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92 Suburban 2500 4x4 Build (pic heavy)

6.5 BUILD 
12K views 30 replies 7 participants last post by  LBZFORME 
#1 ·
So before I being I will say that If you are not a fan of modifying a vehicle from "stock" then this thread is NOT for you :thumb: Otherwise Enjoy!


So in June of 2013 I picked up a 1992 2500 Suburban.

I do a lot of shooting, most of it in the desert and I needed a vehicle capable of transporting equipment and more than 3 people into and back from the desert.

The vehicle at over 180K on it, although it had a recently rebuild 350 and a seemingly good 4L80E transmission. It was a former fire captains vehicle as told by the strobe covers and wiring throughout the interior. Here is what it looked like when i brought it home.




The paint was faded out on the roof and hood, and the rear doors had damage that had been bondo'd as a repair. the bondo was breaking off/cracking and the door had begun to rust so they had to go and a new paint job was in order.

I elected to do a home paint job using a paint similar in chemical makeup to the military's CARC paint (Chemical Agent Resistant Coating). Plus I love tan and its was a desert vehicle so why not.

After several weeks of sanding and priming in the garage this was the result.




I then set up a makeshift spray booth in the garage using 2x2's and painters plastic.



Next i wanted to install these tires... yes i purchased the tires and wheels and then decided on a lift...




After educating myself on the types of lifts utilized during these years and price shopping, I found a 6" RCD lift that had all the qualities I was looking for. Incidentally, RCD is was the first and only manufacturer to offer a 6" lift for this body style suburban with new steering knuckles to lift up the tie rod end mounts to the factory locations. This enables the vehicle to retain it's factory steering geometry.




( to be continued ) after writing most of the build it logged me out and I lost all the info. :bawl:
 
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#2 · (Edited)
Can an Admin tell me why the "edit" button disappeared? I'd like to edit and add more, but the button vanished...

Edit: I can edit this post... but not the original...
 
#5 · (Edited)
As I was saying at the end of my last post, I picked out the RCD lift, and after getting all the parts together, tore into it.

I also cleaned up the rear axle a bit before the lift.

Before:



After:



As most of you more experienced guys know, anytime a coating of rust is involved, every bolt takes twice as long. Well this was no different, and i fought tooth and nail with every part i had to remove.

The torsion keys and lower arms were rusted into the torsion bars so badly I had to first remove the keys by letting the whole assembly hang down. Then I just went at them with a BFH. The bars wouldn't budge loose, so as a last resort I picked up the bars and lower arms as one piece and dropped the end of the bar on the concrete driveway. That finally did the trick!

Here's what's left of the keys...



If i remember correctly it took me about 50 hours to install the lift by myself... Everything was done alone and with floor jacks. :thumbsdow

The effects of rust on two of the rear axle U-bolts. I believe chevy re-designed these so they wouldn't retain water and dirt to avoid this exact problem...

 
#6 · (Edited)
Here is a photo half way through the lift.




Since I was swinging these huge 37's I wanted to rid myself of the crappy tie rod ends and put in something beefy. I found a company in California that makes Billet rods with heim joints. As you can see the rods are nearly as large as the CV's!




Once the lift was on, the widows behind the doors were painted over and the rear quarters were cut off. I anticipated fabricating a bumper that would fill a majority of the gap and in the future will tie into an exterior cage around the vehicle.




It now has a pretty good amount of suspension travel.




The first try at a bumper you can see here...:shake: but it will have to do for now. I also fabricated the framework for the rear bumper and added the towing mirrors. I also added torsion bar relocators so the factory bars could be tucked back up into the frame.

This required the cross member to be re-located back 2 inches to allow the relocators to be installed. This is not my vehicle but you get the idea of how it works.




Well soon after all this was done (probably due to the extra load from those 37's the transmission died and I paid an acquaintance a hefty sum to rebuild it. Long story short after 3 months, a new case (old one had been rebuilt at least 3 times ( at least three different colors of post rebuild paint)), and a new ECM (he cut a wire in the harness re-installing it and finally found it after purchasing a new ECM) I had it back on the road.

The 350 just wasn't cutting it for me, and I'm not a fan of all the electronic crap on newer vehicles so I decided to convert it to a 6.5 and mate a NV4500 to it.

Enter the donor vehicle....:hehe:
 
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#7 ·
Ok so as you can see the back of that poor suburban was cut off by the previous owner to turn it into an avalanche of sorts. While it was a 6.5 it was a 96 which meant OBD2 and the DS4 setup and not the DB2 setup.

Regardless of the body condition, the motor with around 125K was in decent shape for its age. It had oil weeping out from a few places, but appeared to be old hoses and not from any main seals.



On top of the DS4 to DB2 setup, I was also converting to a manual which required the clutch setup and all the mounts for that as well. This proved challenging, but due to you amazing members I was able to find parts lists for what i needed.

Oh yeah and I had to find a transmission... Thanks FleaBay!



Also, here are some of the new goodies I either got from the junk yard or from the good ole internet.




I am skipping ahead slightly, but not only did I have to install the bracket for the clutch pedal, I also had to drill the holes for the bracket under the dash. As I don't plan on keeping the factory gauge cluster I drilled the crap out of it until I had room to reach into, Drill and bolt in the bracket properly. :banghead:




Before I could do anything with the 92 I had to remove the 6.5 and any parts i planned on selling to re-coupe some of my investment. Since i picked it up for 2500, I though selling the transmission and rolling chassis would recoup at least 1000.

Here's pulling the motor out.



Cleaned up the Transmission a bit after inspecting it. Bearings appeared in spec and the gears were clean without any signs of significant wear or deformation.

 
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#8 · (Edited)
Once The 96 was stripped it was time for the 92 to get its new heart! This time a few friends were willing to help drop this bad boy into place! We Pulled the 350, 4L80E, and installed the 6.5 in 1 day. Not bad for a few armatures.

350 coming out


6.5 going in! (that's me in the orange looking like i fell into an oil bin...)





Once the motor was in, my dad came up and assisted in lifting the transmission into place. I do not recommend this without a transmission jack adapter...:thumbsdow




Here is the giant hole we had to cut into the floor to get the tower to clear. unfortunately my transmission (which I selected because of the higher gear ratio in 1st) had the old style one piece tower.




Once that was in place it was time to install the a fore mentioned clutch pedal assembly and pedal. This was no easy feat but ya gotta do what you gotta do.

Three pedals!




While I did not do any photo documentation on this for some reason, I also converted the massive rear drums to disk. Unfortunately, the calipers with a parking brake were an additional $200 that I didn't want to spend, so i cut the parking brake cable and assembly off... If only I had remembered I was going to a manual transmission...:idea:

Either way disk brakes were a huge improvement and cut off some rotating mass at the same time!

This was a temporary mockup until i can fabricate a new gauge cluster, but the glow plugs are manually operated and have a warning light to remind me when I turn them on. Both the fuel shutoff and cold advance are both manually controlled as well.

 
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#9 · (Edited)
One thing about buying stuff from someone else is you never know what they did to it....

I decided to change out the universal joints and clean up the rusty/nasty looking drive shaft... I had never done this before, but after some online education, I removed the joints. The problem was that when I bought replacement joints, they were much too small...

Fortunately the parts store near me has a few old timers who actually know their way around cars. They went to the back and after a few minutes emerged with a FORD universal joint... :bat:



After figuring that out, the drive shaft got a coat of paint and re-installed.




Apparently the driveshaft was custom made and fits pretty much every year of FORD F250's as well as a few years of the 1960's corvettes... all i could say was :wtf:



Next I picked up a Posi-Lok 800 so I would always have 4wd. This removed the weak link of the electronic one that always fails. I'm not a fan of the entire linkage setup which I will improve on myself, but it will do for now.



I also installed a boost and pyro gauge, although I'm having some difficulty getting the pyro gauge to function properly (the green can be changed to 7 other colors, but the cheap gauge doesn't remember the color you set it on and defaults to green)




I am currently waiting on a new cartridge for the GM-5 turbo to get here so I can rebuild it.

While the turbo is apart, I plan on polishing up the compressor housing in the same way I did the intake.

Here's how the intake turned out....




Definitely a work in progress, but hopefully a few of you can appreciate the many hours I've put into this thing.
 
#10 ·
This is awesome. Practically chisled out of rock with your bare hands but the result is amazing!
 
#11 ·
Thank you! Definitely a work in progress (that's putting it mildly) :)
 
#12 · (Edited)
So here is today's update!

My new turbo cartridge came on Friday and I just got over some nasty flu so I had some down time to sit and sand...

When taking the assembly off i notice there was a TON of oil coating the area all around the intake of the compressor housing... I knew the bearings were worn as I had started getting a louder squeal type sound on deceleration, and the turbo was sounding "off" at freeway speeds. Dunno how else to describe it, but it wasn't a smooth turbo spool sound it sounded....sick?

Either way it was WELL over due for a change and it was $200 bucks cheaper to replace the cartridge myself than to buy an entire assembly.

The compressor side of the turbo came off fine, but the exhaust side was a different matter. The bolt heads were just twisting when an open end wrench was used, but there wasn't room to get a box end wrench on 4 of the 6 bolts.

After heating the housing with a torch and getting no results i decided to cut off enough material to get a box end on the bolts...




Once that was done it was easy to get them off using the box end of the 1/2" wrench.

The exhaust side is soaking in evapo-rust overnight, and the compressor side got a good polish.

Here is the start, after grinding off some of the manufacturer symbols. I left the model and s/n in tact.. doesn't look as good but I figured why not..



And after polishing for about 3 hours....



Its not perfect, but its considerably better.

I also polished up the intake lip slightly. Couldn't hurt right? :confuzeld

Tomorrow I'm picking up a 6.5 for $200. if the block is bad i can still scrap the FMM, Intake, manifolds, etc. I plan on polishing them up and selling my old ones. What do y'all think?
 
#13 ·
Quick update. After cleaning up the exhaust side I bolted the turbo back together and bolted it onto the manifold. I guess I assumed (I know never assume) that the new cartridge would be in spec.... boy was I wrong...

After bolting it up I spun the impeller and to my surprise it didn't turn that freely and sounded like it contacted the housing. I wiggled on the shaft and sure enough TONS of play. I could press the impeller blades against the housing on both sides it was so bad.

I have contacted DieselCare to return it. Disappointed to say the least...
 
#15 ·
I wish. Several problems with that though, the biggest one being budget. With a wedding coming up next year I can't drop that kind of $ into this motor right now. Plus with the amount of blow by I have now, it would put this motor into an early grave. I like where your mind is at though!:thumb:
 
#16 ·
You can get a knock off version like many members here have done including myself. They can be found on eBay for under $300.

That turbo would only help your motor last longer. Less drive pressure for one ect. Just take a look at the 6.5 performance section.
 
#17 ·
Do you have the specs? I'm not familiar with other turbo manufacturers so I'll need description of possible. I saw a T3 spec turbo?
 
#18 ·
did you ever find a new turbo?
 
#19 ·
Sorry for the delayed response, I missed the notification. I went through three cartridges before I found one that was satisfatory. Well the first one was the disaster, the second one was ordered and then cancelled because they said it was actually out of stock.

The third one came in, and, while it had slight side to side shaft play it didn't contact the housing. Either way its in and back up and running. See below for my current..... activities :HiHi:
 
#20 ·
OK, so as stated above, I finally got the turbo back together and the intake re-installed. It really is clean looking with the polished housing, new hose, clamps, and polished intake.




Next I added badging to the exterior on the driver and passenger front doors as well as the passenger side rear barn door. I like the styling. I plan on a complete re-paint of the whole body so the area where the color does not match will be fixed down the road.




Yesterday I spent the majority of the afternoon fixing a problem that was created by the realift torsion bar re-locators. because those re-locators moved the bars back up to the factory location, but also back 6 inches, it cause the bars to run right through the middle of the transmission cross member.

to temporarily (and by that i mean over a year) fix the issue, the transmission bracket was lowered down and spacers were added. this worked, but the drive angle was changed because I couldn't add a full 1" off spacer, and it also looked terrible having that cross member hanging under the frame.

To fix this I made some U brackets to go under the torsion bars. Not only did it put the transmission back in its original location, it also gave me an additional inch of clearance on the snout on the end of the transfer case.

right.... more pictures less talk...

here's a closeup of the bracket.


Once that was in place I had to cut the bracing bars 3" shorter because they had been off since I swapped from the auto to the manual which was shorter.

Here's the whole project done.


I will add some plates to go between the brackets so they won't catch on anything, and I didn't loose any clearance because the braces hang down about as far as those brackets do.


Moving right along... today this came in the mail! :coolnana:



A riddler rear differential cover. a minimum of 3/8" thickness, recessed bolt holes and no edges to make it super slick.

I painted it with high temp flat black, and accented the logo with flat tan (shocker i know). Added lucas 75w 90 gear oil and off it goes!



Here is how it looks now. I think the flat black and chrome bolts look nice, albeit out of place on the flat tan...

 
#21 · (Edited)
not too much of an "update" but I did get a chance to take the rig up to the mountains this last week on an overnight camping trip.



Even got to test its torqe capabilites. I was impressed how well the super low gearing worked.





And here he is parked at the camp site.



I averaged a little over 13 mpg. and most of that was traveling up hill, so I think its doing quite well.

Now to finish up that front bumper!

I also ordered a transfer case rebuild kit, and Plan on putting a new input bearing in the NV4500 at the same time.
 
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#24 ·
If you want peace prepare for war, Nice quote. How much paint did it take and what brand is it.
 
#26 ·
I used about 1.5 gallons of flat Behr premium plus ultra exterior paint.
 
#28 ·
Standard house paint correct ? Any issues with it wanting to peal ? Thinking of using the same on my 95.
 
#29 ·
Way too late reply, but yes standard exterior paint. No issues on the body, some flaking where I didn't prep well in the fenders, but everything else is solod.
 
#31 ·
You didn't miss it, I just failed to put it in there. I shopped around for weeks online and ended up buying from ebay. Free shipping saved me like 300 if freight costs. It shipped on two pallets.
 
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