Smells like a Steak and Seats 35

You have a good understanding of the ultimate tbi mods, right?

If you don't, I could be convinced to finally get off my ass and get them done on the elky so you could follow along.

Cool truck. The title finally caught my eye after building a 10th scale canyonero out of axial parts.

Just remember, unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!

Dusterbd13 wrote: You have a good understanding of the ultimate tbi mods, right? If you don't, I could be convinced to finally get off my ass and get them done on the elky so you could follow along.

I've read through them and they seem pretty straightforward. I don't know that I plan to do them all (at least, not all at once) but as Black Betty needs an exhaust, I figured I'd start there.

I'd be happy to have some company on my journey, though. I need to get the exhaust fixed sometime between when we get back from Pheonix and Christmas.

So...wife comes in the other day from taking a run in Betty Burban..."Heat doesn't work". She said it felt warm at the ducts, but wasn't blowing. Checked it out tonight- nope, fan doesn't work. Checked fuses, all OK, checked wiring, nothing obvious. Fan worked fine a few weeks ago when we drove up to NY 6 hours and back for Christmas. Heat was nice and toasty, blower fan seemed fine.

So...????

EDIT: I should ad that the blower fan does not work on ANY of the speed settings. I know there's a blower resistor for the non-HIGH speeds, and if that burns out you'll have HIGH but noting else. I have nothing. I guess the first step is to check the motor, by running it 12V. It just seems weird it would work fine one week and then die the next.

5 minutes of troubleshooting identified a craptastic blower fan relay. In another 3 minutes said relay was removed. The local auto parts jobber has one in stock. It's $7. I'm picking it up tomorrow. It will take another 3 minutes to install, and then the wife will have heat.

And this, friends, is why I love the Suburban.

New relay installed, heat has been achieved, and the wife is happy. Or, at least, slightly less grumpy.

Next up: replacing the exhaust and installing a radio.

EDIT: Update: a week or so after replacing the relay, the fan blower motor died, too. That was a $16 part and the repair took less time than the drive to the parts jobber to pick up the new fan.

big old simple trucks are refreshing, aren't they? I've always loved box body Burbs.

A few months back, the cover fell off the muffler. I made a F-E-R on it and it lasted through the winter.

I'd ordered all the parts to do a complete exhaust on Black Betty, and finally on Sunday I fired up the welder and got to work. First, I cut off the weird crossover pipe that connected the exhausts under the engine and which convoluted up over the transmission crossmember, rattling on it, and down to a too-small chunk of pipe that was booger welded into the muffler. The result:

There's one of them fancy Flowmaster 2-1 connectors in there, and the pipe now runs under the trans crossmember (where it's supposed to) and through a new catalytic converter (whoever threw together the mess that was on there now took the cat off), real 3" pipe, a new muffler, and a new tailpipe.

For giggles, I started the truck up and drove it around a bit after welding on the 2-1 collector, without any other exhaust. It sounded really good, but Mrs VCH was concerned about the decibel level and Little VCH's tender ears.

Now it's quiet, tight, and clean. Well, as clean as it ever was, I suppose. I'll be curious if there's any affect on fuel economy.

With the family making plans to reunite this past weekend, we decided to ready Black Betty for a roadtrip. We'd be heading to southern Massachusetts, about an hour south of Worcester (which the locals pronounce like they're saying "rooster" with a lisp). And since hotels were pricey and far from where the reunion would be, we decided to bring our little pop-up camper along.

Some VERY IMPORTANT THINGS had to be tended to on BB prior to making the 400 mile voyage from western Maryland to southern Mass. Highest on the list was the lack of a decent sound system. Since some P/O had completely hacked out the stock radio opening, I fabricated a new plate out of metal and mounted a "gifted" used Pioneer CD unit.

The stock speaker openings in the dash only house 4" drivers. On top of that, they're tough to access, and point straight at the windshield. My solution was to cut openings for some 6-1/2" drivers in the front footwells. The wiring tucks nicely under the door weatherstripping and into the dash.

The speakers were on clearance for $15 for the pair, and I added a $6 connector to the back of the free Pioneer to allow plugging in of an mp3 player.

Tunes achieved, other, less critical items were tackled- flushing the radiator, replacing the two old front tires to match the new rear ones, and the usual pre-trip checks one performs on an older vehicle.

On Thursday morning, packed and hitched up to the Esterel, Mrs. VCH headed us out of the driveway.

The A/C was blowing cold and the truck was behaving itself. We crossed into PA and saw the official Pennsylvania Welcome Sign:

As we joined Interstate 81 heading north out of Harrisburg, the truck began churning up the mountains right as we hit the heat of the day. Our smartphones showed it was in the mid-90s outside. At one point, with Mrs VCH still driving, I noticed the smell of coolant, and looked over to see the temperature gauge reading somewhere between 210 and 235. She'd been downshifting manually up the hills to save the 700R4 the indignity of kickdowns, but still running 65 mph or so up the big grades. We switched off the A/C, slowed down, and let the 350 cool back down to under 200.

The rest of the trip was a juggling act, keeping the temps under 210, running as fast as possible, and keeping the A/C running to keep pregnant wife, baby #1, and our dog from getting too hot. We stopped every couple of hours to stretch and cool off, and the truck ran well. We even averaged about 14 mpg, not too terrible considering the hills, speed, heat, and the camper in tow.

Right before crossing into New York, one of the power windows refused to roll back up. As Mrs VCH drove, I pried the switch out of the door panel and used the metal part of a binder clip and a bent key-chain ring to hot wire the window up. One of the nice things about driving a 1990's GM product is that you can walk into a random Advance Auto Parts in northeastern PA and walk out with a new power window switch.

The State of Connecticut was pretty much wall-to-wall traffic after Danbury, and as the truck began to run hot sitting in traffic with the A/C chugging away, we decided to take back roads up to our campground. That, combined with an impromptu search for a frying pan (we realized we'd forgotten ours about a half an hour from the campground) had us finally setting up camp right as night was falling.

The next morning was beautiful.

After a fun weekend of camping, swimming, cooking out, and seeing family I hadn't seen in 10 years, we hitched the camper back up to Black Betty and headed home Monday. Knowing how to manage the coolant temperatures (and avoiding rush hour traffic), the trip home was uneventful. About a half-gallon of coolant mix was boiled away in the 800 mile jaunt, and less than half a quart of oil consumed. The odometer crested the 182,000 mark somewhere around Scranton on the way back, so it'll be time for another oil change soon. The radiator looks a bit dirty inside, so I'll be replacing that as well, before the next road trip.

Nice rig! I'd take a good hard look at the cooling system though; I would think it should have plenty of cooling capacity to do that without getting warm. My wagon pulling a slightly larger and probably much heavier trailer back when it had an identical engine and a 200r4 with an additional external cooler instead of 700r4 would hover right around 190-200 with a 180 stat in it rolling 70-75ish mph, and that 'burb has to have a bigger radiator than a Caprice. New radiator may fix you right up if it's dirty, though. That's very good (meaning minimal) oil consumption for an old non-positive valve seal SBC, too. By the time I built the new engine, my L05 would burn a quart every 400 or so miles, and it still had good compression.

In reply to gearheadE30:

When we got the truck last year the coolant was a very brown sort of brown. I removed the thermostat and flushed the engine for an hour with a garden hose. Then put a new 180 'stat back in and refilled with coolant. Before we left on this trip, the coolant was once again a very brown sort of brown, so I flushed it again and added new. Now that we're back, it's brown again. The inside of the radiator is brown. I'm hoping another flush and a new radiator will help. This truck was pre-Dexcool, so that shouldn't be the issue. I think it was probably just not flushed at the proper intervals.

Regardless, the same radiator was used for 350 and 454 powered trucks, so this should be plenty adequate for the 350 in ours.

I had a '77 'burb with a 350 that would drink a quart of 40wt oil between fillups. Still ran great. I've been using 15W-40 oil in this one.

Honestly, 14 mpg is amazing for towing a trailer... in that!.

When you hosed out the block did you flow water through both ways? Pull the block drain plugs and flush/backflush there? Coolant going brown indicates there's a lot of rust/silt sitting in the bottom of the water jackets. Blowing all the E36 M3 out of a V8 is challenging since you only have the little block drains at the lowest point of the jackets.

14 mpg from a TBI 350 dragging a camper through mountains with the air on isn't "not too terrible" it's great.

In reply to BrokenYugo:

I did open the block drains, and turned on the heater, and I've also connected one of the garden-hose T-fittings to the heater hose to allow backflushing. There's just a lot of crap in there.

Part of the problem is now the radiator is so crapped up I'm not sure how much brown is coming from the engine and how much is from the radiator. I can get the rad flushed, but that means taking the truck offline for a week or so for the shop to have the rad. So I'm probably going to buy a new rad, and have this one flushed out to keep as a spare.

I'm also thinking about installing ONE OF THESE FILTERS. Anyone have any experience? My only concern is that if the filter gets clogged, coolant won't flow and the engine will overheat. But if I install the clear one, and check/ clean it often, it might work.

Plugging a filter on the heater core wouldn't do much besides kill the heat, I think you would want more than a screen though. Big diesel trucks have a spin on coolant filter on the bypass (heater) circuit that you could use.

I guess you could try the old fill it with water, drop in a dishwasher tab, drive it for a day or two, and then flush the hell out of it trick. That would probably knock out any dexsludge too if somebody put dex in it at some point.

On the way home from the birth center last night (monthly check-up), Mrs. VCH was idling in rush hour traffic with the A/C on and the temps once again climbed to a bit over 210. Not overheating, but not "happy". The fan clutch, BTW, is newer and working fine (you can hear the fan cycle).

New all-aluminum radiator on order. Will backflush the cooling system, open all the drain holes in the block, remove the t-stat, etc. before installing. Hopefully I can divest the SBC of most of its crud before dropping in $179 worth of new radiator.

Since the drain plugs are in the middle of the block, have you been leveling the engine when flushing so stuff can't settle in the aft end?

Also, a coat hanger rimmed as deep into the cooling system passages as possible will help loosen debris. Rifle cleaning brush would be even better.

It was good and hot today, so a perfect chance to do the radiator swap. I parked the Sub on level ground under a nice shady tree and proceeded to run hose water every which way I could through the engine. I hooked up the heater hose flush thingie and flushed it that way. Then I flushed it forwards, hose in the radiator cap opening and the top radiator hose removed so the dirty water spewed on the ground. Then I shut the engine off and flushed it back through the top hose. After repeating this several times and in different orders, the water came out clean no matter what I did.

The new radiator is an Aluminum unit from Champion radiator. With free shipping, it was about $190. The rad came securely packaged, and seemed well-made with nice even TIG weld joints everywhere. Being aluminum, and not full of dirt, it was also lighter than the old, stock radiator.

Nearly everything mated up to the truck perfectly. The trans cooler lines were in the right place, and the heater connection cleverly had a threaded plug with a barbed fitting, so that worked fine, too. The only thing that required modification was the top bracket by the radiator fill opening- it hit the cap, and had to be trimmed with an angle grinder.

The stock upper radiator hose was a snug fit on the radiator connection, but eventually went on OK. Then, with the thermometer showing 91 degrees, I cranked up the truck, fired up the A/C, and went for a drive. When i got home, I let it idle in the hot sun, A/C blasting, for 10 minutes.

180 degrees. Rock steady. There was probably never a more fitting use of the following emoticon:

I just picked up an '83 Suburban a few weeks back. I'm happy to see this one and the Frankenburban on here for reference. I'll start a thread on mine at some point.

Your Suburban is getting used in pretty much the same way I hope ours will be used (except substitute horse trailer for pop-up). Family hauling, vacation, junk retrieval, etc. I heartily approve!

Next stop for me is to read your 10-bolt thread you linked to earlier.

In reply to ClemSparks:

Awesome man, can't wait to see pics. Does yours have a 700R4 or is it the TH350/400?

If I had it to do over, I might have held out for a clean, 3/4 ton 350/4L80E 4x4 GMT400 version- they're out there, and cheap. But Mrs. VCH likes the styling of these better, and it's her truck, so...

Mine has a 700R4. It moved under its own power for the first time this past week.

A question for you: What size tires are those you have? Any new/fun stuff happening with Black Betty?

Bam-ba-lam!

ClemSparks wrote: Mine has a 700R4. It moved under its own power for the first time this past week. A question for you: What size tires are those you have? Any new/fun stuff happening with Black Betty? Bam-ba-lam!

Huzzah for moving!

When we got BB she had some 31 inch of-road tires on her. The stock size is 235/75R15 and As 99% of the time she's being driven on-road, we went with the stock tires. We went with those Nexen tires as they had the highest load rating of any in that size (109). I think we got them at Walmart for about $90 each.

I've also ready the 700R4 can be somewhat sensitive to too-large a tire. And the speedometer was off.

BB continues to do her thing, without drama or fuss. knock on wood The wife's happy, so I'm happy. The rear electric window was catching on something and the tailgate release was hard to operate- turns out they were related, and some cheezy stamped bracket had bent on the tailgate mechanism. I straightened it and welded in a gusset for reinforcement. All's Bob again.

600 mile round-trip up to my parents' house for Thanksgiving with Mrs VCH and Baby VCH and Doggy VCH in Black Betty went off without issue. Total oil consumed for the trip: 1 cup. Not bad for an old SBC with 184k on the clock.

I towed about 1000 miles on 6 cylinders, it doesn't really do anything all that great but it literally does everything.

I have a spare rear motor because I bought the whole tailgate for the glass I will have to check and see if its still good...