boo, so sad news. The shop said the mufflers would not fit without coming incontact with the driveshaft on the passenger side. So it looks like were getting flowmasters, however the tips from the stang will still be utilized.
EDIT: hooray page 5!
boo, so sad news. The shop said the mufflers would not fit without coming incontact with the driveshaft on the passenger side. So it looks like were getting flowmasters, however the tips from the stang will still be utilized.
EDIT: hooray page 5!
Here is a quick shot of the food mechanic installed next to the new and improved washer system:
The food mechanic is very secure and its location makes for a great seat when working on things in the rear of the engine bay such as a distributor. Which I gave up and replaced. I have always been fussing with the ignition in some way or another and I Just gave up. I should have bought a new one when I got the new engine. Replaced the coil while I was at it, starts better, runs better and runs smoother.
Its an accel brand, installed pretty easy and picked up a tach/battery pigtail for easier installation and connectivity.
I had barn finded (sp?) a throttle body spacer at my co-workers place, his father had passed away few years back and left him all this SBC stuff, there were at least 5 OEM rochesters BNIB with the carb wrapped in plastic, some were pontiac and one or two performance manifolds or carbs, I wil have to check out his garage later he said because there is even more parts.
So I gave it a quick polish and cleaned the surface a tad.
close up shot of the new hotness (blurry)
Now the air cleaner fits much better in the engine bay and carb adjustment screws are easier to reach.
Exhaust is too loud, I'm getting boring mufflers installed now. I'll upload a youtube link for the hillbilly exhaust. Sounds good its not to bad idling or low throttle but as soon as you get mid throttle it is LOUD, not so much in the cab but everyone around me.
I forgot to mention the carb spacer is 2"
also here is a sound clip of the billy exhaust: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHQqjty2DWU&feature=youtube_gdata_player
IMCO mufflers, true duals, hooker comp headers 2.5" all the way through.
At least the tips look good, but I need the truck to be quieter so some lame boring mufflers are going on instead.
Got the muffler to a much more quieter and normal sound then took it up to sno*drfit rally (finally some action shots) and hauled the party around from stage to stage.
Drove one of saturdays stage before the run started, gave everyone there a good show. This was good prooving ground for the food mechanic, it was a bust. the piping is too thick and doesn't shed off enough heat. Going to have to re-think that one but it was a great idea for being REALLY high, I mean 14,100 feet up high at pikes peak summit giggling over donuts and chilli.
Its hauling a sno*ped, Part moped, part childs' snomobile and part briggs and straton but all sorts of fun!
No I did not create it but my old college roommate did.
Last weekend did 3 ice racing events over the duration of the weekend and ended up having more fun with the truck.
Even the tow vehicle got some action!
When I wasnt driving I was working by pulling people out. I look forward to pulling suckers out at the next snow rallycross and ice race event, pretty much my prefered worker assignment now.
However because I was pulling people out I was rolling down the back window a lot, I decided to roll it down all but .25" and tossed a shovel in, the handle hit the glass and it being 0 outside it just shattered... so I need a new one of those right now...
fidelity101 wrote: Even the tow vehicle got some action!
Ha, didn't realize this was you. I saw your truck/trailer in the parking lot early before ice racing started. I didn't run that day, just came out to spectate for a bit.
To my 5 year old son's eyes, of all the fairly normal looking cars in the parking lot, the coolest one there was your Suburban with a trailer! 
We sat inside and had lunch while he "watched the big truck go rescue cars".
Gawd I love these things so much.
In reply to xflowgolf:
Yeah that was my favorite part, 13" of sno was no issue. I even had the chinese college student in the mercedes come up and ask for a ride, he loved it so much.
At times I wish that my only toy was this because its beyond useful and would be cheaper.
I was thinking...how about a heater core on the bottom of the food mechanic? Or maybe a transmission cooler (except their lines are usually smaller, IIRC) or something along those lines.
In reply to ClemSparks:
Thats our next idea, Use a small trans or oil cooler and have a fan below it blowing upward through the fins and wrap the inside of the box in a reflective heatshield tape/wrap i have laying around for whatever reason.
Cool!
Looking forward to the development.
The thread went to awesome squared with introduction of the Food Mechanic, btw.
So I learned something new over the weekend.
It turns out I don't have a short in my dome light circuit. If you twist the headlight knob anti-clockwise to past the detent it will turn on the dome and courtesy lights.
And they say you can't learn anything from hillbillies.
Some updates!
I have since fixed the rear window, and in doing so I have a spare rust free tailgate with power window regulator (motor is dead though) and the window was a heated one too, not to mention came with race stickers already on it! (pics soon to come)
So now that it is summer the food mechanic kind of works, after a brief drive the thermometer in the ammo box registered 150 degrees F. Just need to get around to re-doing the piping for more betterness.
Some of the bedliner is flaking and some rust is showing on the hood :/ I am looking to repaint it white soon but I am closing on a house so once that is finalized I can sand it down in the new garage :)
Also the Detroit area's E36 M3ty roads are so bad and the vehicle is so stiff that it has literally shaken my poor truck 'apart', I went to do an oil change over the weekend and noticed that ALL of my sway bar bolts and nuts were loose. So I fixed the clunk in the front end that I had been noticing recently. It has done this before to the shock mounts, scary stuff.
Since I did an oil change it was time to inspect and maintain. Air filter was dirty so I put the biggest one that I could fit there.
MURICA!
Also speaking of America, I had the slave labor do more repairs on the truck.
Upon doing this they found a kinked rear line and a blown wheel cylinder, so the rear resivour had NO fluid in it. This would explain why this winter it was not able to stop without being in 4wd. So they did the following
I didn't have the spare cash for new drums but they are on the threshold of spec, shoes are damn near max adjustment right meow.
Also, while leaving with slave labor my teacher friend had told me that the truck indeed has a lift, (I always thought it sat high) it has an add a leaf all around. sooo bonus? Still fits in 7'4" parking structures luckily.
The bad news is that he instructed me that my tires are 12 years old based on the date code and I should not tow on them anymore:
Right now they are 285/75/16 all terrains. I'm thinking 315/75/16 will still clear MAYBE without cutting fenders and adding flares. Forwhatever reason fender flares are EXPENSIVE! Id like to lower my highway RPM a bit,
This is current idea is this 315/75/16
General Grabber AT2, a friend of mine works for continental so I can get screaming deals on general or conti tires.
Then ditch the rusty steel wheels and put those bad boys on:
I've always loved this style of wheel, I could not find an 8 lug picture but you get the idea.
16x8" 0 offset, 4.5" back spacing with 295-315/75/16 A/Ts,
Also I mostly see D range tires in this size, ideally I would want E range but do I really really need E?
Also now that it is summer, I really need to buy a head unit and wire that into the existing speakers, port-o-speaker isn't cutting the mustard with wind noise and there are a few summer trips planned towards the end of july and august.
Neighbor wants to put flames on it, really tempting. I'll post pics of the flames he did on his protege. Its kind of a long story...
Well I still haven't done anything about the tires because right now I am closing on a house, or should I say I bought a garage with a detached house. :)
I will finally be able to store this indoors during the winter! So because I am moving and have a few small road trips planned with this beast it was time to fix the no radio issue. The bluetooth wireless speaker thing works great in winter when you don't have the windows down but now the wind noise grossly over powers the tiny speakers.
Luckily though the previous owner tried to install one and failed. So new rear speaker wiring was already run, and I'm not sure the stock size of the rear speakers but it looks like they cut out the mounting hole a bit to fit 6x9s. Bonus! They also cut out the stock radio mount to fit a modern radio size.
All I had to do was mount it up, wire it in and run new wires for the front speakers.
Whats left to do is source a front left speaker mount/attachment thing (hopefully with a speaker)
Oh yeah it has bluetooth :) The whole truck has nearly all mechnical inputs/controls but it has hands free calling and bluetooth capabilities. Price? 62 bucks at wal-mart.
Installed new front 4" speakers this weekend and decided it was time to finally replace the old tires.
BAM!
315/75/16 toyo open country load range E, and I only needed MINOR modification of the front fenders for it to clear on full lock turns and to provide me some room for wheel movement for minor off-road use. I wanted to go with the general grabber AT2s but they were only an 8 ply and with the towing I do it was best to buy just one set of tires and call it good.
Going from a 32.5" tire to 34.5" tire should lower my highway RPM to a bit more tolerable level, maybe improve mileage or at least be able to tow at 70 instead of 60-65.
The ride is SO MUCH NICER with newer tires, I wanted some BFG all-terrains but they were very expensive, it is a bit strange putting japanese tires on this beast but my fuel filter is for a 300zx sooooo oh well...
Looks awesome!
I originally wanted aluminum wheels but it would be another 400-700 dollars each and that would buy alot of gas. The tires were expensive enough, now I gotta try and sell the used tires, still would be good for off-roading but not towing. That and steel wheels are tough as nails. So when I get down my repaint project later this summer I will also repaint the wheels and pick up some lug nuts (black or chrome) that match.
I'm going back to my roots, white vehicle on "gunmetal gold" as the color I created, observe past vehicles:
Yes, the rx7 did used to look nice. Now its kind of a pile (but more on that car's body work later, and in another thread)
I think the ARE 16" wheels I put on my 84 might be the 8 lug ones you were looking for a pic of.
[URL=http://s240.photobucket.com/user/NOTATA/media/84%20Suburban/84Suburban007-1.jpg.html]
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nawww, I really liked the outlaw IIs.
ALSO: FOOD MECHANIC UPDATE!!!
It works much better in the summer! Some short trips showed 150 degrees F on the meat thermometer. Soon I will replace the U bend pipe with a heater core and insulate the inside of the ammo box.
I did drive around a bit on our bumpy & broken Detroit roads and noticed that I needed to trim the front fenders a little more. They didn't rub at lock or inbetween LH&RH turning but if you hit a bump it would want to whack it.
Also, an added bonus of the larger tires... My spedometer is accurate now! It is within 1mph of the GPS speed so that is a nice feature :)
To celebrate the 4th we did a beach party camping trip which involved some minor off-roading to get to our spot. We ended towing up 3 kayaks and a sail boat, lots of gear & beer as well as a few hundred pounds of wood for the campfire.
The other truck is my friends cummins 6 speed resto mod.
I brought a tent, but it was 6000lbs so here was my view of lake Michigan every morning:
There was a few mile long trail that ran perpendicular along the beach that was pretty fun to traverse around, I was in 4Low for most of it but then I decided to get a bit excited with the bravery gravy and got it stuck in a pretty good mud pit, we were nearly out until this happened:
This is the front passenger side axle u-joint, rather whats left of it....
So a 'quick' tug and we were out, had I hit it with more speed it would not have been an issue or if the 4wd was functioning the front tires had plenty of hard ground it was just the rear ones stuck in a rut on some clay, could have dropped the tire pressure but the shrader valve was under water :( (too dark for photos)
Then we proceeded to head back to our camp site and basically got stuck again and we left it until morning to give it a quick yank out and we were on our way.
Its pretty embarassing how very little we were stuck but oh well, E36 M3 happens!
I got a new axle shaft in but have yet to replace the u-joints... however, it was properly the correct time to do this...
aaaand some more progress, this time I removed the chrome trim pieces instead of painting over them, I also have better shape piece to replace it with too.
26 dollars for a gallon of rustoleum and 15 dollars towards beer made a fun Saturday afternoon. After painting a bunch of random rooms in the new house I have plenty of roller supplies hanging around.
The wheels are next, paint is already picked up but I won't get to them until maybe a week or two, new lug nuts will be in store as well. I'm taking this vehicle back to my roots. White on gunmetal gold, pics to come
I don't know why its sideways so just try and tilt your head or look at prior pics for wheels and their condition.
However I might catch flack for this but love or hate it, I enjoy a good sticker bomb.
Most people just do a small lip, but anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Go big or go home, I laugh at your silly little lip with only a few stickers on it. I just need about a dozen more stickers to cover up all the paint on the tailgate.
Love this more than one should love a gas guzzling 'burban!
the question is, when I am done with the bomb, do I clear coat it? can I? Should I?
No hate for the sticker bomb, hate for the bed liner body, but not the bomb. I say yes to clear coating it and see what happens. If it doesn't work you can just re-bomb it.
In reply to Adrian_Thompson:
Its gonna take 3 coats to go from black bed liner to white oil based paint.
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