Finally got myself a Burban

[upper_tanker]

I have a decent selection of yards around me. Theres probably 20 yards within 50mi, but I only visit 1 of them. There's even a guy a couple of towns who only buys gmt400s & parts them out, but he wants stupid money for parts, so I haven't done business w/ him. Example, the yard that I go to charges $150 + core for any truck rearend. This guy wants $200+ depending on the type/style of rearend. I prefer self serve yards, I like to be able to pick & choose the part that I'm buying, besides getting misc screws or clips that a full serve yard wont provide. besides the fact that you'll pay more for the parts because they pulled them & may not be to your high standards. The standards will vary from yard to yard & employee to employee. I've seen it 1st hand, I've worked in several yards. The downside to self serve yards is that you get tools who break things to get what they want.
I mostly visit Pick n Pull, they have several sales a year which helps. This past weekend was 40% off card members. Every so many points, you get emailed a $20 off coupon. Every sale weekend , I end up using my card for other to get discounts while I get the points. That all helps me get more bank for the buck.
I can say that from experience, unless its strictly a full serve yard, no one can honestly say what parts are on a vehicle.
I used to work @ Bill's Auto Parts before they were bought out. We did full & self serve. In the self serve side of the yard, we could tell you the following: yr, make, model & lg items like drivetrain, suspension, radio, hvac controller radio, cluster, body, column, window type, lg items under the hood, fuel pump. When we took a part from a vehicle, we used the stock # on the car so it would take the part out of the system. Problem w/ that is the customer or employee would give you the wrong # or not inform you of bad parts so that you could update inventory. So it was always a gamble.
On the full serve side, we inventoried more parts. Still had an employee issue of not informing of bad parts.
Then there was Ebay, my baby, I could tell you if the Audi TT still had the dash vents or gas door on them or not.
We inventoried about 50 on a vehicle in self serve, about 90 in full serve & about 200 parts in ebay. Only I dismantled the Ebay vehicles except when it came to the drivetrain, another person did that part sometimes. He got paid to go slower & pull more under hood parts. All parts went to me for review & additional pics.
Was on our way of getting what the manager & I wanted, no more self serve. Then the owner sold out. The 2nd yr of doing Ebay, I did a 1/3rd of self serve did. I was selling stuff that i was told would never sell.
One of the best was pissing off one of the saleman. We sold ashtrays in self serve for $5. I had a virgin Deville unit on Ebay for $60 shipped. I had already sold 2 @ that price. Salesperson had to sell it for the $60. We split the commission though. She was not very happy about it.
Maybe one day I'll get back into a yard & run it my way.

Wow, it sounds like you really know your salvage yards! Again, I wish I even had a guy around me that parted them out for stupid money! I completely agree with you about everything that you say about j/y employees possibly not having the same standards as somebody who is looking for parts. To most of the j/y employees, I'm sure it's "only" a job. To most people who call or visit a j/y, they're usually looking for something in particular for a particular project, and they DO care about it because they are benefiting in some way if they find and install this part.

I used car-part when I was looking for a tailgate. There was one that said it was in AA condition (or whatever "perfect" means, I forgot), and said "MUST SEE". It was about a 45 minute drive from me, so I called the yard, and asked him if he could go out and verify that he still had the tailgate before I made the trip and if possible, let me know if it's truly as clean as the add says. He just says, "Man, the add says you have to come out and see it, so you just gotta come out and see it." I make the trip, walk in, and he tells me what row it's in. Says it's a yukon GT. I walk out there, there's only ONE GMT400 SUV, and there's no f*cking tailgate on it. I walk back in, I almost lost my mind on the guy. From then on, I decided I would exclusively deal with the one j/y that my dad always deals with. If he doesn't have a part, my j/y search ends there and I take to other platforms to find the parts I'm looking for.

 

[mars2878]

Wow, it sounds like you really know your salvage yards! Again, I wish I even had a guy around me that parted them out for stupid money! I completely agree with you about everything that you say about j/y employees possibly not having the same standards as somebody who is looking for parts. To most of the j/y employees, I'm sure it's "only" a job. To most people who call or visit a j/y, they're usually looking for something in particular for a particular project, and they DO care about it because they are benefiting in some way if they find and install this part.

I used car-part when I was looking for a tailgate. There was one that said it was in AA condition (or whatever "perfect" means, I forgot), and said "MUST SEE". It was about a 45 minute drive from me, so I called the yard, and asked him if he could go out and verify that he still had the tailgate before I made the trip and if possible, let me know if it's truly as clean as the add says. He just says, "Man, the add says you have to come out and see it, so you just gotta come out and see it." I make the trip, walk in, and he tells me what row it's in. Says it's a yukon GT. I walk out there, there's only ONE GMT400 SUV, and there's no f*cking tailgate on it. I walk back in, I almost lost my mind on the guy. From then on, I decided I would exclusively deal with the one j/y that my dad always deals with. If he doesn't have a part, my j/y search ends there and I take to other platforms to find the parts I'm looking for.

another alternative for you to try is www.row52.com it'll let you know what vehicles are in the yard, when it arrived, the vin # & sometimes a single pic. still cant tell you parts were on it when it arrived let alone the next day or month. but the pic will give you generalized idea of the arrival condition & a better idea of the color. It's not perfect, but it has been useful. Looking up a Grand Am or Cavalier is one thing, but looking up a specific GMT400 model is a little funky w/ this site sometimes. I don't recommend using the year or models fields, just the Make field. I think that it gets confused between say a: c/k1500 vs k1500 vs Silverado vs Silverado k1500. so you look up one model & find nothing, meanwhile its there & listed under another. Just put GMC, Chevrolet or Cadillac in the Make field & you'll see every Cadillac, GMC or Chevrolet on the property. You can register on that site to receive email, text or both alerts of new arrivals. Then you'll know about them sooner.

 

[mars2878]

So I joined the metoocrowd, the 07+ Express/Savanna knob crowd that is.

I ordered my OEM AC Delco knobs from here: https://www.newgmparts.com/index.php?p=cart
Part Number: 84141127
I paid $5.14 per knob & $8.78 for shipping. My bill was like $65 shipped for 10 knobs.
It arrived within the week & was well packaged.
They required a vin # for the order, so I grabbed a vin # off of craigslist to make them happy.

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I did 9 so far, just have to do the headlight switch still.
It was straight forward, plug n play w/ the 9 knobs.
Get a pair of pliers, pull the white rings off of the back of the new knobs & throw them away. Pull old knobs off. some might be easier to pull while others may be more difficult. Put pliers on old knob, place your hand on the controller face to help prevent you from pulling the whole assembly out of the hole. Line up the new knobs & push on until seated correctly. rotate the knobs to make sure that it's not too stiff. If it is, pull the knob back off slightly so that you create a slightly bigger gap between the knob & controller.

The headlight knob requires modification, more on that later.

 

[mars2878]

While I had the bezel out doing other things, I removed all of the vents from it, dissected the vents & washed everything. Now it looks & smells so much better. Not sure how people can drive around smelling that crap? I also washed out the black section of the vent the best that I could reach. I have a spare/clean black dash vent that will be eventually installed when I pull the dash for another mod.

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That is just so disgusting!!

 

[JackE]

That is just so disgusting!!

Yet another reason I love living in the dry desert! My vents are always dusty, but nothing growing in them like that!

 

[mars2878]

Yet another reason I love living in the dry desert! My vents are always dusty, but nothing growing in them like that!

that's the vent above the dash cup holder, that's years of spilt drinks

 

[98chevy2500SS]

I always see that in trucks, so f*cking gross. Both of my trucks had that in the vents before I cleaned them.

 

[mars2878]

Just did the spark plugs wires, inspected the old ones & they didn't look damaged but who knows when they were last done. No noticeable difference in runability. Cap & rotor will be next.

here's the wires that I bought: Ultima Select #3276-03, they come w/ a lifetime warranty

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[mars2878]

While doing the spark plug wires, I noticed that this hard vacuum line was broken. So I MacGuyveréd it until I can locate a new one.

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[mars2878]

As I've said before, I do a full tune up on everything I buy unless the po can prove when it was last done. This tune-up is being piece mealed because of time & weather constraints. I have having open projects, but it happens, so I do my best to avoid them.

So far we have a burban w/ a 158k mi, supposedly the original drivetrain. no codes & ran good when I bought it. I replaced the plugs w/ AC Delco Rapidfires, which is what was in there. Promptly afterwards the check engine come on & I have a p0300 code. I double check everything, everything is correct/I didn't forget anything. So I figured that it was one of the spark plug wires, it must've been on its way out & I disturbed it. Not a biggie, I already bought wires & will do when I had time. Got time, replaced the wires. No change. Doubled checked the firing order, I couldn't have screwed it up, I only did one @ a time. Oh well, next up is the cap & rotor.


Did the cap & rotor yesterday afternoon.

old rotor, duh

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Don't know about you, but I think it's junk.

Even says Delco Remy on it. Quite possibly the original