Life is better with 2 E36M3Boxes: 2002 Tahoe.

So Golfball the Miata has been my only usable vehicle since about a month after I got it home and got rid of my Saturn. That car has been my trusty steed through all of the dumb stuff I ended up doing through 2020 and 2021. Long commutes, travel for work, an unreasonably long distance away autocross event, 9-12 hour drives just to hang out at Gridlife events, and moving halfway across the country for work. The car has seen some E36 M3 already. 

Recently a dumb mistake on my part left me without a car for a week because I was chasing an electrical problem that ended up being the one that I caused. This lead me to believe I needed another car that wasn't my ratty 230k mile Miata. Then bobzilla tipped me off on this thing.

Meet the new daily, camp wagon and tow rig. Seen here sitting next to nice cars at Autobahn because I've been busy playing in the rain today and didn't take many pics yet. 

More full post on it when I actually get home tomorrow night. 

so, snorkel intake on order yet?

Oh yeah. Slept in the Tahoe at a race track and drove it home. So far things are doing ok. 

You're gonna love that thing.  I bought one four years ago for $3,000, it had 250,000 miles on it.  I've since driven it another 40k more including countless towing miles and have never had a problem or performed any maintenance besides tires, brakes and oil.  Oh actually there was that time when a full 6" section of brake line fell off causing me to loose 100% of the brakes instantly.   Definitely get your brake lines checked, they rust before the trucks do.  

In reply to Box4VIR :

Yeah brakes are currently suspect right now and I've seen otherwise spotless rust free southern GMT800s pop a rotted brake line. This truck spent its life in Indiana until now and has some rust, so I'm definitely checking brake lines before I drive it too much more. 

How do you feel about those tail lights? My truck came with some similar units and I couldn't dispose of them fast enough. 

In reply to JeremyJ :

They will not being staying. There are a few items on the list a head of them though. 

So we have one slight issue to fix before we're in full service here.

It came from there apparently.

Offending trashed water pump removed

New shiny bit bolted to the nasty block I really should go back and clean.

And then I lost a bolt and decided to call it a day since I'm waiting for a couple bits in the mail. 

New belts, new AC tensioner, new water pump.

All buttoned up. Hiding all the new shiny bits behind filthy old stuff. 

And now I have a have a cooling system with all its liquids contained and AC that blows cold so I can roll the windows up and act like I don't know nobody. 

I am on the fence about a coworker's 2000 Yukon Denali he said he'd sell me for $1k because it needs full brake lines. 200k, Michigan but no body rust. Never towed with it. But... Michigan. I am 2 for 2 on undercarriage rust ruining my day. 
Then posts like this and Tom's Suburban get me daydreaming 

In reply to P3PPY :

You're not the only one I've had tell me they've been swayed towards big GM SUVs lately.

If the brake lines are crusty they make nickel copper line kits that are all cut to length with proper flares and fittings installed. I installed one for a customer on a similar year gmc pickup. It was like $200 but it was worth it not having to flare any lines and knowing they should outlast the truck.

Drove it to work today. Getting off work and climbing into this thing and turning the AC on is a noticeable improvement over getting into Golfball's aluminum seat and remembering I don't even have a working blower motor in that car right now.

So I was never a fan of this grill having the chrome slats. 

I got looking closer and noticed the slats were an added on piece secured by clamps. And the normal black inner grill was still there behind them.

So the screwdriver came out.

The cheap screws stripped on the lower grill so the drill came out. 

And now we're here.

Made the drive from Iowa to Kentucky with no drama. And then the AC broke and I went on to Tennessee to see my buddy with the bus anyway.

Tahoe's first real outing as the race track bum camp wagon. Going great. 

It looks right in its element.

It was kinda eye opening to me how much of the GridLife paddock are a "sleep in a hatch" types, or sundry variations of that theme.  Definitely a cool/inviting vibe.

In this thread, normal truck acts like a normal truck and doesn't give me any cool story to put in its build thread. Seen here hiding in the trees at Gingerman during Midwest Festival. One of the other workers loaned me his extra air mattress to toss in the back so I actually got something resembling decent sleep at one of these deals for once.

Also met up with John Brown while I was in the area and got E-fan bits for later use on this pile.

Looking good. One thing I would do is replace the heater quick connect fittings at the firewall. They are plastic and tend to fail suddenly.

New tail lights finally.

Finally! Much better. 

Came here to mention the heater fittings, they normally dont give you a warning and then just dump the full contents of the cooling system on the ground. Sweet truck, I genuinely believe the GMT800 platforms is the best truck made if you want something reliable, capable and that drives like a modern vehicle.

So I had planned on making a few minor fixes and upgrades to make this thing a better tow rig.

Yeah things happened pretty suddenly and I didn't get a chance to do any of those. It just hauled a lot of my crap and my Miata ~700 miles with very little drama though. We were doing our best Carolina squat but we made it.

In reply to Daylan C :

Are you moving from Iowa to somewhere else?

seems like buying this was a fairly prescient thing.  Good to see it's managed to attain escape velocity.