Well, a little over a week ago I hopped in the Suburban to drive into town, made it to the first stop sign in my neighborhood and didn't have any brakes at all. The next day I popped the reservoir cap off and the front portion was completely drained. I figured that perhaps a leak had developed, probably at one of the caliper seals since I couldn't see signs of a leak anywhere in the front. I pulled both front wheels off and removed each caliper only to find absolutely nothing unusual. All the literature I had at hand indicated that the front reservoir was for the front brake circuit and the rear reservoir for the rear brake circuit. I filled the front reservoir back up and got some assistance in bleeding the front brakes. When I checked the master cylinder a couple of minutes later the rear reservoir had lost fluid and the front was still full. Wait, what?
Looks like things were a bit backward. I did track the leak down a couple of minutes later though. There was a connector on the rear circuit that wasn't tightened down quite enough. We bled the rears and I went out for a test drive. In hard stops it locked up the rear end first (like I mentioned briefly in post #137). It hadn't been doing this recently though because the rear circuit was low on fluid. Putting 2 and 2 together it became clear that with the circuits switched, the combination valve was pushing too much pressure to the rear and not enough to the front.
Here's a picture of what the master cylinder to combination valve lines looked like:
I remembered that I still had brand new stainless intermediate lines from my Inline Tube kit that hadn't been installed. I never put them on because they looked completely different than what I already had. When I held them up now, I could see that the new lines would route the fluid correctly and solve the problem I was having. I quickly grabbed a couple of flare nut wrenches and tried to put the new lines on only to find that two of the fittings were the wrong size. After some research, I ordered two adapters. All I needed was one 1/2-20 to 9/16-18 (Edelmann p/n 258307) and one 9/16-18 to 1/2-20 (Edelmann p/n 258306) which a local O'Reilly was able to get for me overnight.
This is what I've got now:
We'd have bled the brakes again this afternoon, but it started snowing (third time so far this fall). Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to test it out and make sure everything is working properly. Who knows, it may even help improve mileage a little.
I also took care of another minor issue recently. While performing a visual inspection in the engine bay, I noticed that the serpentine belt was now riding over the rear lip of the engine pulley. With some research, it seemed that the damper was too far forward. The front seal had very recently started to leak a little bit too, so perhaps the damper had been slowly migrating (or I never got it fully seated 6 years ago when I built the engine, or both). I pulled out the fan w/ clutch and the pulley to verify that, in fact, the damper was slid forward. I made an installer tool with a long bolt (had to cut threads in the shouldered section to make it long enough) that I chopped the head off of, a nut and the big thick washer that had been on there. It is now snugged down flush and torqued to 85 ft-lbs so hopefully we don't have any more problems.
The only other thing I've done is pull the steering wheel off to have a look at that screw mosesburb mentioned, but it looks okay. One bit that didn't look quite right was the plastic part of the turn signal switch that the lever is screwed into. It has a small crack or two and flexes with use. I don't have any good spares, so it'll be a piece to replace eventually. The reproduction horn hardware that I installed under the horn button also seemed pretty loose (despite being fully tightened) and could be a culprit. I made sure everything was lined up well when I put it all back together, and it has only honked inappropriately once or twice. Luckily no one else was near me on the road when it happened.