454 Chevy

I'm sure when my Chevrolet Suburban rolled off the assembly line in 1985, it had no idea it would be the star of an online weblog 23 years later. Or that it'd be owned by an expat-Australian who used to be a bona-fide Ford man. Or that it'd be sleeping outside in the cold, Indiana winters for that matter.

But it's doing all these things, and this is the weblog to chronicle it all - the trials and tribulations of feeding a 454 cubic inch monstrosity as we head steadily towards the era of $5/gallon gasoline.

This is a "sticky" post, please check below for new entries.

I'm usually not a big fan of "snake oil" treatmeants. I know that there's probably not much that can be bottled that I can put in my gas can or crank case that's going to make up for abuse and neglect (though a light oil flush did help), but upon the insistance of quite a few people, I decided to give Seafoam a try - it was, after all, only about seven bucks from my local auto parts place. So I picked up a 1 pint can of it while grabbing some belts.

I put the belts on (hurrah, no more squealing belts), and started reading the instructions. I guess I should discuss the motivation first - my truck, despite a full tune up, "diesels" frequently upon shutdown. I have a sneaking suspicion the carb needs a service, but I decided to take the easy route first, trying to eliminate the cylinder buildup that could be causing "hot spots".

I'd seen a few videos and read a few experiences online, and was expecting an elevated idle, followed by plumes of noxious fumes indicating expulsion of all the crap that was coated on the interior of my engine. I poured 1/3rd of a pint down the carb throats, let it run for a little, then shut it down. I went to grab some coffee, and came out five minutes later to start it up.

This is when the plumes of white smoke, indicating many thousandths of inches of deposits going into the atmosphere and no longer causing any trouble inside my engine right? Yeah, I didn't get any of that - fumes certainly smelled different (so much so I tried harder than usual not to inhale them), but were transparent as usual.

So I chalked it up to "this stuff is worthless" shut the truck down after about 5 minutes of cycling and went inside for the night.

When we made our errand rounds today, however, I noticed something that's either a wicked coincidence, or proof positive of Seafoam's merits - not a single time did my truck diesel. Now granted it's only been shutdown about 5 or 6 times since the treatment, but so far so good.

We'll see how it goes, but I might be a believer in this Seafoam stuff. I'm saving the rest of the pint for the Cavalier.

Today I got a cheap power buffer and some bonnets at a pawn shop, and decided to put them to the test. I don't know very much about waxing cars at the moment (I've been researching) but I wanted to take care of a problem area that's been bugging me for about two years now... in the winter, snow lands on the car, and it will sit on the small curve on the bodyline. The snow must act as an abrasive, because now that area is all quite dull, so I decided to try polish it out.

The results are pretty good, I wish I had taken a before shot so you could see how dull it was beforehand. I need to get some proper wax to protect the now-shiny surface, and I'll probably do that tomorrow, which should hopefully really give the entire body a good shine... but at least for now that small strip horizontally along the car looks as good as the rest of the paintwork.

I have a few small chips here and there, both in the silver and in the blue stripe, so I'm going to try pick up some factory paint and match it to fill those chips back in. The roof is especially bad, it really probably needs a whole new spray job but that's going to have to wait until I make friends with someone with a spray booth.

I also took another shot showing the front, but unfortunately it highlights the two worst aspects of the truck - the grille and the windshield.