New to the board, 2 suburbans and some other GM goodies

[cal30_sniper]

Hey all,

I've lurked here for quite a while, but I've never actually posted up. Thought y'all might like to see my rides and hear some of my plans for the future.

I've been a suburban owner for nearly 3 years now. I purchased my first burb back in '09 for an all around beater/camper/long-hauler when I was up in Maryland. It turned out to have the extra benefit of being quite the winter bruiser up there.

The first was a '90 GMC R1500 Suburban. I purchased it from the original owner with 260k on the clock. Actually, purchased probably isn't the correct term. I actually traded it for an M1 Carbine, haha. It had a fresh (<500 mile) 350 Goodwrench crate motor, a freshly rebuilt trans, redone brakes, bearings, etc. He had all the work done to it and then ended up buying a new truck to tow his boat back and forth to the lake. I ended up throwing a ton of time and a good bit of money at it over the past two years. I ended up doing a Vortec head and Quadrajet swap on the 350 with a bunch of other goodies. I did a heavy duty buildup on the transmission, full dual exhaust and long tubes, all the coolers, and 1-ton springs with a completely rebuilt front end and air-lift rear air springs. I did all the work myself up at the base hobby shop. The full list of mods and a bunch of pics are up on my cardomain page, http://www.cardomain.com/ride/393062...-suburban-1500.

In the winter of 2009, I jumped behind the wheel and piloted it form West Texas to Annapolis, MD. After that trip it ran all over the eastern U.S., including some really long road-trips to South Carolina, Kentucky, and Toronto. I ended up racking 40,000 miles on the clock before I brought it back down to Texas with me to start grad school. The trip from MD to TX saw it loaded down with 6000 lbs of gear and a 2500 lb boat trailer on the back.


Here's some of my favorite pictures of the old burb from the last few years:


-inaugural test run, Big Bend Ranch State Park, West Texas


-first snow storm, Annapolis, MD


-towing my boat back to Annapolis from Pittsburgh, PA


-fly-fishing trip, Shenandoah River, VA


-Lake Bryan, TX


-the only pics I have of it with the 17" Jeep Wrangler rims and tires. This particular moment happened to be when a flood had about a foot of my front yard under water.

Unfortunately, all good things usually come to an end sooner or later, and with 295k on the clock, I got sideswiped by a kid texting and driving while running a red light. Best as the anyone could determine, he was doing about 50mph in the 35 when he hit me. Spun the old burb completely around and threw it out of the intersection. I gave a quick scan of all the vitals, threw it in reverse, and backed out of the intersection. I drove home that day, he had to be towed out of the middle of the highway where most of his front clip and drivetrain lay scattered about in pieces.

I found her replacement a few weeks ago in the Austin craigslist. It's a 1986 Chevrolet C20 Suburban with 69k original miles. It's got a 454/TH400 with a full factory towing package. Other than that it's bone stock, and one of the best driving old trucks I've ever crawled into. It took me a few days to get all the dirt and doghair cleaned out of it, but when I got done I was very surprised at how clean it was. Here's a few pics:






The front seats and door panels have some sun damage, but other than that it's a pretty clean old truck. I've got some big plans for it in the near future:

-Gear Vendors Overdrive
-Low Stall Torque Converter and Shift Kit + extra capacity trans pan
-RV Transmission cooler
-17x8.5" H2 Rims and 255/75/R17 tires
-SBC Serpentine bracket kit (using all my 350 brackets from the other burb)
-Air Lift Springs and KYB Monomax shocks
-Weiand Street Warrior Intake, Pertronix Ignition components, Comp XE250 cam kit with 1.72:1 Magnum Roller tip rockers
-Full tube heat-coated headers and dual 2.5" exhaust
-Milodon high-flow waterpump and thermostat
and any other random goodies that come my way. My goal is to build the one heck of a Heavy Duty Suburban while still keeping the gas mileage reasonable enough for the long distance trips I love to make. Stay tuned for the build thread.

-cal30_sniper