CoOverwatch
New member
Hello again. I found Expedition Portal by searching out plans for a trailer to drag behind my 48 Willy's and soon got caught up with everyone's travels and the building of their expo rig's.
Late one night I was going through some old paper work of my dad's who had passed away unexpectedly, and found the rough equipment list we had put together 15 years ago for a trip to Alaska.
He had spent a majority of this career flying over Alaska and had wanted to spend some time exploring it from the ground. So the plan was to build/buy a couple of rigs and I would take some time off work and we would point them in the direction of Alaska and see where we ended up.
As I sat in front of my computer late one night working and complaining that once again it looked like I was going to be spending my summer working/fixing an application that has been in development for 5 years the wife walked by and said “stop talking about it and just do it, but make sure that what you do it will haul me and the two kids!”
With the green light I started hitting this site and another forum asking questions as I wanted to ‘build' not buy. Didn't need to be an extreme off roader, just something safe that will get some mild trails with enough room for the 4 of us. I had zeroed in on a suburban as that is what we had growing up and had many great family outings with the 6 of us.
I started looking around and found an 88 2500 that was in budget (under 2k) that was in good shape. However, the kids that had it could not produce the title work so my search continued. On my way home a neighbor was pulling an old suburban out of his shop so I stopped and asked what he was going to do with it. Believe it or not he was getting ready to put it on Craig's list. The only catch was that the buggy he was building would have to go with it. At 2k I passed as I didn't want to start with someone else's project. A month later he called and said he would let it go for 1k and deliver everything. Sold.
Today while I was getting parts for the jeep I ran into a couple that was getting stuff for their daily driver and was stressed on how they were going to pay for the new transmission and she said they would have to sell the suburban they had in storage. I told him if it ran I would be interested in it. So we stopped over at the storage and 15 minutes later we drove the 90 custom burb back to the house for $700.
these are what I am starting with.
91 burb
90 burb
Late one night I was going through some old paper work of my dad's who had passed away unexpectedly, and found the rough equipment list we had put together 15 years ago for a trip to Alaska.
He had spent a majority of this career flying over Alaska and had wanted to spend some time exploring it from the ground. So the plan was to build/buy a couple of rigs and I would take some time off work and we would point them in the direction of Alaska and see where we ended up.
As I sat in front of my computer late one night working and complaining that once again it looked like I was going to be spending my summer working/fixing an application that has been in development for 5 years the wife walked by and said “stop talking about it and just do it, but make sure that what you do it will haul me and the two kids!”
With the green light I started hitting this site and another forum asking questions as I wanted to ‘build' not buy. Didn't need to be an extreme off roader, just something safe that will get some mild trails with enough room for the 4 of us. I had zeroed in on a suburban as that is what we had growing up and had many great family outings with the 6 of us.
I started looking around and found an 88 2500 that was in budget (under 2k) that was in good shape. However, the kids that had it could not produce the title work so my search continued. On my way home a neighbor was pulling an old suburban out of his shop so I stopped and asked what he was going to do with it. Believe it or not he was getting ready to put it on Craig's list. The only catch was that the buggy he was building would have to go with it. At 2k I passed as I didn't want to start with someone else's project. A month later he called and said he would let it go for 1k and deliver everything. Sold.
Today while I was getting parts for the jeep I ran into a couple that was getting stuff for their daily driver and was stressed on how they were going to pay for the new transmission and she said they would have to sell the suburban they had in storage. I told him if it ran I would be interested in it. So we stopped over at the storage and 15 minutes later we drove the 90 custom burb back to the house for $700.
these are what I am starting with.
91 burb
90 burb
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however I first set of rigs I picked up have the 4l80e transmission and 14bFF. the 91 burb is geared 3.73 and I was planning on swapping in the buggy diff's as they are 4.10. the 90 burb is already geared in 4.10 and now trying to figure if I just change out the rear end for the 14bff and move over the 4" lift and 4l80e tranny. have to keep it simple right now as I have 2 burbs and a 48 willy's I am working on. the plan is to do a few trails here in CO this summer and a jaunt to Boise to make sure all is good.