1989 V2500 Chevy Suburban

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Jermu

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Hey y'all,

I went and got a replacement for my GMT400 3/4 ton pickup. The problem I had with my '95 in daily driving conditions was the lack of rear doors and a proper backseat. So I got me a squarebody burban!

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She is filthy on the inside and covered in moss and rust on the outside. The cruise doesn't work, the rear doors are not connected to the center locking and like I said, covered in rust... This is going to be a bit of a project but hopefully an easy one at that. I love that things are more simple with this than in the '95 and the interior is something else, me and my girlfriend both fell in love with the thing! This is going to have to do as an introduction, but I'll get y'all more pics and info as we go along, probably next week tho.
 

Jermu

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Did my first mod today. I changed amber bulbs into the aux lights :Big Laugh: in all seriousness tho, they don't make them bulbs (BA9S 4W) in amber, so I had some amber film laying around and I wrapped the bulbs with that and a heatgun. If it's stupid but it works, it ain't stupid, and now I have more amber running lights :biggrin:

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It ain't much, but it's something. I have to contact one more place, but it seems as though I'll have to wait until january next year to get new pigtails for the front blinkers. The driver side one has been changed to accept a regular BA15S bulb and the passenger side has the original pigtail, but the running light wire has been ripped out, so might as well replace both. Talking about the driver side blinker, I was wondering why the light looked all white when I got the truck. Here's the bulb that was in there...

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Baby steps for now, but every step is making it more "mine", if you know what I mean.
 

HotWheelsBurban

Gotta have 4 doors..... Rawhide, TOTY 2023!
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That is some serious bull bar!
Congrats on the new Burb, I miss my 90 GMC 3/4 ton square Burb. My family has gone many a mile in our various square body Burbs....got to where we couldn't find good ones in the Houston, Texas area that were still good runners, so we got a 400 Burb in 2005. Replaced it in 2013 with the current one; it's still chugging along with 203,000 miles, just did a loaded run to a swap meet outta town last weekend. Did a great job, barely knew it was loaded. Gassed up before the trip(150 miles round trip) and that trip plus driving all around Houston for work all week, in traffic a lot of the time, and we got 12.3 mpg according to my calculations upon filling up today.
 

Jermu

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That is some serious bull bar!
Congrats on the new Burb, I miss my 90 GMC 3/4 ton square Burb. My family has gone many a mile in our various square body Burbs....got to where we couldn't find good ones in the Houston, Texas area that were still good runners, so we got a 400 Burb in 2005. Replaced it in 2013 with the current one; it's still chugging along with 203,000 miles, just did a loaded run to a swap meet outta town last weekend. Did a great job, barely knew it was loaded. Gassed up before the trip(150 miles round trip) and that trip plus driving all around Houston for work all week, in traffic a lot of the time, and we got 12.3 mpg according to my calculations upon filling up today.
No, it is not. :Big Laugh: It looks tough, but **** me backwards with a telephone pole if I ever rammed anything with it, the mounting was just stupid, upside was brackets on the grille and at the bottom it was bolted through the bumper...

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I believe ya, I've fallen in love with this thing, the way it drives and all. Haven't got to counting reliable MPG's yet though, because there's some funny business going on... I don't trust neither of the counters, not the ODO nor the trip, I can't tell for sure which one is ****** or if it's both of them :help: The trip counter can't be reset, so that's at least partly broken, but then again the ODO is showing questionable numbers too :gr_grin: Time will tell I guess, gotta start counting when I get it back on the road.

What I mean by that is that she's been off the road for the better part of the last couple months. Sprung a coolant leak and when I got to fixing it, things didn't go as planned. On the way there the alternator belt jumped off and got close and personal with the fan, which then ended up in the belt taking a chunk out of the lower waterhose and creating more problems.

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It took me literally a day to get the radiator out and find the leak, which was the upper corner, frontmost pipe on the driver side. Of course it couldn't be a hole, sumbithc had been torn from the seam...

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Since soldering it would've melted the sidetanks gasket (at the very least), we decided to tackle it with a kind of a liquid metal or whatever, which held! But we didn't smear in enough of it, or then the fix was so good, the next weak link revealed itself, and as such we still have a leak, now from the lower pipe. **** it, it's not as bad so we'll just go with it as I can't afford not to mention find a radiator atm. A one I found costs ~560€ and has to be special ordered, so to hell with that for now. I want to verbally abuse the stupid original owner who ordered it with the fancier radiator with both, motor and tranny oil coolers, but I know I'd have 100% done the exact same thing so I guess I'll just shut up :jester:

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After that I shoved her in the garage, as my re-registration plans have been halted several times, but now a light is shining at the end of the tunnel - For a mere ~280€ of bureaucracy and ******** I can finally have the documentation I need to prove to the local authorities that this really is a 8,600lb GVWR vehicle. Also it's gonna take from 2-4 weeks to arrive... yeey... Welp, beggars can't go around choosing, so the wait begins. Again. I'll keep y'all updated if I remember.
 

texas tough

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love the glass headlights on the 88-89 years,. im going to put a set on my 94 soon
also, find out why that belt jumped off before you call it fixed. a mud dauber nest in the wrong place could have done it, or u may have a pulley alignment issue .
 

Jermu

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love the glass headlights on the 88-89 years,. im going to put a set on my 94 soon
also, find out why that belt jumped off before you call it fixed. a mud dauber nest in the wrong place could have done it, or u may have a pulley alignment issue .
I'm gonna blame it on the old belt. All of the belts actually, that was really just a matter of time, it was so dried up. Here's a picture of the powersteering belt that I noticed by accident... Was poking at something in the engine bay, can't remember what anymore, but my hand happened to hit the underside of the belt and I was like "that felt weird" and wiggled my finger in there. Took it off to see this:

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Sumbitch was missing several teeth in several spots and I know that the belt in question has been slipping previously due to bad tensioning and/or the harmonic balancer dangling on the brink of death. Which is another thing I should fix pronto, soon as I have money for it, a new balancer was like a ~160€. But I have to get the registering stuff done first because the yearly diesel tax on it at the moment is 750€ a year. After the re-registering in the correct weight class, it'll be 85€ a year...
 

HotWheelsBurban

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Man awesome burb. I've always been curious about the square body 2wd burb vs gmt400 burb.
What would you like to know about square body Burbs? I've been bumper to bumper on all the ones we used to have ( and several others in the wrecking yards lol).
There's a little more room under the hood ( especially on the early ones) and the carbureted ones, you can change the fuel pump on the side of the road in half an hour. Room inside is about the same, but the 400s are a little smaller on the outside. Easier to get in and out of tight drive thrus....
And my 2500 series 90 Burb was tall enough with the stock 16" wheels, that I could slide under it to do oil changes. Not much extra room, but that's not something I can do with the current Burb....
 
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