540 BBC 68 Burb Dually 54" Boggers on Rocks

[68burbanontherocks]

OK so my project has come along way but still has a looong way to go so bare with me and i hope to get plenty of helpful tips!

It started out as a dually burban that i had purchased from an individual in California for 2500 bucks. It seemed like it was too good to be true cause it had a mark IV 454, TH 400, decent trim, dually conversion, and it was the exact body style that i have been looking for for many years now. The problem didn't occur until i tried to register it at the local DMV and it needed a VIN verification however the title had an "error" and one of the numbers was a 6 on the title and was an 8 on the vehicle.

Long story short the person i had purchased the vehicle from had given up trying to register it and the Burb had not been registered since 2003 and the previous owners had both passed away so i was kinda stuck with it. Had to get a paper etching make a lot of phone calls and 6 months later i got my local DMV to press delete once and fix the misprint ha!

Once i had gotten the suburban my initial thought was to make a pro-street style ride so i had a 502 big block Chevy that i for another project that i decided to throw into the Burb and cruse around in that for a little while.

I really liked it but then decided i wanted to make a monster truck, like all little kids i have always been obsessed with monster trucks so i figured now that i could afford to make one id do it. So heres a few pics of its transformation so far.

Its no where near done, Loosing the purple paint, I'm building a tube frame chassis for it (high tech microsoft paint pic!), single triangulated 4 link coil over set up (yes i ditched the gawdy leaf springs), pro fab drop box and am even considering going rear steer with it.

Hope to get lots of tips and criticism on it as the project goes along!

[68burbanontherocks]

So in the pic its got those huge 25" leaf springs, i got them for 500 bucks on ebay. Once i put them on i saw they were wayyy to big/tall, gawdy, stiff, and unstable. So i sold them and i have 18" travel 3.0 king coils now that im going to run which are a huge improvement. 2 1/2 ton rockwells with ouverson engineering 2" violator shafts and ujoints as well as randys pinion brakes. PSC hydraulic steering, high angle driveline 42 degree CV shafts for the front and rear. TH 400 with an NP 205 with twin sticks but again im looking to run a profab/scs drop box.

[68burbanontherocks]

So with the idea to go with dually boggers, i think it was one of those things that sounded better in my head and on paper than it did in real life! Haha, there just really big tires and its literately 80 inches of rubber in the rear! I loved how my Burb was a dually prior to me owning it so i wanted to keep that concept just on a much larger scale. As you can see from the pics they just stick out really wide so i need to figure a way to suck them in without going too far where i start to affect the spring perch location significantly. I can flip the hubs on the Rockwell's in and narrow it that way. Another idea is i could run a front axle in the rear and cut it by 7" inches and run 2 short stub shafts and it would also put the center chunk in-line with the rear drive shaft.

The wheels them self are built by John Staszak at Stazworks LLC. Awesome dude!! just takes him a little while to get your product out, but is definitely well worth the wait! The idea we came up with for the rear rims was to run all 4 rear tires with a 10" offset wheel that way they are all interchangeable to an extent. To make up for the gap John made a spacer out of 3/4" plate that is 12" in length. The front tires are 20x14 and the rears are 20x12's double bead-locked.

[Average Joe]

Wow! That thing is freakin huge. Very cool and welcome to the board.

[68burbanontherocks]

As for the motor, its a Bowtie Race Block that i had gotten from a guy who swamped it in a scarab boat. I had to bore the motor .032" (4.500") and put in a larger 4.250" callies crankshaft. Which made the motor out to 541 CI. For the rotating assembly i put in a callies crank, oliver rods clevlite 76 barrings, and 12.1 JE pistons. Up top it has Brodix big brodie alum heads, brodix intake, jessel pro shaft rockers, comp roller cam/lifters, milling oil pump, milodon pan, MSD pro billet distributor, tall deck valve covers, march pulleys and a holly dominator 1050 CFM carb (intake, heads, distributor, and carb not shown in pic!!!)

[68burbanontherocks]

Heres what it looked like after i put the motor in and before i decided to hack it up and lift it haha!

[68burbanontherocks]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-7v0_2g_-U

Here is just a sample vid of a walk around and it running right before i tore it all back down to start on the chassis and paint ect...

[68burbanontherocks]

So before i tore it all down i had to just cruse it around the street a little bit so i went during the day in the middle of the week so it wasn't too busy and drove it around the block before i broke it all down. I just had to dangerous or not it was a definite must! So heres some poser driving shots.

[68burbanontherocks]

So then i started to tear it all down so that i could get it back into my garage to start working on the chassis design ect. I considered just boxing my frame till i started taking a closer look at it. The frame had been hacked in many spots, primarily in the motor bay to fit the BBC headers, as well as the core support mounts had been cut and booger welded back together. The more i thought about it i just kept thinking that the frame is 44 years old as is and visibly weakened in spots, so i just said the hell with it might as well just build something new! So the chassis will be made out of 2" .120 DOM tubing.

So i had John at Stazworks build me some roller wheels so that i could get my Burb back into my garage and i had sold the leaf springs so it worked out great.

Haha had to post some pics of what it looked like swaping out the tires it was awesome i looked like a total tool!

[68burbanontherocks]

Hahaha i think its funny

[68burbanontherocks]

I have way too many big ass tires and finally the leafsprings are out of my hands!

[68burbanontherocks]

Tear down = not fun when your a one man army!

[68burbanontherocks]

Gutted the whole thing, have autometer pro comp gauges and a switch pannel for the dash

[68burbanontherocks]

So to seperate the chassis from the body i needed to come up with somthing that was going to be wide enough so the tires could roll past with out contacting anything to make the removal as easy as possible. I decided to fab up some 1/4" 2x4 rectangle tube with some casters and have the casters sleve into 4x4 1/4" square tube and 3/16" square tube. They worked out really great. I can move the body around my garage by myself pretty easily and i put mounting points on the inside of the brackets so that the casters width will be narrow enough to fit on a trailer if need be.

[68burbanontherocks]

chassis removal

[y5mgisi]

Dang man! I remember seeing this on pirate and all the dudes there being jerks! So glad you are actually sticking with it! Looked bad ass! Now i really cant wait to see it with the new suspension!

[68burbanontherocks]

old chassis off

[68burbanontherocks]

Pulling the dually fenders off as well as the start of paint stripping.

[68burbanontherocks]

Originally Posted by Average Joe

Wow! That thing is freakin huge. Very cool and welcome to the board.

Thanks man im looking forward to it.

[68burbanontherocks]

Originally Posted by y5mgisi

Dang man! I remember seeing this on pirate and all the dudes there being jerks! So glad you are actually sticking with it! Looked bad ass! Now i really cant wait to see it with the new suspension!

Oh hahaha yea i actually accidently deleted the forum when i went to post a pic. Its no big deal they wernt really being jerks i think they just didnt like the leaf springs and old tires that were on it which i agreed 100X. As well as "distroying a rare burb". No sweat though ill repost a build thread on there one of these days... pretty sweet you remembered that! lol

[babylonflyer]

AHHHH OOOHHH!!! u good sir ,have scared me ... killer ride..wicked boggers & big block!!

[y5mgisi]

What color are you painting it?

[thirdstreettito]

This looks much better than what I saw on Pirate lol. Glad you changed the plan! Good luck on your build!

[68burbanontherocks]

Originally Posted by babylonflyer

AHHHH OOOHHH!!! u good sir ,have scared me ... killer ride..wicked boggers & big block!!

Thanks man! it should be pretty cool some day when its done ha.

[68burbanontherocks]

Originally Posted by thirdstreettito

This looks much better than what I saw on Pirate lol. Glad you changed the plan! Good luck on your build!

hahaha yea when it was on pirate i still had those silly leafs and smaller tires so it just looked rediclious! The plan is to do a little bit of body work then put a tarp on it and then start on the chassis stuff before i paint it. The goal is to keep it nice and low and keep the COG as low as possible. I really dont want it sky high like how it looks with those leafs on it. I widened the wheel wells so that i can drop it down when the coils go on. When i start on the chassis i may have to come bug ya for some tips! Thanks for the encouragment man.