[70RAlll]

Originally Posted by smaman

I was all set to go the the show and was looking forward to seeing the cars and meeting njsteve, then life got in the way. Maybe next year. Sorry to hear about the breakdown- I saw you were on some of the 6.5 forums. Some of those guys really seem to know that motor, so between that and your local guy I'm sure you'll get it figured out. I had been looking at Duramax trucks, then my neighbors perfectly maintained truck with only 110k miles needed 5000 dollars worth of injectors and other work. I'm probably going to get a 8.1 gasser. That kind of maintenance will buy a lot of fuel.

Think2x about the 8.1L gas engine. I ordered a Sierra when they first came out with the 81.L .. Amazingly, that 496ci engine is a dog and get ready for 7-8mpg in the city.. I had that truck for 7 years so I have a good insight into that engine.

[njsteve]

I have driven a few of the 8.1 K2500 Suburbans and those things devour fuel. 9 mpg highway and around 5 towing! OUCH! At least my 1995 got around 14 empty and 10 towing, (which ironically was the same mileage we got with the borrowed 2014 Cummins over the weekend).

[smaman]

I figured the 8.1 would be bad, but not that bad. It's sad that your 6.5 got only 130k before failure- maybe you'll find it's relatively minor-head gasket? The 5.3 in my 02 Yukon has 257k now, and hardly uses any oil. Original trans too. It's fine for pulling f- bodies on an open trailer, but it's kind of maxed suspension-wise. I'm looking forward to the Macgyver, I mean njsteve, elegant fix to the problem.

[1970TA]

I also have a. 5.3 with 174000 miles and I've towed a open trailer and no trouble with engine or transmission . It's a 2000 Silverado 1500 . Hard to beat that engine.

[unruhjonny]

Originally Posted by njsteve

Click on the photo...

this might have just made my morning.

[unruhjonny]

Originally Posted by njsteve

...

as mentioned earlier, this wheel is a '72 part;
69-71 wheels had nothing;
72 had the wood grain;
73-74 had black.

also!
69-70 had a stee outer ring on the wheel, while 71-74 had no ring.

[unruhjonny]

Originally Posted by njsteve

Thanks to the assistance of a PerformanceYears.com member (RicksGTO) who happened to search the internet and found that there is only one Enrico Stein in the entire universe and that he lives in Arizona but used to live in Port Washington, NY, I was able to spend a magical hour talking to the man that ordered my 1973 Formula SD455, brand new.

Enrico has been a car guy all his life. In 1968 he bought the very first BMW 2002 that arrived in the US for around $2,000. Several years later he wanted to upgrade to a 2002 TII but none of the BMW dealers wanted to give him a break from the $6,000 price tag on the car.

Being the consummate car-guy, Enrico read all the latest car magazines and found out that a 310 horsepower Super Duty engine was going to be available in the upcoming 1973 Firebird. So he went around to the local Pontiac dealerships and asked about ordering the car. He was given the runaround and told that the engine wasn’t available.

Not satisfied with this answer, Enrico called the very same magazine writer who wrote the test drive article on the 310 horsepower Super Duty engine and got some insider info on the cars. He was told that there was an administrative hold on building the cars at the moment and that if they were going to be built it would be during the last two weeks of the model year in late summer, 1973.

With that info in pocket, Enrico went to Suburban Pontiac in Glen Head, New York and found a newly minted car salesman (who just happened to be a former dress salesman who was laid off from his prior job). The salesman took his order but the big-wig, zone managers in New York City said that they would not accept any orders for the Super Duty. Not taking no for an answer, Enrico hunted them down and told them in no uncertain terms that they will order his car, and they will do it now. (At the time, Enrico was 6’8” tall and 280 lbs.). The zone promptly allowed the order to go through.

It seems that Enrico was so “convincing” in his negotiations with upper management, that Suburban Pontiac was able to order a second Super Duty Formula for another young man. (This second car is known, and still exists). That car arrived shortly after Enrico’s car was delivered. This caused much consternation among all the other Pontiac dealers in the zone, concerning how one little dealership on Long Island could get two Super Duty Firebirds when the other big dealers got none.

When Enrico ordered his car, he was told it would be delivered with the fiberglass, twin scooped Formula hood. It arrived, of course, with the Trans Am shaker unit in its place. He was told that this was due to the drive-by noise regulations that were in place by the time the cars were built.

I asked Enrico about the tires on the car and he said that the car came with the infamous Firestone 500 radials. He mentioned that the car always had a severe pull to the left when he drove it. No matter what was done with the alignment, the pull would not go away. It wasn’t until much later when he replaced the tires that the pull magically disappeared. Enrico said that when the recall came out for the 500s, only the tires made after 1975 were listed. That is why his tires stayed with the car. I mentioned to him that there are four, not five Firestone 500s still with the car and he said that when he sold the car to a California collector in 1986, the collector’s driver insisted on driving the car from Arizona to California. Enrico warned him that he should buy newer tires for the car and reminded him that the 500’s were recalled. The guy didn’t listen and in the middle of night out in the desert wastelands between Arizona and California, one of the 500’s exploded. Luckily the car was not damaged.

I also asked about the front valance and was told that the car was delivered with the polyethylene front valance but it cracked soon thereafter and Enrico had the dealer replace it with the steel valance.

When the subject of what steering wheel came on the car originally came up, Enrico said he know exactly what wheel it came with because it was currently sitting in his garage, in the very same box that the Formula wheel that is on the car now, came in. He then asked me for my address so he could make sure it was reunited with the car!

He also asked if the paint flaw in the fender was still there? I confirmed that it was – there is a weird raised line and pieces of fuzz in the paint along the mid portion of the front fender near the headlight. It looks like an air hose for the paint gun was dragged over the wet paint. Enrico said the car was delivered that way and that it was never fixed.

Enrico owned the car from 1973 to 1986 when it was sold to a collector out in California. That collector had it until 1991 when he sold it to the man in New Jersey from whom I bought it. While in Enrico’s hands, the car never saw any winter use. After two years, he and the car moved out to Arizona where he and his wife have lived ever since.

As an aside, Enrico mentioned that the car had been stolen and recovered once. He was at work one day at a large marina when he got a call from the local AAMCO transmission shop manager who asked what he wanted done with his car? Enrico replied: “What the hell are you talking about?” The AAMCO guy then said that his car was there and wanted to know what work he wanted done to it. Enrico was always getting pestered by people about selling is car whenever it was parked in front of the marina. It turned out that one of these pesterers was a car thief who contacted the local Pontiac dealer and pretended to be the owner who lost his keys. The Pontiac dealer happily made the thief a new set. The thief then brought the keys to the AAMCO shop and told them that “his” car was broken down in front of the local marina and needed to be towed to the shop for work. The AAMCO guys happily sent a rollback and picked the car up. The only fly in the ointment was the AAMCO manager calling Enrico before the thief could come down to the AAMCO shop to pick up the car. When the disinterested AAMCO manager said that he was closing up for the day, Enrico told him “Oh no, you’re not! - That is my car and you just stole it.” Enrico then gathered up a bunch of guys from the marina and went there and immediately repossessed his own car. Sitting in the ashtray was the freshly made set of GM keys that the thief had left for later. From that point on, Enrico would park the car in the back of the marina. When the owner complained, Enrico told him that he was parking it there and if they didn’t like that, they could fire him now. They wisely backed down.

I feel very privileged to have had the chance to talk with Enrico. He is now around 80 years young and he is truly a unique person and a major car guy from the age of two (according to him). He has a photographic memory about every car he has ever owned. He also has a file on every car as well. He mentioned that he has photos of the car from when it was new and all sorts of paperwork as well.

Enrico is retired and still has a bunch of collector cars and motorcycles and is very involved with them. He also asked if I was interested in selling to car back to him. I told him that if I do, he is definitely first on the list.

this thread just keeps getting better!!

[unruhjonny]

Originally Posted by njsteve

The white ones were cheapo aftermarket ones that were available back in the day. Most were adhesive backed but some, like the ones that the dealer wanted to sell to Rick, were screwed or riveted on to the car.

The original, factory installed side moldings were stainless steel with a black vinyl insert regardless of the paint color of the car..







And they used these clips. The doors, fenders, and quarter panels had pre-punched holes for the mounting clips' studs

... and I just learned something new!

[njsteve]

I was talking with the original owner Rick, today on the phone. His wife had sent a nice email a couple days ago, saying how much he loved seeing the photo coverage of the MCACN show and how seeing his car again literally brought tears to his eyes.

When he called today he was quite excited. He had no idea that I had managed to source a full set of the Firestone 500s. I think his exact quote was "You Son of a B@#$h, she looks exactly like how I bought her new!" :-)

Anyway, as we were talking about my dilemma with the blown head gasket and/or engine in my 6.5 diesel Suburban, and we were talking about crate engines, he mentioned that back in the 1970s when GM was getting out of anything performance-related, he went to his local Pontiac dealer on Long Island (not Suburban Pontiac) and they happened to have had half a dozen or so, crated Ram Air IV engines. It turns out that Pontiac was sending these out to all the dealerships to get rid of them, forcing them to try to sell them even though they hadn't ordered them.

Rick saw the crates and asked what was in them. When he found out, he bought three of them. They were $3,000 a piece. I know what you're thinking, that's was way too high of a price for mid-1970s. But according to Rick these were complete ready to run engine assemblies from carb to distributor, to oil pan. He said the only thing missing were the alternators. He ended up selling them off eventually.

[Pepi]

That's incredible, too bad he didn't pickup more.

[unruhjonny]

too cool!

[West Coast GTO]

Well, After sending the original radio out for rebuild and removing the center console and most of the ducting, I replaced the repaired radio ( just needed cleaning and lubrication / adjustment for AM and FM stereo operation), I took the car out for a little test drive. Very COLD here at 65 degrees( kidding) but with clears skies. Anyway, I noticed a gurgling coming from the heater core area. Sounds just like water running through pipes.
Did your heater core " make noises" before it started leaking? I will say that I don't relish replacing the core after reading the process you went through here and it is not leaking.
Also, according to my PHS, my car did not come originally with an 8-track player even though there was one installed when I bought it. Is there any interest for what appears to be an original 8-track player and all brackets and wiring?

Originally Posted by njsteve

After hooking up the kickdown switch I took some before shots so I knew where things were and what hardware held it in. Note the giant gap between the heater box and the defroster duct.






And the heater core housing pulled free of the dash. There are two bolts from the inside going through firewall and three studs coming from the housing and into in the engine compartment. Two of the studs are behind the passenger side cylinder head and the third is under the heater blower motor which requires the lower mounting points of the fender to be unbolted, in addition to the entire inner fender. You then put a small block of wood to hold the fender far enough out so that you can properly slit your wrists on the sharp metal while quarter turning the ratchet to remove the single nut from the stud...and the remove the lower heater core hose from the core outlet. It then promptly wedges itself into the kick panel tranny hump and lower portion of the dash.




This is something like solving one of those twisted nail puzzles where there is only one way to get the two metal pieces to unhook from each other. I found the secret: You have to first push the housing toward the driver's side (the radio removal was critical to this move), then you have to rotate the housing so the heater core outlets face the floor while pulling the housing diagonally toward the passenger door. It takes around 10 steps of pulling one inch, rotating one inch...lather, rinse, repeat, until the whole assembly can come out of the car.

[njsteve]

The gurgling noise is normal. It's just the water flowing through the system. If it starts coming out and drippng on the carpet, that's a bad sign.

[njsteve]

Update on my Suburban: it was the driver's side head gasket that blew out at the same spot they all fail at - right at the far end where the bore is closest to the coolant port. The local diesel shop pulled both heads and are reassembling with new head gaskets, head bolts, etc. Might be back on the road next week. Here's a shot of the head gasket and the head:

[RamAir]

I'm glad to hear it was repairable Steve, good luck with the reassembly.

[Mezzo]

Steve, I guess that can happen from time to time hauling a bunch of Tin Indians so to speak. Kind of ironic.

[njsteve]

She lives! I stopped by the diesel place this afternoon and they had already got the truck back together and they were test driving, and checking for any initial leaks, etc. Another day or two to verify everything is up to spec and then I get her back!

[smaman]

Glad you didn't need a new motor--high compression small gasket area seems to be a weakness there. Are there tougher, more modern gaskets that will alleviate that issue?

[njsteve]

Not really any other real gasket choice with these engine and their 20 to 1 compression. Due to the design, these things are rather tough on head gaskets. 121,000 miles on the head gaskets seems a pretty good life span. A lot of the diesel guys prefer the Felpro head gaskets but since it was a GM dealer and they warranty their work, they have to use GM parts. He said he'd be happy to put a Felpro head gasket set in but if the gasket fails all that is covered under Felpro's warranty would be the $20 gasket. With the GM head gasket, GM covers the gasket and the labor, too.

They were amazed though at how clean the engine was inside. The one valve cover they replaced was completely shiny inside. Most diesel engines would have some kind of gunk layer but she was clean as a whistle inside. Shows what regular oil changes will do - every 5,000 miles since new with Shell 15w40 Rotella.(These valve covers don't use a gasket, only silicone sealer - so if you bend one prying it off, you should replace it, especially if it is on the turbo side of the engine with all the extra plumbing there.)

[njsteve]

Finally got the truck back this afternoon. She runs great. Final bill was $3,400. Of that $1100 was for parts - head gaskets, 34 head bolts at $7 apiece, new waterpump (which was the most expensive part) and assorted hoses, serpentine belt, thermostat, gaskets, etc. Since this is a GM dealer all the parts were at list price. But if something goes bad, they cover the part and the labor to remove and reinstall. All in all, I got away reasonably cheaply considering a new long block would have added about $6400 more to that amount.

Before it could leave the dealer, the 80+ year-old owner had to test drive the truck. He has been running the dealership for the last 56 years and nothing leaves without him first approving the work.

In case anyone needs some diesel work done, here is a link to their place:
http://www.colonialmotorsofnj.com/Au...chburg-NJ.html