[70cst]

Originally Posted by vectorit

First off, welcome to the best place on the net for Suburbans!

I will throw in my .02 on your questions, and throw in a few others for your information:

Q: What areas I should be looking for when I look at them?
A: The usual places for these trucks to rot, are the rocker panels along the doors. No matter where you get the burb, it will have rust in the rockers. The trick is to find one that hasn't eaten to deep into the support structures, and into the frame to body mounts. For burb specific, I would try to find one with the rear doors/hatches with as little to no rust as possible. These are the hardest to fix, and they are hard to locate as rust free replacements. Make sure the doors are solid, since they are burb specific.

Q: What areas are the most prone to rot?
A: See above.

Q: Which doors are best? My panel had barndoors and I hated the hinges.
A: I am partial to the clam shell style, and I have more people say they prefer them over the barn doors than barn doors to clam shells.

Q: How is the aftermarket for these trucks now?
A: I have been restoring my burb for over 15 years, and in the beginning there was little to none reproduction burb specific stuff out there. Hence why I hacked up a lot of PU stuff to convert to Subruban. Today, there are replacement body panels, good choices on interior stuffs (67-68 are still non existent years in the seat and side panel upholstery).

Q: I would like to install A/C for the family. Is it best to find an original A/C truck or go completely aftermarket?
A: Personally, I'd go aftermarket than try to refurb OEM stuff. The aftermarket AC kits and systems are very nice, and have actually thought about installing one into my non-AC burb.

Few personal notes/observations from a life long 1968 K20 Suburban owner...

The budget you have in your mind right now - triple it. Suburbans are big, so there is more time and materials used to get a body into shape. Interiors are gigantic, so the amount of materials and cost to make them look, feel, and sound good are breath taking.

Space. Suburbans are giant, so you need lots of space to park, disassemble, store parts, and be able to move around to work on your stuff.

Ride. The ride quality on my burb is quite nice in my opinion, especially for a 3/4 ton 4x4. There is a lot of iron rolling, so it soaks up the road quite well.

Resources for information on how to do stuff with them was non existent, then I found this website and have not had to search anywhere else for answers on Suburbans since then.

Good info ...