- Joined
- Aug 3, 2010
- Posts
- 30,615
- Reaction score
- 28,848
- Location
- Usually not in Ohio
- First Name
- Andy
- Truck Year
- '77, '78, '79, '84, '88
- Truck Model
- K5 thru K30
- Engine Size
- 350-454
Little bit of backstory for starters...
'88 Suburban with original TBI 350. Purchased in early '06 I think,with a little over 100k on it. My wife ran it low on oil a few times, to the point of valvetrain noise. Somewhere around '09-'10, while cranking along the interstate all day, I overheated the oil, to the point the rods were hammering like crazy (it was fine when it cooled down). I think it was early '13, after a trip into Indiana, I noticed that oil consumption had increased by a large amount. My wife then ran it out of oil a few more times. Then it started using coolant. I think it was spring of '14 maybe that overheating issues began, from the thermostat not opening due to airlock. The housing bolts felt like they were going to break, so I pulled the hose off and stabbed a big screwdriver through the thermostat. The wife and kids didn't need heat in the summertime, lol. At around 200k on it, it also began missing badly and horribly fouling out a couple spark plugs. Sometime around there, I started buying other Suburbans for the wife to drive. The trusty ol Burb didn't get driven much after that, just some trips here and there, some general farm type use, and the occasional mild offroading. Then sometime in '17, I pulled the transmission out of it to sell to a friend. Last week I finally installed a new transmission.
Ok, so I guess that wasn't just a little bit of backstory. Sorry for the novel. But anyway, the truck's coolant had been kinda brown-ish looking for a while. When I got the truck back up and running, the coolant level was low enough that I couldn't see it. I dumped in a gallon or so of water and called it good. Today, I was curious if it had lost coolant, so I took a gander and I honestly was startled with what I saw, lol.
Now, I've opened a lot of radiators in my days of working in shops and at a junkyard. But I don't recall ever seeing anything in a radiator that looked quite like that mess.
The truck runs terrible, it's down a cylinder or two, the exhaust sounds ridiculous, it smokes when you rev it up, and it's got a remarkable amount of blow by. I'm 100% OK with that too. But now I kind of want to tear into it to figure out what the heck is going on in there.
'88 Suburban with original TBI 350. Purchased in early '06 I think,with a little over 100k on it. My wife ran it low on oil a few times, to the point of valvetrain noise. Somewhere around '09-'10, while cranking along the interstate all day, I overheated the oil, to the point the rods were hammering like crazy (it was fine when it cooled down). I think it was early '13, after a trip into Indiana, I noticed that oil consumption had increased by a large amount. My wife then ran it out of oil a few more times. Then it started using coolant. I think it was spring of '14 maybe that overheating issues began, from the thermostat not opening due to airlock. The housing bolts felt like they were going to break, so I pulled the hose off and stabbed a big screwdriver through the thermostat. The wife and kids didn't need heat in the summertime, lol. At around 200k on it, it also began missing badly and horribly fouling out a couple spark plugs. Sometime around there, I started buying other Suburbans for the wife to drive. The trusty ol Burb didn't get driven much after that, just some trips here and there, some general farm type use, and the occasional mild offroading. Then sometime in '17, I pulled the transmission out of it to sell to a friend. Last week I finally installed a new transmission.
Ok, so I guess that wasn't just a little bit of backstory. Sorry for the novel. But anyway, the truck's coolant had been kinda brown-ish looking for a while. When I got the truck back up and running, the coolant level was low enough that I couldn't see it. I dumped in a gallon or so of water and called it good. Today, I was curious if it had lost coolant, so I took a gander and I honestly was startled with what I saw, lol.
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Now, I've opened a lot of radiators in my days of working in shops and at a junkyard. But I don't recall ever seeing anything in a radiator that looked quite like that mess.
The truck runs terrible, it's down a cylinder or two, the exhaust sounds ridiculous, it smokes when you rev it up, and it's got a remarkable amount of blow by. I'm 100% OK with that too. But now I kind of want to tear into it to figure out what the heck is going on in there.
