Company Rats

You must be a swift driver with t

10 mpg lol that's bad in a suburban , he'll mine gets 17 and 21 .

 

Ida barfed .

 

It's a 1990 3/4 ton 4x4 with a 350, TH400, and 3.73's in the Dana 44 & GM 14 bolt axles. Had a 6" lift (blocks in the rear) & 35's when I bought it, with long tube headers and nothing behind 'em. First thing I did was run 2-1/4" pipes back to a Y, put an O2 sensor back on it, then ran a 3" exhaust through a MagnaFlow cat & a Flowmaster 70 series muffler with a single 3" tailpipe behind the rear axle. Also put 33's on it. At that point, it was getting 9.25 mpg.

Put new springs all of the way around...3/4 ton 2" over stock up front, and 1 ton 2" over stock in the rear. Wasn't thrilled with the squatty look, so I added 1.5" lift blocks in the rear. Running boards in front of the rear tires are 1/8" higher off the ground than they are right behind the front axle...so it's got a pretty nice stance now. TH400 started slipping, so I swapped it out for a 4L85E to get the lockup torque converter and the overdrive. That got us up to 11.25 mpg...until the engine started knocking. Dropped in a crate Vortec 350 w/ 4 bolt mains (for a 1996-2000 3/4 & 1-ton), but voided that warranty before I installed it by swapping in a different cam with a little more lift & duration as well as changed the valve springs to accomodate the new cam. My mistake was trying to use the OEM 1990 TBI, which just couldn't flow enough air to feed the new engine. That led to more throttle being used to try to make it go, and really crappy fuel mileage. A 670 CFM Holley replacement TBI solved that, though, and we're back up to 10 mpg with about as much get-up-and-go as you'd expect from an 8000 pound SUV with a little 350 under the hood.

I've also rebuilt the brakes all of the way around, which was fun...front calipers were easy enough, but the rear axle turned out to be off a mid '70's truck, so the drums for a 1990 didn't fit, and the parking brake cables aren't even close to the same...which meant fabricating some adapter brackets and welding them onto the backing plate, as well as tracking down the "discontinued" parking brake levers and struts for the big 13" drums.

Yeah, I could have taken that money and bought a much newer Suburban...but then it'd look like every other Suburban on the road. Those new ones might get better gas mileage, but they just aren't as cool. The cool factor is worth giving up at least a few mpg's in my book.

 

My '96 Ford with the 460 and a 5-speed boasts the same peak HP and torque numbers as the diesels of the era. Diesels are nice for towing, but if you want to play the gasser is the way to go. The 460 is the best of both worlds...just lacks the fuel mileage. Like I said, though, driving something with a bit of cool factor is worth giving up a couple mpg's.

 

We're starting to plan for the Walcott Jamboree. How should we get there from Chicago? My wife's Suburban that might get 14 on the road, or the Kenworth that gets 12 bobtailing? No question! Detroit, loud jake, that audience? Were taking the W9!

 

This reflects what I said in an earlier post.

The sad thing is a certain percentage of drivers actually will do what the safety director requested for personal gain or petty satisfaction.

The sadder thing is there are naive fools who refuse to believe stuff like this happens.

 

my opinion is,
(1) some people just cant mind their own business &
(2) some people get a thrill out of dropping a dime on, and making a spectacle out of others,often times to feel good about themselves.
And this isn't exclusive to ''company rats''.
This manifests itself in other ways. For example, a driver might see another driver from a ''mega'', say,swift or schneider, make a mistake ,which is of no consequence to anyone. Instead of minding his own business,this driver goes on a truck driver message board, probably at the first chance he got, to tell all about what he saw, and to mock and insult the mistaken driver from the ''mega'' company. This is a hypothetical example by the way.

The things some people do to feel better about themselves.