Projects '65 Suburban Carryall

My wife calls it Big Girl, despite it not actually being very big compared to a modern Suburban or pick-up.

 

That's something I had a tough time wrapping my head around when I bought my last Suburban! I've owned a '57, '60, '62, and '64 previously, and thought the '67 and newer were just huge buses! I didn't want one, and avoided them. But about 7-8 years ago I decided I wanted another old Suburban and was looking through local ads when I spotted a '69 for only $2000. It looked gorgeous, and I felt it was at least worth a look. We went over to see it, and it was better than the pictures, so after a drive I bought it.
I still like the short wheelbase '66 and older, but there's a lot of pluses to these long wheelbase versions too. But I'd trade it for an earlier one if somebody every offered that trade! They just look better.

 

Started up on the driver side:

 

Looks like your patch panels are really a nice fit. Not always true for many I've purchased.

 

Not photographed above: Lots of repe***ions of swearing and fitting, marking, removing, cutting/tweaking/m***aging and then starting over...

Some fit pretty good, some don't. I bought AMD where I could because it supposedly fits better, but even then it was a **** shoot.

• Fenders fit good, but required relocating the braces to get them to line up correctly.
• The lower door inners are downright garbage.
• The lower door skins are too flat, but workable. Made more difficult by the garbage inners.
• The floor pans/inner rocker bits were real good.
• The rockers were ok, but made worse due to having to remove so much rot and not having a real solid "starting" point.
• The bed sides cut down into quarter panels have been the best thing yet. Great fit. Though, not much left to them by the time I'm done with them.

 

I had one panel that fit perfectly on my '39 Chev, and it was a NOS EMS tail panel I found locally. I was expecting the worst, but it fell in place easily, and took maybe 3 hrs. to weld in!
My inner and outer lower door panels were all about 1/4" too long, and had to be sectioned and shortened. My front floor panels were Ok, but needed 1.5" added to the outer edge to reach the rockers. Back floor panels would have been easier to build from sheet metal, and not even use as they required so much reworking to fit.

 

We had one where I once worked, a '64 with FWD that was never registered. The property had lots of acres and a few buildings, so it was used to carry the maintenance crews around. No rust, a few s****es but it was cared for, always garaged and had a snow plow on it. I was out of the facility in 1986 and the property was sold and razed in 1992. I have wondered what became of the great old truck.

 

Other side is getting there... since the bedside came up a bit short, had to have another piece in the back. Getting that compound curve that sweeps to the rear-end was tricky, and admittedly it isn't correct... I've got to sleep on it. It's a bit too flat.

 

Good for another 50 years.

 

The work looks good, I've been enjoying following along. I had one of these as my daily driver about 15/20 years ago and I really miss it. Body was rough, probably worse than yours, but someone had put later 5 lug suspension in it with power steering and disk brakes, and it had a 250/3 speed setup that would get low 20's MPG. I was pretty broke at the time, I drove it for like a month with no battery in it, always parking on an incline and push starting it everywhere. Was a great truck, and really handy. I wish I would have kept it, and did what you're doing here.

 

Nice work.
When I did mine, the corner piece under the bumper needed replacing, considering the fact that I had no metalforming equipment (or skills), it turned out acceptable.

 

Driver fender fitted and door welded back up.


Again had to remove the fender brace, remove some metal, trim the fender skin, and then re***emble slightly differently than it originally came. The fender (along with the p***enger side) was also 3/8" to 1/2" shorter than the original fender, so we had to bring whole grille support panel back.

Up next is A-pillar drip rails, rot above the windshield, and fixing the radio cut-out.

 

Doing a great job SDD. Reminds me of replacing rockers, toe boards and floor on my 65 C10 back in high school.

 

i cant believe i didnt notice how strangely the hood opens on this era of chevy truck, the hood looks like it moves forward a solid 6-10 inches while it goes up. really neat design.

 

Three local gl*** shops I called couldn't source green gl***. The one that could told me his sheet supplier put the cost at $600 before he even began cutting. He was friendly as heck, but was nervous that a single mistep would likely mean he would need to order a second sheet just incase. I decided to order online. VintageGl***.com quoted a fair price ($645 for all gl*** excluding the windshield), and four days later it showed up at my door. Looks great so far, but will compare to originals tomorrow as I won't be actually installing it for a few more weeks... maybe even a couple months. Worth noting that it appears to have been dropped ship from Auto City Cl***ic in Minnesota, which is funny because I had them quote the same thing and it was ~$200 more.

 

All the gl*** looks great, and is a great match holding it up to the originals.

Gave the spot above the windshield some love with the sandblaster and found some holes that had been hiding behind some filler. So I decided to investigate from the inside a bit.


Welp, more sheet metal to buy. I can save the interior panel... or at least I'm going to attempt to. The exterior has more pitting/rust than I care to deal with. I'll hold off on cutting it out until the new piece arrives so I can verify fitment to make sure installing the new sheetmetal isn't harder than fixing the existing...

Cleaned out the drip rail (didn't get a photo after wirewheeling it) but it cleaned up real nice. The rear was caved in where someone must have back into something; fixed that too.

Started picking at the rear floor a bit more and found some fibergl*** that was hiding some rust above a floor brace, hence why I couldn't see it from below. Cut that out, working on patch pieces now.

While I've got the windshield out, and after fixing everything else, I plan on painting at least the dashboard. I'd like go to with what I think was the original color, fawn, since it's got a cold old-days vibe to me.

The project moves on, slowly but surely. I was hoping to be putting some primer on right now...

 

It doesn't move near as much as it appears to in the pic you are seeing. There is a piece missing in that pic that is likely 10-12" long...

 

Fight the urge to buff the dash out to a high gloss or use a clear-coat finish. On a bright, sunny day any glare off the dash will be reflected on the inside of your windshield. There's a reason why newer vehicles have a matte or textuered finish on the the top of the dash. In fact, I think it's mandatory.

 

Yep, I made the dash in a 63 C10 as nice as the outside when I was in high school. I found that wasn’t the best idea because of the reflection once I started driving it.

 

ahhhh, i guess that explains it, i didnt notice there was anything missing as the only generations of chevy truck im familiar with are the 50s apaches and the 70s+ trucks

my '57 has its original dash paint, its a satin/matte finish, 0 dash reflection onto thr windshield.

 

I'm going with original fawn color, but it'll be a satin finish. My father in law recommended the same; the dash of his '55 F100 is a high gloss metallic blue, and despite it being a small dash, it sure can produce a lot of glare.

 

Your rods and cones will thank you!

 

Fixed the issues found last weekend; new exterior windshield-to-roof panel. Probably the best fitting piece of repop metal I've had so far. Some very minor grinding at the ends, and it fit right in like a glove and looks great.

I've also finally found a spotweld cutter that seems to be worth a damn. The Blair ones (P/N 11096 and 11082) were fantastic. I must have been through four different brands trying to find one I liked and actually lasted, and these Blair ones are great.

 

So, where did you get the piece over the windshield from? I need to put one in my 61 GMC and sounds like yours fit well.

 

It's TriPlus part number 610-4060. I got it from Summit since it was the cheapest place I could find it once shipping was taken into account.

 

Ok, thanks! I actually got all the patch panels for my sons 63 there too and they have all been ok.

 

Another productive weekend.

Cleaned up the plug welds on the piece above the windshield, patched the interior panel in the same area and got a light skim coat of filler on it, cut out the mangled radio hole (will patch to original), and then spent the rest of the time with wire wheels getting paint out of nooks 'n crannies (Thomas'® Original English Muffins) as we prep for primer.

Goal is to have the sides all primed and ready to go so I can have some fun this summer. Will tackle the hood, roof, and barn doors next winter. Some point this summer I'm going to rebuild the front suspension. Already has drop spindles, but bushings and joints are shot. Once I'll do that I'll figure out what I want to do with the rear; needs some sort of drop as it pretty aggressively raked right now.

 

Being that the entire front suspension/engine crade bolts in with 12 bolts, you could find a second one and rebuild it off of the truck, then bolt it all in as one ***embly when it's ready, which might take the truck off of the road for a lot less time than tearing the original stuff apart. If you use the 1971-newer cradle you'll get disk brakes and power steering automatically, and with 5 lug wheels instead of 6 (of course then you've got to change out the rearend to match if you want all 4 wheels the same). That's how my '66 was done years ago.

 

I've considered it. My truck already has discs upfront (looks like a CPP kit but I haven't really looked much once I verified they worked and were safe) and I'm not interested in power steering. When I get older, that last bit may change.

Some people also prefer that '73 and later, as that gets you rubber bushings instead of steel-with-grease-fittings. Some prefer otherwise. I'm not sure what I prefer since I don't know enough about either. But yeah, swapping out an entirely dressed crossmember is enticing.

Right now I'm leaning towards rebuilding the original. I should be able to accomplish the task in a weekend. I've considered stuff from NoLimit, QA1 and Hotchkis (a**** others) but I feel they are too aggressive for what I want to do, though, I may look at adding the Hotchkis center link as that is supposed to quell bump steer which is pretty significant.