My First Suburban

[Ryan685]

Just brought a '97 LT 4x4 1/2 ton home. Won it on eBay of all places... I let my 17 year old daughter (Jamie) drive it 350 miles home. I mostly followed in my old '85 325e BMW with 350K miles on it. Glad I decided to bring walki talkies, made the trip even more fun. You see, I hadn't seen Jamie for several years. I just got custody of her a month ago and we're just getting to know each other. She's a really great person and very confident in herself. Had to give her a hug when we arrived home for doing such a wonderful jog of driving through Texas rush-hour traffic and threading her way through Oklahoma City's splits & detur's.

This truck has 143K miles on it. Was well cared for as far as initial inspection goes. Everything works. Has quad seating with a TV/VCR in the console. I'm not sure if the two rear seats fold down to haul a sheet of 4x8' plywood. The third seat comes out, I know that much.

After reading about the intake gaskets on the 5.7 Vortec. It doesn't appear that this one has been changed. I'm a mechanic by trade. No evidence, tool marks on bolts etc. Also the transmission is a major concern. I'm almost tempted to take it straight to the tranny shop and have it rebuilt. A friend with a '96 pickup said when they rebuilt his trans, there were a few upgrades that had to be done. One was too high of pump pressure causing check-balls in the valve body to pound through the sepparator plate. Another was the plannetary drum wears out, spider gears shatter. I read another post on this forum where someone's tranny did this. I'm not sure if the '97's had any upgrades over the '96 in the transmission department. Anyone know?

Another thought here. I have an old '85 Dodge 4x4 that I've swapped rear ends out on. I put a Dana 60 front axle & a Dana 70 rear under it. It's a dually now with a 8ft X 10ft dump bed on it as well. A work truck in other words. It scales at 8000lbs. I put BF Goodrich All-Terrain KO's on it. I like these tires. I wonder how they would work on this Suburban. Anyone tried them already? Good, bad, ugly results?

[Old Dave]

Ryan, I also own a 97 GMC 1500 Suburban SLT. Mine has the split bench seat for a middle seat and the bottoms flip forward against the front bucket seats(after you remove the headrests) and the backs fold down flat on the floor. The rear seat comes completely out and gives you a large area to haul stuff in but I don't know what the distance is between the wheel wells and have never tried a sheet of plywood or sheetrock. Mine had the transmission replaced under warranty at about 70K, about a year before I bought it. My son and I replaced the intake gaskets last Dec. at about 105K. Good luck, you will like the vehicle.

[suburban_lee]

Originally Posted by Ryan685

Just brought a '97 LT 4x4 1/2 ton home. Won it on eBay of all places... I let my 17 year old daughter (Jamie) drive it 350 miles home. I mostly followed in my old '85 325e BMW with 350K miles on it. Glad I decided to bring walki talkies, made the trip even more fun. You see, I hadn't seen Jamie for several years. I just got custody of her a month ago and we're just getting to know each other. She's a really great person and very confident in herself. Had to give her a hug when we arrived home for doing such a wonderful jog of driving through Texas rush-hour traffic and threading her way through Oklahoma City's splits & detur's.

This truck has 143K miles on it. Was well cared for as far as initial inspection goes. Everything works. Has quad seating with a TV/VCR in the console. I'm not sure if the two rear seats fold down to haul a sheet of 4x8' plywood. The third seat comes out, I know that much.

After reading about the intake gaskets on the 5.7 Vortec. It doesn't appear that this one has been changed. I'm a mechanic by trade. No evidence, tool marks on bolts etc. Also the transmission is a major concern. I'm almost tempted to take it straight to the tranny shop and have it rebuilt. A friend with a '96 pickup said when they rebuilt his trans, there were a few upgrades that had to be done. One was too high of pump pressure causing check-balls in the valve body to pound through the sepparator plate. Another was the plannetary drum wears out, spider gears shatter. I read another post on this forum where someone's tranny did this. I'm not sure if the '97's had any upgrades over the '96 in the transmission department. Anyone know?

Another thought here. I have an old '85 Dodge 4x4 that I've swapped rear ends out on. I put a Dana 60 front axle & a Dana 70 rear under it. It's a dually now with a 8ft X 10ft dump bed on it as well. A work truck in other words. It scales at 8000lbs. I put BF Goodrich All-Terrain KO's on it. I like these tires. I wonder how they would work on this Suburban. Anyone tried them already? Good, bad, ugly results?

Mine's a 99. the 60/40 back seat folds to provide - yup, just enough room to haul 4X8 plywood, drywall, etc. I changed my intake gaskets recently (130K miles) and there was evidence of leaking. It's worth doing. My favorite tire on this truck has been the Micheline LTX series. I'm pushing 70K miles on this set, and there just not ready to retire yet.

[Ryan685]

Suburban lee, My truck has Michelin LTX series tires on it. I installed Bilstein shocks front & back, made a huge difference. The Michelin's I think are a "bouncey" tire. It could have to do with 265's sqeezed on 7" rims. I'm going to put 245's back on.
I've read quite a few posts on the Tire Rack about the BF Goodrich All-Terrain TA KO. Customers report 60 to 90K miles and repeat buyers highly recommend them. I guess the next step is to place the order.....I'll post back if anyone is interested.

Oh, I find the quad seats do not lay down for extra storage like the bench seats do. They do move forward quite a bit for extra storage room but nowhere near what the bench seats have. This is my boat puller vehicle. If I need to move furnature, I'll hook up the trailer.
Just a few more words on the Bilstein shocks. I took some friends on a short ride right after buying the truck. They noticed the front end was bouncing way too much after a dip in the road. I ordered the Bilsteins from Turner motorsports for $64.00ea. Took about an hour to install all four and I didn't have to jack up the truck or remove tires. Then took my buddies for another ride to see what they thought. Handling is much better. The old shocks weren't completely shot, they were very weak though. Anyone considering better shocks, I recommend the Bilsteins. They really nail the front end down, no bounce after dips at all.

[nosefirst]

I'm running 10 ply LTX's on my 98' w/stock rims. I like em alot. Very little noise, excelent wear, and excelent in snow. I had a mysterious very slow coolant loss develop, but has stopped with Bars Leak.

I put Edlebrock Performance shocks on last year and put the ride back to original. I'm still looking to improve cornering though.

I think 99' is the year they made some big changes in the suspension that improved handeling dramaticly.

[sub006]

I have a '90 Suburban 4X2 with almost 400,000 miles. In my experience it's hard to go wrong with BF Goodrich tires on almost any vehicle.

KOs indicate you're seriously into off-roading. All-Terrain T/As are good dual-purpose tires. And remember, Michelin fans, BFG is a subsidiary of your favorite company.

If you are primarily driving on pavement like me, I've settled on regular Radial T/As, size 255-70 X 15 on 8 inch steel Rally rims; 60-70,000 miles of smooth riding. Also recommend red Koni shocks which will go at least 200,000 miles before rebuilding is necessary.

[Ryan685]

Mounted and balanced the 255/70/16 KO's Sunday. Adjusted the rear drum brakes over two turns on the self-adjusters, brakes are much better now. Spent Sunday evening cleaning & polishing in & outside the truck. Monday went on a drive to test the new tires and see if they were noisy & harsh riding. At 45psi these BF Goodrich All-Terrain KO's are a very good tire. I have them on a 1-ton dually dump bed truck already and knew they were not a noisy tire. Reading all the Tire Rack's feedback on these tires, some people make you wonder how they dream up some of the comments. Well, my experiance so far is positive with them. Even though the tread looks agressive, the noise is less then the Michlens I replaced. And you know the XTR's are not a loud tire. I picked up a friend, with the windows down we were being criticle of any tire noise at highway speeds and around town driving. If you were blindfolded and got into my truck, without knowing what the tires looked like, you would never guess after driving around that the tires were anything other then an all-season car-tire looking tread design. Reading the comments left on the tire racks site about these tires. Some guys said they were on their second or third set of KO's on their 4x4 Suburban. They reported 75K to 100K miles of wear and better economy because of less rolling resistance. The KO has a 3-ply sidewall. No other radial tire has it.