Okay, seems I left off back in April with a quick summary of the Arizona Old Iron run. Well, plenty has happened since then. In that post I mentioned that the Suburban might be exploring a little of the local area soon. That weekend my then girlfriend / now fiancé (see, really important and non-Suburban related event coming up) and I hopped in and drove out to the tiny town of Lund, then beyond, into the mountains in search of some managed herds of wild horses. Unfortunately, we didn't find any of the Sulphur Springs herds but there were plenty of snaky dirt roads and the old Arrowhead mine.
I did find this fun sand hill to play on.
We tried following this sign that pointed the way to something called “Pinto Spring”
Which turned out to be a horse trough.
When we were turning back to head home, the Suburban began to manifest a funny hesitation and/or misfire every so often, but other than that it drove fine. Once home, the whole vehicle was absolutely full of dust. I had to open all the doors and blow it out with compressed air. Now I know why mosesburb had all of the small openings on his Suburban covered with masking tape.
A short while later a blind old man backed into my Suburban in a grocery store parking lot while I was waiting for the truck in front of me to back out. How do you miss seeing an 18' long, 7' tall, 6000lb lump of SUV?
After that I didn't drive it very often because there wasn't much time to investigate the misfire problem fully. Plus, I was kinda bummed about that huge crease in the side. Instead I drove one of my other two registered and road legal vehicles, but then they all developed their own difficulties (clutch hydraulics went out in one and the CTS failed in another, making the ECM think it was -45 degrees out and flooding the engine until it stalled). Frustrated with them, I started driving the Suburban again. I did find a little time to push most of the dent out from the inside with a big pry-bar.
Later on I exhausted a few easy to test theories regarding the persistent engine stumble, but no insights came until late one night on my way back home. I decided to try an old trick I'd read about online. In the middle of nowhere I pulled off the highway, opened the hood and shut off the headlights. Looking closely I repeatedly revved the engine and watched the spark plug wires. The passenger side seemed perfectly fine, but once my attention was on the driver side I could see crossfiring and grounding happening.
The next morning I swapped out plug wires #1 and #7, then took it for a test drive where it didn't stumble anymore. Looks like next time I need to order some plug wires with better angled ends.
At the beginning of July I took my fiancé and her brother on a quick overnight camping trip. The Suburban was loaded up with all of our supplies and we set off toward the mountains. I love that such resources exist only 15-20 minutes from my house.
Nice little trips like that were pleasant, especially because they involved heading into higher elevations. Nearer the end of the month however, I had a family reunion scheduled on the east border of Zion National Park. It gets plenty warm there in the middle of July. After months of having it on my to-do list, I finally took the Suburban in to get the A/C system charged. Oh how lovely it is now to have cold air blowing in the summer heat.
Family reunion time! We loaded up the Suburban with our clothes, some guns, a skeet thrower, fishing poles, bikes, chairs and food then drove straight to Zion. It was a hot and muggy day, just between big thunderstorms. The temperatures varied from the high eighties to nearly in excess of 100 °. Despite having the A/C on full blast, climbing switchbacks and needing to idle for extended periods of time while waiting to travel through some tunnels, the engine temperature never once exceeded 200°. It normally stays right at 180°. The air conditioning was just adequate enough for us in the front seat. Keep in mind that there isn't any carpet on the floor or sound insulation or heat barriers anywhere in the vehicle. Oh, and it only has the factory installed green window tint. I can see that if there had been back seat passengers that they wouldn't have felt any effects from the cool air though.
While at the reunion, my Grandfather asked if he could use the Suburban to ferry family up to where we had set up to do skeet shooting, so all of my uncles who had ridden in and learned to drive with their '72 Suburban from post #183 got to ride in mine. I saw some more pictures of the '72 when they had a DVD presentation of old family slides that night too.
I didn't take time to use the Suburban for exploring the back roads around the ranch where we stayed. Had too much fun running them on ATVs instead. On the way back from the reunion, the Suburban continued to run cool in the sweltering weather.
Even coming up the 'black ridge' on Interstate 15 in the middle of the day, neither the transmission or engine got hot.
Later that week I visited another '67 - '72 Suburban in town. Part of the wedding plans involve holding the reception in my Mom's backyard. She and I have visited every single nursery in a 70 mile radius to pick out just the right plants for the occasion. Pulling out from one of the nurseries in town, I spotted a familiar shape on a hill right across the street. It was a '69 or '70 Suburban that I'd lost track of about five years ago.
During my freshman year of college, I ran across a girl driving it through a grocery store parking lot at the same time I happened to be driving mine. We of course stopped to chat. She was nearing completion of a nursing program if I remember correctly, and the Suburban had been in her family for quite a while. We each shared some 'burb stories, but I saw less and less of that particular Suburban in the coming years. Now, the license plate tags have been expired for about seven trips around the sun but it still looks good from a distance. I checked it out for a minute and the thing is very original inside and out. 350, TH350 and no A/C. My own Suburban would have looked pretty similar to it when they were both new.
This last weekend we actually went back to Zion. The $25 National Park entry pass is good for seven days, so we decided to make good use of it and do some hiking. After a hot day in the sun and then cooling off in the river we made a side trip to an old ghost town I'd visited as a kid. The place is called Grafton and it was founded around 1862 but hasn't been inhabited since 1944. There never were even 120 people living there at any one time. The light was pretty spectacular when we arived though.
There's also a neat little cemetery a short ways off with headstones that contain inscriptions like “Killed by Indians”.
So there you have it, our adventures since April. The Suburban now shows 2,500 miles on the odometer and the last tank of mixed city/highway driving yielded 10 mpg.