Suburban is officially under the knife...

[1BadAction]

Ohhh blessed mother of acceleration, please halp me I have officially turned my guy loose on the Burb. It had a "rod knock" that went away when I first drove it. Paint is shot but there is absolutely zero rust on it, and the interior is beautiful. I can do the paint myself but I refuse to put tons of time into another cancer truck. This is when I picked it up.

[1BadAction]

The "rod knock" (if that's what it was) may have went away, but there were some odd issues with oil pressure when driving down the road, good OP, bad OP, then no OP, then good OP again. It still felt very strong, but something just wasn't quite right.

I took it to the only guy whom I trust to work on my stuff, so he could tear the oil pan off and do a little investigating... Long stringy non-magnetic shavings were found in the oil pan. oh ****. I was somewhat expecting this but I was hoping to get lucky, lol. The bottom end, however, appeared to be in good shape, but I knew it had to come out.

Might as well throw some good parts in it while it's being rebuilt, right? My plans were to have a stone reliable, 87 octane torque monster that I could safely tow with. After all, what good is a 3/4 ton burb with a big block if you can't tow a house with it?

Much to the chagrin of the performance community, I am staying with the stock peanut port heads and TBI, which means the stock intake on this GenV 454. However, I have ordered the K11-412-8 266HR full roller conversion kit and a custom chip, as soon as I know if I need to overbore, I'll be picking up Keith Black 12cc dome pistons to bump the compression to around 8.75:1. Basically I will lose some parasitic drag and gain some reliability, driveability, and HP/TQ.

I know I probably could have went a bit more wild with it, but with some tricks during the build it should be a great driving rig. More pics to come.

[1BadAction]

I might just be going with Vortec heads on this, news at 11

[1BadAction]

Oh no, whats this I just scored?!?

[Stoney]

Nice, and clean suburban

[68Timber]

Looks like "mostly stock" went out the window, hate it when that happens. Beautiful truck, btw.

[1BadAction]

I may rein myself back in on the vortec heads and aluminum intake for right now. I ended up getting a thousand dollar surprise on my GMC (tires and brakes) that took a small bite out of the burb funds, but such is life. I can always do a top end later down the road myself. Probably better off that way since I don't want to be paying someone for trial and error fitting of an intake/heads that aren't direct bolt ons.

[sethv]

Very nice interior! Hopefully you get it running normal soon

[1BadAction]

One last thing before the engine comes out of the truck, we're going to check the endplay on the crank. If it is excessive I believe I may need to look at the line pressure on the trans to see if it's to high. This is what came out of the oil pan and I have a feeling it may be part of the thrust bearing.



The beast, not all that clean but doesn't appear to have been screwed with too much.

[SuburbanStevie]

Beautiful condition. it's a '90, 3/4ton, 454 right? I've got a very similar one, even the same color/paint scheme. I had to look twice to see if it was the front of my house?!!! Good luck.

[1BadAction]

Thanks man, it's a 91 3/4 ton with the GenV big block and the 4L80E

You should post up some pics of yours.

[1BadAction]

coming along now

[1BadAction]

Probe 18cc Forged dome pistons are sitting at the house. Hydraulic Roller Cam kit should be here in a week or so along with the Autoprom1 from Moates.net - It's starting to come together and I'm getting geeked.

Block has been torn down with some interesting results. Mains are shot, and the rest of the block looks like it has about 5000 miles on it. Crosshatch looks excellent along with the cam and thrust bearings. Only 2 bolts broke on disassembly, and they both had enough meat to grab with vice grips.





Cause of the noise and the low OP.



Can't believe they didn't spin...


It's all going to be ok, we will build him faster, stronger, and more efficient.

[1BadAction]

Got some goodies down to the builder finally...



Pics do not do these pistons justice, so beautiful it's a shame they're going to be inside the engine.

[dieselmec1993]

Nice truck I just got a burb yesterday just got to go pick it up only needs to have doors put on it
Posted via Mobile Device

[SuburbanStevie]

Hey, I'm back from last month,
Back on Feb. 21st you suggested I post some pics of my Suburban that is strikingly similar to yours. Finally got around to washing off the winter dirt.
Some outside, inside, engine, and Overdrive shots.

Keep us posted on your progress,
Steve

[JPalmer81]

Looks great, i need to find me a burb with good interior. Looking forward to the end result. Good score

[1BadAction]

Originally Posted by SuburbanStevie

Hey, I'm back from last month,
Back on Feb. 21st you suggested I post some pics of my Suburban that is strikingly similar to yours. Finally got around to washing off the winter dirt.
Some outside, inside, engine, and Overdrive shots.

Keep us posted on your progress,
Steve

Thanks for the pics, Steve. Beautiful truck, and great underhood shot, I was wondering how the metal of the air cleaner assembly was finished on these. I'll be repainting mine to try and match that semi-gloss finish.

Engine should be going through the final assembly within the next week or so. I still have a bit of work ahead of me once I get it, tuning, re-looming all the wiring, etc. I can't wait to get back to driving it. Still trying to come up with a plan of attack on the paint, though...

[1BadAction]

One of the other things I would like to look into is the old add-on Delco keyless entry setups. If I could find one, that would be awesome. I lost a lot of my part numbers and links, there was some cool stuff that GM had back in the early to mid 90s. They still come up on ebay once in awhile but it's hard to search without an actual part number.

[JPalmer81]

I know your probably wanting to go OEM on the keyless entry, but LMC sells an aftermarket kit for it as well, if you already didnt know.

[1BadAction]

I have, not sure what I'll do if I can't find a GM one. Ideally I could get one that looks nearly identical to the 90s delco controllers, but has remote start and other goodies on it.

[1BadAction]

Engine is together, pushrod length and rocker location checked (roller cam install requires this) ARP Bolts lubed, sealed, and heads torqued down, sounds like it will be getting primed and ready for install tomorrow. Final compression works out to be about 9.35:1 Calculated volumetric efficiency is going from the low 70s to 91%, which IMO is pretty good for off the shelf parts.

[y5mgisi]

This is going to be one bad ass cruiser. And SuburbanSteive, That burb you have is insanely beautiful.

[1BadAction]

Originally Posted by y5mgisi

This is going to be one bad ass cruiser.

Hopefully, if I can ever collect the parts to finish my so called "complete" cam kit. lol

Anyone need some 3/8" pushrods?

[1BadAction]

Yet another setback with my daily driver. 3rd and OD are shot. I had a core that wasn't blown, that I was planning on doing myself, but it just didn't work out how I was planning on.



Soooo My good core is headed off to Gilbert at Ace racing. It's gettin the full treatment sans billet shafts.



3000rpm stall and a sharp tune should wake the DD up.

Good news on the burb is that the engine is built and back in line so it can be installed, bad news is it will likely be another 2 weeks before that happens. I'm going to go from only having 1/2 of a truck to 2 trucks,