head gaskets on my Suburban! I had never bothered to re-torque them! Oh how silly, how simple. Wait, could it really be that simple? Was that why the engine was using more oil than seemed normal, despite its good compression numbers?

So I popped off the valve covers. Its actually not a very easy feat. The passenger side one absolutely does not come off unless the rearmost valve spring is in the compressed position. Otherwise there is not enough clearance between it and the firewall. I proceeded to tighten all of the head bolts to 80 ft-lbs in the sequence listed in my 1989 FSM. The ones on the driver's side turned further than the ones on the passenger side. On a trip to the grocery store and around town that night it seemed to be running better, but I figured a longer test drive was in order.

This past weekend we took a trip into the mountains to find some fall colors. Turns out it was a good thing we did it on Saturday, because this morning there is snow on that same mountain.









Tried to make a gif of the quaking aspens using multiple shots from my DSLR.



The Suburban ran just like it is 'supposed' to the whole time with nary a hint of stumble present anymore. I love it when my mechanical contraptions just plain ol' work right.

[hgs_notes]

Always good when the fix is simple and you figure it out before the big time/money investment is made. Cool GIF!

[y5mgisi]

Very pretty pictures! Glad to hear its running right also!

[Cobalt964ruf]

nice burb.