So $250 later and the Suburban is sitting in the shop! No real excitement in picking it up. Just drove it up onto the flatbed and chained it down.
The ride back down off of the flatbed was interesting though. It was raining outside which left the bed of the trailer quite slick. The practically bald tires on the ‘burb offered no traction and the truck just slid on down. There is no real problem with that, it just came as a surprise to me.
So I now have the opportunity to pick up a 2wd 1990 Suburban. It is currently drivable, however, the body is rotted quite bad in the back. So much so that in order for the previous owners to utilize the back door, they had cut the top of the bumper off to provide clearance. Clearance which is now gone because the body has sagged even more.
Here are some pictures:
Parts retained for the K5 include:
For my Chevelle, I will be keeping the recently rebuilt 700R4 transmission
The rest of the Suburban will be parted prior to finally scrapping it.
So after determining that the old Hooker headers from my Chevelle would not fit the K5 properly, I ordered a set of Hooker Competition headers. These are made to work with the Hooker Competition dual exhaust system which I also ordered.
The headers fit very well, however, the mandrel bent exhaust system did not fit to my liking. The passenger side exhaust pipe needed to be cut into 4 separate pieces to properly clear the frame & transfer case as well as have the pipe end up at the proper place to tuck the mufflers up under the truck. The driver side pipe only needed to be cut once.
I have the driver side pipe welded back together with the appropriate clearance and positioning for the muffler. I also fabricated a hanger to properly locate the exhaust system using some 1/4” bar stock and an exhaust isolator from NAPA. I will have pictures of these pipes up at some point.
Here is a short video of the open headers:
Enjoy!
We were hit with a decent snow storm Friday, December 19th. By Sunday, we had anywhere between 12” and 18” depending on where you measured and that was before the wind kicked up.
Here are some pictures:
Today I removed the carb and treated it to a complete rebuild. After cleaning everything as best I could on my bench, I pinged down the original well plugs on the bottom of the main body, then cleaned these areas again, finishing with some brake cleaner for a residue free surface. I then applied some JB Weld to the plugs and surrounding surfaces to seal them up, hopefully for good.
After allowing the JB Weld to setup firm, I reassembled the carb and reinstalled it on the motor. I will have to wait until midday tomorrow before I can put some fuel to it and see how well it responds.
Next on my list is to remove the old points style distributor and install the HEI distributor out of my Chevelle.
I will be picking up a freeze plug block heater tomorrow to install when I remove the manifolds to install the headers.
So my surgery went well I suppose. Had a bit of a rough patch coming out of the anesthesia, but that was solved by a nice pain killer shot. The nurse was a bit ambitious flushing my IV line and my hand is still burning from the first flush, but I was quick to scold her that I was already in pain and did not need more added onto it to save a few seconds.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was able to get some work done to the Blazer.
I received a new manual rear window crank handle to replace the broken piece that was on the tailgate when I purchased the truck. In the process, I had some fun with some of the bolts in the tailgate. If I had of thought of how to properly attack this, I would not have gone through all of the trouble that I did. I ended up removing the window, regulator, and latch to get down to the bolts that hold the crank handle in.
As I did not get the lock cylinder, I also did not get the latch pawl and spring. I was able to fit a 1/4-20 x 1/2” long bolt into the clutch portion of the crank handle assembly so that the outer crank would drive the regulator. The window can now be opened by anyone. At this point in time, that is not a concern. Before I actually put the truck on the road, I will have to remove the crank handle assembly again and install the proper lock cylinder, spring, and pawl.
In the process of messing around with the crank handle, I realized that some one had done a “modification” to the tailgate latch assembly which consisted of drilling a hole through the top of the tailgate and welding a screw driver to the latch lever inside the tailgate. I guess that the original latch handle had broken and it must have been easier for them to do this “fix” instead of replacing the original components.
Prior to doing any work on the tailgate, I removed the spare tire carrier from the back. The carrier itself is bent up pretty good and was often in the way of the tailgate when you would drop it down. Once I had finished working on the tailgate, I took some time to attempt to straighten the tire carrier. I was successful in straightening the lower bar, however, I have come to find that it really should have some degree of a bend in it to maintain the alignment with the bracket on the back of the tailgate. This bracket on the tailgate also has to come off and undergo some straightening as it is bent a bit as well. I also noticed that the bolts that hold the bracket inside the tailgate are prohibiting the window from fully retracting into the tailgate.
I did not take any pictures (I know shame on me!), but hopefully next time I will remember to take the camera out there with me.
After doing some reading on ColoradoK5.com, I have come to the conclusion that the headers from my Chevelle would fit the Blazer just fine! I almost took them to the scrap yard with a load of other scrap metal a few weeks ago and was glad that I had not. They have light surface rust on them and can be cleaned up for the purposes of my Blazer, but I was going to be getting either stainless steel, or ceramic coated headers for the Chevelle. When I was down to my dad’s house a few days ago, I grabbed the set of headers.
I took the Blazer for a spin down to the tire/exhaust shop at the end of the road to have them give me an idea of how much it would cost to have an exhaust system installed. They use heavy pipe for their exhaust systems and bend it up right there, but they are quite expensive.
On that drive, I still had a pronounced bog at initial throttle opening. WOT was good and it revved freely with greater throttle. I have found several references for tuning the Rochester Quadrajet carb and all signs point to a malfunctioning accelerator pump. I will be pulling the carb again soon and will likely be fully rebuilding it.
I definitely need to get the exhaust fixed up and then move on to tuning things up. It is difficult to hear what is actually going on with the motor when the exhaust is leaking out of several places!
Several local and online retailers have a performance dual exhaust system that would bolt up to the headers so I will likely be going with that arrangement.