Impressed with our Burb!

[RDrancher]

Thank you!

I won't lie, I'm pretty happy and feel blessed to finally be able to do this. I've wanted a lowered Chevy for 17 years, but it didn't fit what I needed for work, or the budget and sometimes both.

[rusty76]

I understand completely

[jasonroman]

are you still getting the 15x6?
if so, how long till they arrive and what size tires are you going with ?
i have stock 15x6 and wondering if there are any good size tires i can put on if i ever get this thing dropped or if i should just keep looking for 8 or 10 inch rally wheels.
found a set here in jersey. but didn't drop truck yet so not sure if i should get wheels and tires before lowering it.

[RDrancher]

I got a wild hair and went with 15x7's. I would have used the 6" wheels if they would have sent me four that were matching. I had the tires mounted and picked them up this afternoon. 225/75 for the front and 235/75 for the rear. You can also run either of these sizes on stock 6" wheels. I should have them mounted on the Burb this weekend and I'll take some pics.

[RDrancher]

I got the new tires and wheels mounted up this morning. The chrome valve caps in the pics are long gone.





The old Kellys that were on the Burb when I bought it are a ton wide than any other 235/75's I've seen before, including the new skins.

[68Timber]

Too cool! If it were me I'd run the spinners, I like them.

[RDrancher]

Originally Posted by 68Timber

Too cool! If it were me I'd run the spinners, I like them.

Thanks! I had the spinners in mind as an option with OEM wheels but I'm a little too impatient to wait for stuff on backorder when I've finally made up my mind to pull the trigger. After a bit of research I found out that Gorilla also made the right size spinners to fit Cragar Delux wheel centers so I went that direction.

[rusty76]

Awesome I am really digging the burb.

[RDrancher]

A couple more pics.

Now that it's running much better and sitting pretty much the way I want it, the next move is to get the Burb's front end aligned.


The rear bumper is a bit tweaked and lower on the left side. No doubt this had something to do with the dent in that lower quarter panel. The drop accentuates the difference in height so I'll have to address that soon before it drives me crazy.

[rusty76]

Dig your license plate. Lol

[RDrancher]

Yeah, Texas only had vanity YOM plates available during 1985. Standard plates used the year/month stickers. All of the vanity plates I found had weird thicker letters or numbers at random. In this case it was the C and A. I think they chose the wrong prison to get uniform painting.

The cool thing about running YOM plates is that you don't have to have the stupid registration stickers on the windshield. If you look closely there's a small tag affixed on the plate bolt up in the corner that gives the actual registration expiration info.

[rusty76]

That's really cool. Years ago I was digging through some things and found a plate from Delaware. It was from 58 I think, and it has to be the heaviest plate I have ever seen. If it ever fell off a car it would likely go through the windshield. Really cool plate. The words seem to fit the burb.

[RDrancher]

Thanks! I think the word fits the Burb perfectly too. I was pretty stoked just to find plates that didn't have someone's name or nickname on them.

[RDrancher]

The alignment guy called and said that the shaft and bushings on the driver's side upper control joint were too far gone to get decent alignment. So I drove the Burb back home and finally had the time to fix it Friday afternoon. I ended up replacing both uppers (with pre-installed ball joints) since the parts store had them in stock. I hope to have time to get it back in for alignment this week.

It's been driving me nuts not being able to drive this thing around and yesterday afternoon the urge was too strong. So I packed up the wife and kids and headed out to a car show in Bowie some 40 miles away. We were late getting there and only a couple cars were left, so we ended up finding a place to eat on the square and then taking the scenic route back home.

A couple observations...

Since it's not aligned yet the steering pulls to one side a bit, but the CPP shocks and cut front coils ride real nice. The rear rides good mostly, but still needs a little tweaking. Even with 110 lbs of air in the shocks, it still (gently) bottomed out twice during the trip. Granted, both times were on transitions from freshly milled asphalt to concrete bridges in a re-paving construction zone with a full tank of fuel and a bunch of groceries, but still not what I want.

To solve the problem I can either get new rear springs and possibly still have to use 1" lift shackles, or have a notch done...just not sure which one to go with. There are no suburban notch kits available, so I'll have to find someone with better fab skills than mine if i go that route. Locally it's been hard enough finding anyone that knows how to do anything other than change parts and diagnose with a scanner. Where are all the old school guys? It's about the only thing I miss about living in SoCal. Well...that and the weather.

[rusty76]

Keep on keeping. The old guys are still out there. We youngins just end up making do and learn. Lol

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by RDrancher

Where are all the old school guys?

I'm here!; in fact, there's a 50/50 chance I watched your Suburban go down the assembly line.

K

[RDrancher]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

I'm here!; in fact, there's a 50/50 chance I watched your Suburban go down the assembly line.

K

That's cool Keith.

I was pretty surprised when the owner of the alignment place told me he would have to do the Burb himself after hours because none of the guys in his four bays know how to do an old school vehicle. I guess I'm getting old, but 1985 still seems like "new" stuff to me.

[RDrancher]

Nothing exciting to report, just a little fun stuff. I replaced the sticky stock steering wheel with a silver 15" California metal flake wheel from Mooneyes. I gained an inch or so of arm extension compared to the stocker which is much appreciated. I originally purchased a blue flake wheel, but it has kind of a violet pearl shade to it and the interior already has about 20 different shades of blue going on. Adding another was a bit much. While I was at it I replaced the chrome bullet door locks with a set of billet pieces and put on a matching billet shift knob and tilt column stock/knob. A billet turn signal knob was also included in the package, but I won't be using it since our Burb has cruise control.

[rusty76]

I dig those wheels exclusively. Metal flake steering wheels are totally kool.

[DZL1]

Very cool Burb!

[RDrancher]

Thanks folks!

We had a great Resurrection Sunday yesterday and I got a little seat time in the Burb, but of course I wanted more. Woke up this morning to rain with more on the way. Whoo-hoo! My jobsites were too wet to work, so I finished up a couple of proposals early, loaded up the wife and little one and headed for a back country cruise.

Hard to see, but just behind the Burb on the edge of the tree line sits an abandoned '64-'66 shortbed fleetside.


The road followed the property and when I was trying to locate the fleetside from the other side through the trees, I see this.


Once again, hard to see but behind the 4-door Impala sits a 70's C10 or C20 buried in the trees.


I was going to check things out a bit more, but the skies opened up so I high-tailed it back to the Burb. The house and property look abandoned, but we located the address on the old mailbox so my wife will do some checking and find out the status of all the cool old stuff there.

[rusty76]

Love the pics. Looking good.

[RDrancher]

The wife and I headed out this afternoon for another backroads cruise.

We've been taking pics of old homes, barns and out buildings for quite a few years.


Crossing the highway we stopped to check out this historical marker. I've driven by this one hundreds of times at 70mph and never noticed it before.


A cold front blasted through today and dropped the temps about 20*. We saw several snakes out trying to soak up leftover blacktop heat. This one is about a three and a half foot long chicken snake.


I met the owner of this fine specimen yesterday. He just got it back from the upholstery shop. It has a 502 crate motor under the hood.

[RDrancher]

Hey, I just noticed that my photos are back up. Cool. Not much to update really. My business has been so hectic that I haven't really done much with the Burb. It doesn't look right with the amount of air in the rear shocks that it takes to not bottom out. Gotta get a notch. I did get sick of looking at the peeling black stuff on the wind deflector so I spent some time on Sunday removing it along with the old adhesive. That was fun...not.

When we got the Burb I started collecting old travel decals from the states and places we've been, both the vintage water transfer type and repop vinyl. My plan was to keep on pasting one after another on the deflector until there's no room left and then layer 'em on there after. For some reason the repop folks make the new stickers either larger or smaller than the originals. I don't get it. These are the larger version. I like the idea, but their size doesn't really go with the curve of the deflector so I'm not sure they'll stay. I'll probably try the smaller stickers.

[rusty76]

Cool to see some pics and updates. I’m a sticker junkie. Lol.