First thread - rear end question

[qwikgta]

Just got back into the truck scene and picked up a 97 C1500. Its already lowered 3/4 and I plan to make it a 5/7 soon. question I have is with the rear end. I picked up a rear sway bar off a 99 Suburban, I grabbed all the hardware and when i looked under my 97 it already has the mounting boss's on the rear end. I noticed that all the other pickup trucks in the junkyard did NOT have the mounting points but those w/ the sway bar do. My frame does not have the holes, which i get, but why does the rear have the mounting boss's on it already? My first thought is that some time in its life the rear end was swapped out w/ one from a Suburban, so what do you think? Did any trucks come with a rear swaybar, and if they did, did they use a rear end housing w/ mounting boss, or did they use the U bolts like I see aftermarket kits sell.

Thanks in advance.

 

[ArdentFab]

Sounds like it was swapped out sometime before so it way have the positrac diff in it.

I have a suburban axle that I'm about to swap out but I can confirm that the the truck axle does NOT have the mounting boss's for the sway bar like the suburban does.

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[qwikgta]

OK, thanks. Again, that was my first thought. Now I have to find out if it really has a posi or not.

 

[ArdentFab]

It's easy to distinguish once you pull the cover off [emoji106]

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[someotherguy]

Dunno why people keep insisting on calling these truck factory lockers a posi.. they're not. And being a Suburban rear doesn't have any bearing on whether or not it will have the locker. They were optional regardless and plenty of Suburbans were open diffs. Wouldn't get excited about the 10 bolt locker either, it's pretty weak. If anything your two benefits IF it's the Suburban rear would be those mount points, but even better, bigger brakes than all the C1500 trucks got, except for the extended cab longbed which has same rear brakes as the Suburban got.

Long story short someone swapped the rear with a Suburban one. Trucks didn't come with rear sway, not even an option.

**** I just heard in my head how negative I sounded with all that, didn't really mean to, just hate seeing bad info perpetuated. Nothing personal y'all

I'd ask around in here see if anybody low, especially 7" rear, is successfully running the Suburban sway bar. I haven't done one so I dunno what kind of challenges you might face. With the more traditional rear bars offered by the aftermarket, you end up with end link issues unless you shorten them significantly, like in half. Easy to do you just gotta do it.

Richard

 

[ArdentFab]

Dunno why people keep insisting on calling these truck factory lockers a posi.. they're not. And being a Suburban rear doesn't have any bearing on whether or not it will have the locker. They were optional regardless and plenty of Suburbans were open diffs. Wouldn't get excited about the 10 bolt locker either, it's pretty weak. If anything your two benefits IF it's the Suburban rear would be those mount points, but even better, bigger brakes than all the C1500 trucks got, except for the extended cab longbed which has same rear brakes as the Suburban got.

Long story short someone swapped the rear with a Suburban one. Trucks didn't come with rear sway, not even an option.

**** I just heard in my head how negative I sounded with all that, didn't really mean to, just hate seeing bad info perpetuated. Nothing personal y'all

I'd ask around in here see if anybody low, especially 7" rear, is successfully running the Suburban sway bar. I haven't done one so I dunno what kind of challenges you might face. With the more traditional rear bars offered by the aftermarket, you end up with end link issues unless you shorten them significantly, like in half. Easy to do you just gotta do it.

Richard

No hurt feelings lol, my phone auto corrected my sentence, it was suppose to say "may" instead of "way".

And I agree, a 10 bolts nothing to get excited about really, but anything is better than an open diff in these trucks. It'll have you yelling YOLO (you only left one) out the window as your right rear tire goes up in smoke haha.

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[qwikgta]

No worries here. Soon after purchase I googled "junk yard upgrades" to see if I could score some cheep mods by picking up junkyard parts. I have a 88 Fiero that I drive daily, one of the cheep upgrades is to install a GT rear sway bar on the coupe. Its a cheep upgrade that really helps out. I was hoping that my local pick n pull would be full of "cheep upgrades". So when I found a 99 burban at the yard, i pulled the bucket seats and door cards, dash, trim and even cut out the front carpet and headliner. I upgraded from maroon to the standard gray. I noticed that the burban had a rear sway bar, so I grabbed it as well. When I checked my truck i noticed that it already had the mounting boss's and could not understand why the aftermarket kits had U bolts. After looking over every other C1500 in the yard, none of them had the swaybar boss's and realized my rear end must have been swapped. I also think it has the 11" drum brakes, i was looking at converting to disk brakes and before I do I have to know if I have the 11" drums or the 10". My RPO codes reflect 10" but when I hold up a tape measure to the drums outside the rims it looks like they are 11". So again, thanks for the help.

 

[GMTMark]

If your RPO Code says 10" drums and you have 11" then it seems you do have a Suburban Rear. I've been considering a disk brake conversion and a posi for my 98.