Bought a burban!

[Rexmburns]

Thanks guys! Got the gas tank from ups nice and early this am and had the truck up and running about 45 minutes later. It runs prefect now that it is getting steady fuel! After driving around the parking lot and a short trip to the gas station I felt it was ready for a solid road test so I drive it about 50 miles without a hiccup... Well there was one minor hiccup lol can you spot what's missing?


Yup about 4 miles from the shop it got louder and then I looked in the rearview to see the muffler bouncing down the road behind me lol! I knew it was going to need exhaust just didn't figure it would be this soon. So I jumped online and looked for some exhaust and ended up with a Dynomax full stainless cat back system that should be here in a day or two. Later on I'll probably add headers and a new y pipe with high flow cat so this will easily adapt to that and at $130.56 shipped to my door for the full kit I couldn't really do any better! Gotta love online discount codes!

 

[Rexmburns]

Well I haven't updated in a while but I got the exhaust installed, emissions and safety inspection done, sanded and painted the roof with black rattle can and converted the ac to r134 and have just been driving it! It has been running without a single issue for almost 3k miles now and it is time to show it a little love. The hood was dented and the paint was crap so I've been searching around for a factory replacement but people seem to think they are made of gold around here wanting $200 plus for them! I found a aftermarket hood that I have been watching since I bought the burban and the price started at $275 but has been slowly coming down over the last month or so and today I went and picked it up for a $100!! Its in primer ready to paint so I am going to see what it is going to cost to paint it to match my truck and go from there on how I proceed with paint.

 

[Nealgobert]

Congrats! I think you got a good deal

 

[Rexmburns]

Took the burban on a 500 mile round trip to drop the oldest off at lacrosse camp on Monday and it did awesome. Even through the mountains literally the entire way to and from I left home with a full tank and still had a quarter tank left when I got home! SInce it did/has been doing so well I decided it was time to show it some love




I've been doing a lot of reading regarding the TBI and upgrades for it so I figured it was time to start with a couple of them. I started with removing the ridges around the bores and opening them up a bit. I will also order a injector pod riser and TBI spacer in a day or two but for now heres some pics!




Before: For anyone not familiar with these you can pretty clearly see how restricting the ridges are to air getting into the intake.


























Prepping for grinding!



These are the tools I chose to use obviously attached to a Dremel



Ridges roughly removed. The cutting bit made quick easy work of these.



After a bit of work with a sanding roll.








And then finally the finished product. I messed up a bit on one of the raised spots that surround the entire TBI but I don't think that it will cause me any issues since there is a gasket there anyway


















I wish I had remembered to get a pic with the injector pods on before but here is after.



















Up next I will be installing by new hood and building a box to make the ram air "functional" along with a new intake hat.




I test fit the hood today to see where things landed and was going to leave it on but found that I need to buy a bolt on latch for the hood side as the factory hood is welded on and the fiberglass is not






And the part I need








That's all for today!!

 

[Rexmburns]

Well I had to go and mess with it didn't I!! Started the truck Sunday turned on the a.c. to cool it off turned around and it shut off like I had turned the key off didn't have time to mess with it so I left it be and we took the wife's car since we were already late to a baseball game.

So after waking up Monday and taking the new blazer before I even left the parking space the rear view mirror fell off in my hand trying to adjust it and the entire day went down hill fast!!. Sitting in a meeting this am after getting to work I get a phone call from my cousin that I knew would be coming but was dreading that my grandma passed away that night then an hour later my delivery team calls me and says the truck is "squirting something from a metal hose" so ask then to send me a pic and where they are. Of course they are over an hour away so road trip here I come. It sprouted a leak in one of the heater pipes so I rigged it up with some muffler putty and then wrapped it in muffler sealant tape and sent them on their way. The fix worked for two days until I was able to swap the part Wednesday morning.

While on my road trip I noticed the blazer was running a bit warm even on the highway so I figured I should swap the tstat. After letting it cool for a bit back at work I pulled the housing to find it didn't even have a tstat in it! That should have been a sign if it was running warm with no tstat but I figured since the PO was running straight water that wasn't helping anything so I didn't think much of it. Well driving home to fix the burban I'm two blocks from home and the temp spikes and then pulling into home the gauge drops flat as I'm pulling into my spot! Shut it off and pop the hood to find the lower rad hose spewing water. No big deal except I have to pick my son up from daycare in 45 min and I'm now stuck at home with two broken down vehicle's and no way to get him. The wife was at work in a meeting so reaching her wasn't happening so thank god for good friends 10 minutes later I had a buddy picking me and the car seat up to get the kid and another lined up to watch him for me while I messed with trucks

Anyway I swing by and picked up the rad house and started on that and the husband of the friend watching Bentley came to help me so we had the hose swapped relatively quickly after he made a trip top his storage locker to get his hose clamp pliers and filled it up with coolant started it and everything is good... Well kinda it still got really hot really quickly and I could feel the tstat open but still stayed hot at idle but weirdly if you held it above 2k the temp would drop so to me that says water pump issues. So I closed it up and went back to the burban. I ended up replacing all the coolant lines plus the water pump for good measure today and all is well with the blazer.

First thing I did was try fuel in the tb and no change so it's a spark issue. Checked all connections everything is good so I pulled the cap and the button on the cap is gone fried right off and the rotor looks like crap!! I kept going down the list and found that the pickup coil was shot so I replaced the entire dizzy and all is well now.

The spot on the left is just from my finger


And the inside of the cap

 

[Rexmburns]

Well I haven't had to do anything to the burban for some time now but it has developed a front end wobble due to worn out parts so its time for a refresh!

Great googly Moogly..


I have half of what I paid for the entire truck sitting right here in this pile but hey if I'm going to do this I may as well do it right and never worry about it again right? I'm 1,500 miles short of putting 30k miles on it since I bought it and I am still only into the entire truck including maintenance for under $2500 so I'd say its been a pretty damn good truck!!

 

[Tonyrodz]

You're doing pretty good. These trucks are so easy and reliable, even when they break down! What did you do for the latch on the new Hood?

 

[Rexmburns]

Thanks! Yeah I really do love it and its been solid for me for sure. I ended up buying a full latch kit from Cervinis for like $35. Sadly I had the hood sitting in a "friends" shop and he closed up everything in a matter of a couple days and ditched out to FL and I lost my hood in the ordeal. Luckily I had gotten most everything out before that so besides the hood the only only thing I lost was some transfer case parts from my blazer but I wasn't to worried about that stuff.

 

[Tonyrodz]

Nice friend

 

[Rexmburns]

Yeah he screwed a few people including customers when he left. Like I said I was lucky enough to have seen it coming and moved all of my stuff outta there before I lost everything but others were not so lucky.