The editor’s Blowin’ Smoke – 1-Jan-2010

Lately, I’ve been thinking about priorities. You know, we all try to make order in our lives, evaluate and rate the important right on down to the unimportant.

For a gearhead the area between important and unimportant is often a murky, grey area fraught with peril and obstacles than can make you lose your way. You can end up doing the unimportant when the important is staring you right in the face.

That grey area is my shop and one of those pesky obstacles is an ’82 GMC Suburban 3/4 ton I picked up about a year ago. Oh yeah, at the time I already owned an ’84 1/2 ton Suburban. It was my parts hauler, dump runner, junker. I purchased it for $600 and after four years of abuse, it didn’t owe me a thing. But I owed it the respect of putting it out of its misery. It was very rusty and the 305 — despite a cam replacement a year or so earlier — just wasn’t up to snuff. (I would later discover, after robbing the 305’s Edelbrock intake, that a broken valve spring had led to a broken pushrod that had jumped off its lifter and jammed itself into the lifter valley beside it. That truck still did 100 km/h with little trouble.) Anyway, the ’82 had an expired 6.2 litre diesel under the hood, but the rest of the truck was very solid and rust free. It was mine for $800. To a square Chevy/Suburban freak, that seems like a good deal.

The idea was to rebuild a 350 4-bolt I had lying around the shop, swap it in and put the cleaner, rust free Suburban back on the road as my trailer, parts and magazine hauler, junk truck, etc. After the machine work was done it would take a day or so to put the engine back together, another day to drop it back in and the thing would be back in service in no time. Then I could really start on the ’57 Ford Courier Delivery parked beside the Suburban.

Yeah, right.

Once the engine was out, I decided that a pair of World Performance iron heads I had lying around (a junk yard score) should be rebuilt. A very patient and understanding Mike Dunn at Western Drivetrain and Machine Works in Nanaimo, B.C. agreed to help me rebuild the heads. I got as far as putting in new guides and seals before that project stalled. I had to hit the road for the summer car show season and the Suburban lay dormant for two months. When I got back, I put the motor together, got the heads back from the machine shop, torqued them on and decided I might as well paint the whole block. Chevy orange was the only way to go with black valve covers and white headers for a retro feel.

Of course, such a pretty engine couldn’t use the old water pump and starter. New was what it deserved. After that, I started looking at the empty engine bay. There were areas that could use a little wire brushing and repaint. Also, the banged in passenger fender and bent bumper started to bug me. Why not just swap the nearly perfect bumper from the ’84 onto the ’82? And a new fender only costs $100, so I took the smashed one off. That gave me easy access to the inner fender, which I promptly began to wire brush and Scotch Brite. After a few coats of rattle can glossy black, I started looking at the radiator support and driver’s side inner fender. They could use a little TLC and what the heck, it’s only a few bolts. An hour later I had the radiator support and driver’s side fender and inner fender off the truck. I discovered that the inner fender was not so rust free. The next day, I bought an inner fender for $53+GST, then I picked up some chassis paint and went stem to stern on the truck, cleaning up, then applying chassis paint to every body mount and the entire rear floor pan, including under the gas tank — which of course I’d taken out because it had diesel fuel in it. (Don’t get chassis black on you — it doesn’t come off for a week.)

The phrase project creep doesn’t seem to accurately address what has happened over the past four months.

When we finally bolted the engine and Turbo 400 tranny together — along the way discovering that the 6.2 diesel torque converter wouldn’t bolt up to the SBC flex plate, so off to Baker’s Supply to buy a new one — and dropped it back into the Suburban, I decided all the pulleys and brackets should be painted and a new power steering pump was required. Now it’s almost done, but of course I’ve decided I can’t stomach the stock beige and brown exterior colour and a repaint will be required in the near future.
I know all this is not very sexy hot rodding material. My buddies help me out, but they don’t miss opportunities to point out there’s a ’57 Ford waiting for my attention.

This is supposed to be a hot rod magazine and believe me, I want to get a couple projects underway.

But maybe you can understand my predicament. It’s like the mechanic whose car is always the last one fixed. I’m the hot rod magazine publisher who can’t seem to get a hot rod started.

I’m glad the unfinished Camaro stock car is parked in a Costco tent outside. I don’t need the temptation.