I finally have a Diesel suburban

[KirsL]

Made it home, lol.

So a friend and I got the brakes bleed on Saturday. I adjusted the rear brakes, may have to tweak them a bit. Drove around the yard at work some, seemed good. So brought it home.

The right front caliper is sticking some, so I picked one up.

Front-end is loose. So I have to dig into that.

The brake pedal needs a lot of travel to stop. I know these tend to have a spongy pedal, my parents 96 always did, but the travel seems excessive.

When I do the front caliper I'll rebleed the whole system.

Which brings me to, do they make longer bleeder screws? The ones on the wheel cylinders are barely longer enough to get the wrench and the bleeder hose on at the same time.

 

[KirsL]

We used the truck for our normal Sunday errands. Brakes were feeling better by days end.

I'm still going to change that caliper, outside of lines it's the only part that hasn't been changed.

Pedal still has a lot of travel for my liking.

 

[KirsL]

Well ****.

Looks like I'm doing headgaskets on this one, too.



Unlike the stepside, I don't have to pull the engine to fix this one. So I'll fix this first. Then I'll focus on the stepside.

 

[AgDieseler]

Looks like I'm doing headgaskets on this one, too.

Bummer dude.

David

 

[KirsL]

Ok, so the recent cold weather has shown that the truck has a hvac problem.

The air only comes out the floor and defrost vents.

Try a new control panel, no help for this particular issue.

Little digging and I found the linkage from the one arm is disconnected. No biggie, reach up and reconnect it. Nope, the door is loose in the housing. Or it broke in half. Either way, the far end isn't sitting where it's supposed to be. The actuator sorta works. But that's easy to get to.



According to what I've found so far. The only way to fix/replace the blend door. Is to pull the full hvac box out.

Ugh, not fun.

Not that any heat comes out of the vents, but that's a different problem lol.

So I finally used the combustion gas detector. I let the truck warm up. Around 150 checked with a temp gun on the coolant crossover.

The fluid never changed color. But if I left it alone, it did start getting bubbles in it.

View attachment 20231104_145037.mp4

Side note, after running for almost an hour, it never fully warmed up. Highest it got was 150f. I know for a fact that these engines will hit operating temp at idle. But this seems to refuse to.

I'm pulling the heads to do the gaskets. But I figured it didn't hurt to verify things being bad.

 

[KirsL]

Cleaning up some of my mess from. The axle swap in preparation for doing the headgaskets over the holiday weekend.

The housing is junk and going in the scrap pile.

Is this worth saving/selling?


If not, it all goes in scrap.

 

[fourwheelerjeff]

Is this worth saving/selling?

everything is worth saving; the issue is how long do you have to save it before you find someone that wants it?

 

[KirsL]

everything is worth saving; the issue is how long do you have to save it before you find someone that wants it?

That's the big question, lol.

Problem is I'm typical guy car/welder, I save everything.

I'm trying to save what's only really worth it.

 

[Wes Harden]

If the axles work as spares for you, save those. Loaded backing plates are nice. Save the carrier

 

[centexk5]

If it were me, I’d throw the axles and carrier on marketplace and trash everything else. And I’d let the axles and carrier go cheap enough so they wouldn’t be around long. But folks these days don’t seem keen on paying shipping costs and those are going to be decently heavy and bulky to ship so they probably won’t move quick. Might be easier to take it to a scrap yard and get $10 for it. I don’t believe in keeping stuff around that doesn’t serve a purpose.

 

[Truckman4life]

When you have the acreage everything gets saved!

 

[KirsL]

When you have the acreage everything gets saved!

It's all currently stored at my work! Lol

 

[KirsL]

This weekend is headgasket weekend for the burb. So far things are going as expected for a truck with 400k+ miles on it.

I had to cut the crossover off and the first bolt for the turbo I tried, rounded off. So the passenger side head is going to have to come out with the manifold and turbo still attached. Good thing I have a forklift here.



Plus, while draining the coolant, I found something interesting.
A, the leak is worse then a I thought, only about 2 gallons of coolant came out.
B, the PO at some point used stop-leak on it. As there was a ton of glitter material in the coolant. So I have to flush the system as best I can.

On ward with my saga.

 

[Wes Harden]

Don't envy you guys and that rust.

 

[KirsL]

Don't envy you guys and that rust.

Yeah, rust sucks. Especially when items aren't prepared properly for it.


Pushing forward, slowly, but still forward.

Cracked crossover, good thing I bought a spare.

 

[KirsL]

Well that was a long day. I was hoping to at least get the heads pulled. But various things kept fighting me.
The intakes on these are pretty straightforward. The stepside I can have it off in about 30 minutes. This one fought me for an hour and a half.


I finally got it out of course. Problem was the last tech to work on the truck rammed all the bolts in with an impact and held the trigger for at least 10 uggas. And most of the bolts have a stud end for a secondary mount, yep, ran them down hard too.

But this little heat shield between the turbo and injectors, that fought me for way longer than I want to admit.


Even though I can't get the turbo off, I still need to get to the injectors to pull the lines off. So this shield has to come off. Two tiny 7mm head bolts hold it down and two slide tabs. Well, it was rusted in place. But, it's out.

Tomorrow I want to get the heads installed at minimum.

 

[KirsL]

Been a long weekend. Everything fought me, either from rust (expected with a NE truck) to a previous tech not understanding proper torque values or that some things require washers between them.

Regardless I got the driverside head off and the new one in place and torqued down. That last 90 degrees o. The head bolts is a bitch. Had to break out my 36" breaker bar to turn them easier.
Pictures are in no particular order.


I wanted to get farther along, but it's not too bad where I'm at.

 

[Truckman4life]

Did you find the failure?

 

[KirsL]

Did you find the failure?

Only one side pulled apart. But, no, nothing definitive. The driver side head does have some micro cracking between the valves, but that is common in these engines.
Now the head did pop free fairly easily and the gasket itself also came off pretty cleanly.
All 4 cylinders looked good, could still see the cross hatch pattern.
But no glaring smoking gun.


We'll see what the passenger side shows.

 

[KirsL]

Not a bad day. I got the driver side buttoned up. Just have to install injector lines and such. But that's once the other side is done.

Now to the problem side. After pondering it for a few minutes. I decided that getting the head bolts closest to the exhaust manifold was going to be a problem. Besides the whole deal being heavy and cumbersome.

I got the downpipe out of the way and tried my luck on the exhaust manifold bolts. First one, farthest forward, broke free. Couple other fought me, but I have various tools of destruction.

In the end, it took a couple hours but it's off!!


All in all, not a bad day. Yeah I still have to swap that head. But this was a huge hurdle impeding progress. So I call it a win.


Oh, and I was very surprised. But every bolt unscrewed. Heads rounded off, but none broke.