1988 1 ton suburban buildup

[Mark Harley]

Nice Burb!

Like the H2 rims and chrome lug nuts.
They look great on the rig.
Keep posting pictures.
Mark Harley

 

[jturkey69]

WOW..awesome work!

 

[xpndbl3]

got to hear the truck start for 3 seconds before the engine died, realized my buddy didn't turn off vats...whoops. Stopped back by his place and had it fixed and will hopefully toss the computer back in the truck tomorrow. Can't make the y-pipe in the big winds today with the welder outside, tomorrow is supposed to rain all day, so it might be a few days before the exhaust gets buttoned up. Sure sounded sweet for those few seconds though, been a long road coming!

 

[xpndbl3]

three hours into fabbing a y pipe, not bad for only having some mandrel u-bend pipe, a sawzall and a vice to make some educated "guesses" for the angles

 

[dieselfuel]

Nice truck man, I'm actually putting a 5.3 into my 89 suburban here in a month or so.

 

[xpndbl3]

haha good luck man, this has taken me a lot longer than expected, it'll definitely be worth it in the end though.

 

[dieselfuel]

yeah i'm already finding that all the little things will nickle and dime you to death. fortunately i don't have to worry about wiring or anything like that. mine is coming with a stripped down harness and tuned ECM from BD turnkey engine supply on pirate4x4. all you have to do is supply it with fuel and voltage and it'll run with no DTCs or problems. do you have any pics of your crossmember/engine clearance? did you modify the stock crossmember or buy/build one?

 

[xpndbl3]

stock crossmember fit 100%, what's there to modify? Oh ya my harness is all done up with a fuse panel too, and simple hookups....still takes forever for all the little things after that.

 

[jturkey69]

wow, thats some dedication...workin outside on cold concrete!..lol

 

[xpndbl3]

definitely glad it hasn't snowed on me yet, but I'm guessing that'll be here shortly as well. Can't lay on the concrete for more than 35 minutes or it'll suck all the heat out of me, even with putting down some rubber mats, doesn't help stop it much. Hoping the light at the end of the tunnel is soon and I'll be done with it. Then build a sleeping platform and a few other things in the spring I suppose. Would like to run a power inverter in the back, and maybe some cig. lighter attachments as well. Thinking of how to turn the spare tire area into a spot to hold tools, and tow straps, etc.

 

[dieselfuel]

stock crossmember fit 100%, what's there to modify? Oh ya my harness is all done up with a fuse panel too, and simple hookups....still takes forever for all the little things after that.

cool, thats what i was hoping to hear. i wasnt sure if it fit or not.

 

[bftank]

card board on concrete works better for keeping heat in. learned that in fargo changing my oil in january when i was a kid.

 

[xpndbl3]

well had a buddy stop over tonight and we finished up the y-pipe and put on a new tailpipe that I bought($92 whewww) along with reusing the year old flowmaster muffler. Tossed in brand new GM crush gaskets and some new 02 sensors. Fired it up, certainly a lot louder than my old 350ci tbi motor, might have been because it was 11pm, we'll see tomorrow. Glad to have finally finished the exhaust though

 

[Larry]

Looking good xpndbl3! Yeah, the LS engines (and the BB 8.1L) have a different firing order than the old small block and big block engines of yesteryear. The firing order change from 18436572 to 18726543 makes the exhaust note sound so much different. In fact, when I did my swap I had to add a cross pipe in the exhaust, as the 8.1L sounded terrible through dual exhaust with Flowmasters whereas, the 454 before it sounded throaty. Added an H-pipe and now sounds like a pissed off Ferrari at high RPM’s. The engine even felt smoother after the H-pipe was installed. So much different sounding than the 454.

Here are two decent vid’s of how mine sounds, although they are both at pretty low RPM. You can hear the bumper D-rings clang around alot in the first vid.
[video]http://youtu.be/dMwIeDaWpJY?t=36s[/video]

[video]http://youtu.be/Pin2QewDLgM[/video]


Looking forward to seeing pictures of your finished product. Got to get those wires all tied up and secured in split loom. Helps prevent chaffing and just looks clean.

No lose or visible powertrain wires on mine. All individual wires were slid into vacuum line for protection and trunks with several wires went into split loom.

 

[xpndbl3]

Truck sounds good, I was waiting to loom all the wires until I get everything completed in case the harness needs to be worked on at all. As of right now I still have a few trouble codes to work out, so I didn't want to loom it all up just to pull it back apart. Actually pulled out the big box of loom tonight and found my transfer case skid plate I bought like 2 years ago and never installed. Found some new grade 8 bolts in a box as well for it. Need to do a crank relearn on the computer so have to get my buddy over with his tech 2 to do it from his shop first and help me figure out the codes that are causing the SES light to be lit.

edit: wires are more cleaned up than those earlier pics as most were not needed now that the swap is getting close to done with. I'll grab some pics when I'm 100% finished of the end product.