As I mentioned in another thread, my Suburban was totaled in June of 2015 along with my travel trailer. My middle son was driving and we were in a construction area just east of Greenville, IL on I-70. We came up over a rise and traffic was stopped dead in the only lane available. My son evaded the car in front of us, but we went down over an embankment, jackknifed and rolled over.



No one was hurt, but the Suburban was messed up pretty badly as was the trailer.





I was out of business for over a year until I found a 2000 Chevy K3500 Crew Cab Long Bed DRW in Lake City, FL on Craigslist.

The ad read:

2000 Chevy K3500 dually 4X4, 6.5 turbo diesel, crew cab, LWB. The truck has many upgrades and new parts transmission, turbo, inj. pump, brakes, 4"
exhaust, tires and much more, but it is not running at this time I have invested over $10K into this truck and just don't have time for it. If you know 6.5 turbo diesel or know someone who does this is a great deal.

He was asking $4500 for it. Here's one of the pictures that he sent me.



He said that he hadn't driven it regularly in about 8 years and that it hadn't run at all for about a year. He put a modified GM8 turbo on it, supposed to have a different compressor wheel (seems to be a gimmick to me), an SS Diesel tune, a crappy aftermarket air filter arrangement with no provision for the CDR connection (it made an oily mess under the hood, which led to his next problem).

He told me that after the mods, it would start to run fine, then stumble and surge and do that until you back out of the pedal. To clean up the oily mess, he used a pressure washer...it wouldn't start after that. He said that he had three or four "Diesel mechanics" work on it, but none could figure out what was wrong.

From his description, I thought I had a pretty good idea and started negotiating.

We ended up settling on $3750 for the sale price. I arranged to go down there with my 1995 Chevy K1500 5.7 L pickup and utility trailer -- with the intention of driving the K3500 back with the K1500 on the trailer. This was September 15, 2016.

It seems that the SS Diesel tune asked for more boost, but didn't handle it properly on the diagnostic side. It was setting a P0236 code and pulling fuel to lower the boost. That's what I thought was going on from his description, but I had to get it running first to confirm.

When I got there, he was away. I called and he said he would be there in about 15 minutes. I looked the truck over and saw that he had a battery charger on it. It was still too low to crank when he got there. We exchanged pleasantries, exchanged money and title to complete the sale. He looked at me and asked, "Are you going to try to get it running?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Do you think you will drive it home?" I said, "The thought crossed my mind." He had to go back to work, but told me to call him if I got it running and to stay as long as I needed to.

Fifteen minutes after he left, the batteries were strong enough to crank.

I cracked the nut on the #1 injector line, cranked, and found no fuel. Checked the filter bleeder with the key on, fuel coming out fine. OK. Pressure washer, so check connections. Hmm... Nothing obvious. Hmm... Bump the Fuel Shut Off Solenoid -- it's a little loose. Had a 3/4" wrench in my hand for the fuel line nut... whack the solenoid once... crank and it fires.

I texted him, "It's running." Bam, phone rings, "You got it running that quickly?!" "Yup."

A Kennedy Diesel boost fooler took care of the code until I got back and got a Kennedy tune for it. I had John disable the P0236 diagnostic test so the code would no longer set. My turbo makes about 28 psi boost when towing heavy.

It took me a couple of hours to get it movable (blown brake light fuse, etc.) and to get the trailer unhooked from the 95 and hooked to the 2000. I noticed the transmission slip in reverse when I backed up to the trailer. I still needed to wire in a brake controller and do some other stuff before the trip back, but I didn't want to stay there much longer. As I was pulling out of his driveway, he came rolling up and flagged me down. He wanted to talk (for nearly an hour) about how I got the truck running when none of his mechanics could. He was actually very happy to see it running again as he said he really liked the truck.

I went straight to an AutoZone and bought a factory air filter (he had the stock air box and sent it with me) so that I could hook up the CDR properly, charge the air conditioner in their parking lot and did a few other things. At this point it was getting dark and I had only had about 4 hrs sleep on the way down. I found a truck stop about 30 miles away that was accessible by back roads. I hadn't eaten anything since about 8 am, so I hit a restaurant on the way and took this picture:



I eased it to the truck stop and arrived at about 10:00 pm. I slept in the truck until about 6 am. I ended up working on it for about 4 hrs at the truck stop to get fully road worthy for the trip home. Brake controller, found an inside dual flat, this, that and the other thing.

On the way around Macon on I-475, the radiator ruptured. I was able to roll in to the Northbound rest area. Got on my phone, found an AutoZone about 30 miles back that had a radiator in stock. Unloaded the 95, went and got the radiator, replaced it in the rest area, loaded the 95 back up, headed for home again. Lost about 4 hrs.

By the time I got home, reverse was pretty well gone.

I put the engine and transmission out of my Suburban in the truck in October 2016. I just put it back in last week with a new set of P400 heads as I described in the other thread.



The previous picture was from June of 2017. That is one of the Mercedes powered Sprinter vans that I worked on last year going back to its owner.

I like this truck. I'm still working out some kinks and bugs, but hopefully with the new heads I won't have any more problems for a while. I don't like the rims. I will probably put stock rims on it at some point. I don't like the exhaust exiting in front of the rear wheels. That will get remedied at some point as well.

Anyway, I thought you all might be interested in what I've been up to. This was after recovering from a badly broken arm requiring surgery to repair then blood clots in both lungs in late 2015. That laid me up for about six months. 2015 was kind of a rough year.