Project Move, 1994 Chevy 1500 Suburban

[SgtMarshal]

I just bought a 1994 Chevy Suburban for 700 bucks. It runs and drives, the 4 wheel drive is supposed to work, but haven't tested it yet. It needs a tighter serpentine belt, and the pulley below the tensioner pulley needs to be replaced, and it probably needs a new intake. It has aftermarket wheels, and the tires have really low mileage. I bought it to use for moving all our stuff from Jackson Hole, Wyoming down to our house in Kemmerer, Wyoming, and in a couple weeks to a different house in Kemmerer. No pictures yet, I just drove it home.

[Burbman]

Nice! FYI, U-haul rents a 12' enclosed double axle trailer for cheap. I rented one twice to move both daughters and you can fit a ton of stuff including mattress/boxsprings and couches, stuff that's too big for the burb. It tows easily with the burb and rents cheap since it's only a trailer. I remember you posting a while back about juggling a couple moves and houses, sounds like that's all working itself through?

[LeadfootCJ7]

Sounds like a nice score. It should serve you well. Just make sure not to tow in OD and you will be fine. That tends to kills the trans.

Got any pics?

[SgtMarshal]

still no pictures. I was going to drive it 150 miles up to the place we are moving from, but my wife saw mouse poop on the seat, so it got left at home and we are going to rent a U haul truck instead of just a trailer. I changed the tensioner pulley yesterday and saw that the idler pulley was also bad. I bought a new idler pulley, and when I took the old one off, the mounting hardware was fubar, so I need to find the back plate, and I think there is a front plate as well. the wrong serpentine belt is on, so it is slightly loose, and doesn't wrap around that fubar idler pulley, so it runs and drives decent.

[SgtMarshal]

I went and spoke with the expert mechanic about the idler pulley issue and was informed the wrong hardware was used, which destroyed the pulley, so now I have an idler pulley to put on and nothing to bolt it to the engine with. two solutions were offered, 70 bucks for the pulley with all the mounting stuff from the dealership, or find it used at the junkyard. I'll have to run out to the junkyard tomorrow and see what's available.

my wonderful neighbor parked his trailer on the street in front of my house and hasn't moved it in weeks.

[SgtMarshal]

we are all moved out of that house now. we ended up renting a 15' uhaul truck to move all our stuff into a storage unit. thankfully we had some friends show up and help, otherwise it would have been really painful. 2 trips and about 4 hours of loading/unloading. this all happened on a Saturday, then the following Tuesday, we hired 3 people to move all our stuff from the storage unit into our new house. the suburban came in handy moving the more delicate stuff like our 60" TV. The awesome part is that the guy who bought our house and moved in, has a 35' flat bed trailer, that takes up the whole section of street in front of our old house, so the neighbors don't get to park their sh!t in front of the house.

on a different topic, I had the old changed in the suburban, and it doesn't seem to start near as easy. before the oil change, it would crank for 2-3 seconds before turning over, now, sometimes it almost 10 seconds. I think the previous owner used a full synthetic, and this time I used a conventional oil. is it possible for an oil change to have any correlation with startup times?

The other thing I noticed is that the truck smells like it is running rich, and the catback exhaust rattles pretty bad sometimes. are those things I should get fixed, or just not worry about.

[Scottydoggs]

the cats on the old trucks tend to suck, hit it with a hammer listen for crap inside. likely shot. could cause the long crank too and the rich smell.