George's Car Blog » Suburban Maintenance

Bumper Guides ordered for the Suburban!

George — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:32:19 +0000

Alrighty! I thought it was about time to order something cool for the Suburban exterior and this time I decided the accessories to be bumper guides. These are the shiny posts attached to the front bumper which look real good on any truck with hood and they also carry yellow lamps on top which function as corner markers and turn signals. I ordered the guides from the best known American manufacturer of such items named Bores Manufacturing, Inc. Here’s a list of what they are offering.

For those who don’t know, here’s what they look like:

Several improvements done to my Suburban

George — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:09:05 +0000

While the Corvette has not received much new stuff lately (I’ve been correcting some paint damage etc) I decided to spend some money into the Suburban before I have the Vette’s rear end rebuilt. Last week I went to one of our American car shops and they are selling all kinds of cool things there. The main reason I went there was to pick up a new power steering pump since my old one was messing up sometimes and causing the wheel to become harder to turn. So, I picked up the new pump and what I saw was a large amount of license plate frames which had just arrived from USA. I went through them and I immediately found some good ones that would fit the Burb. So, I picked some of them out, went to the truck to see how they would look and finally decided to buy a shiny chrome-coated frame with Chevy logo and CHEVROLET text, both covered in real gold plating for the shine. I must admit I had to pay about 75 bucks but I think it was… well… I can’t say WORTH it, but it was a good emotional decision :) The package included both front and rear frames, by the way.

Then I went to a radio equipment shop because I’ve been wanting to replace the current FM CB radio transceiver in my truck with a new AM/FM radio – mainly because I wanted to hear the truckers on the motorways and they are speaking on AM. So, in the store I was and funnily they had the one I wanted in stock, most probably because I had the necessary money on the bank card (which I wasn’t initially planning to spend on the radio, ofcourse) and such things always know how to pull my wallet empty at the right time, it’s almost like a miracle. I talked 10% off the price and walked away with the transceiver.

I was now eager to get the truck into the yard and begin retro-fitting the new toys. Firstly I installed the frames. It meant removing the old plate housing in the front, measuring the exact screw holes of the frame to drill holes into the truck’s number plate carrier block and finally also drill holes to the right places on the license plate itself since our plates don’t have the standard holes which the US’ have. The end result is very nice, although I believe I need to tilt the plate just a tiny bit cause I was able to notice a slight offset of the frame’s angle against the rest of the vehicle’s nose. Installing the rear frame was easy – just drilling holes to the license plate and screwing the piece on.

Here are some photos for you:

Lots of things fixed on the Burban

George — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:23:48 +0000

Yesterday I took the Suburban to the service and we re-tightened the windscreen moonvisor with new bolts. I spent a whole day taking out the old half-bad LEDs which the first local owner of this car built into the visor and then fitting in the Lund lights kit. I’m very happy with the final result and it looks like new. The lamps are burning very nicely and they are normal wedge bulbs that can be easily replaced.

Here are some photos:

After fixing the moonvisor, I went to the car electrician to weather-seal the wire connections of the visor lights and there we ended up fixing most of the things wrong with the car :) Firstly, he re-wired the CB radio to take power directly from the battery instead of the cigarette lighter socket. Ofcourse he added a circuit breaker, too. Now I have a constantly ready radio transceiver that I can turn on from the switch just like the car stereo. Then there was a problem with the temperature sensor plug under the hood which connects to the thermostat housing. We cleaned and “refurbished” it and it’s now rather perfect. It used to have bad connection and sometimes gave me rough idle when engine was cold and also the Check Engine light came on. One of my Hella high-beams wasn’t working and I couldn’t find the problem myself. There was a bad negative connection and we got it solved. Now it all works nicely and it’s AMAZING what kind of light all the four lamps together are able to produce.

Finally we went to the issue I had with the windscreen wipers – they made very annoying squeeking noise whenever turned on and before I thought that perhaps the new wipers are somehow screeching against the windscreen. However, it still turned out to be the moving mechanism located under the plastic grille in front of the window. It needed some grease and it’s now totally quiet. As we already had the wiper hands taken off, we also re-painted those in black since one of them had paint partly worn out.

Currently most of the things on the Suburban are fixed and I’m enjoying the truck more and more every day. For a car-guy like me it’s the perfect daily driver.