Found a 1997 Tahoe! Close enough to the Suburban for me.

Hey everyone,

For all those that posted advice about the 99 Suburban I was looking at, thank you. After a few more days of persistence we found a local 1997 Chevrolet Tahoe, LT, 4WD with 152,000 on it. Drove it, liked it, bought it. My son immediately hopped in the very back and proclaimed it "best car ever."

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/f...ps35d1fe89.jpg

She has a few issues, some more serious than others. I had forgotten about the Lower intake manifold gasket issue with these beasts. Got it home, realized the coolant was low and started looking harder. Yep, gonna have to be replaced. Shop manual states 4.1 hours for this job. Yeah, right, maybe for a professional in a shop with every tool imaginable and has done a few of them...

I'm at 4 days now and just getting ready to put it back together. Now of course I'm doing it in the driveway and it has rained off and on for the last week here so I've had to stop several times and let it dry out before starting over. And no garage means dragging all the tools out and putting them back every time. Oh well, I've had fun (no, really) doing it and with the new improved gasket set from Fel Pro I shouldn't have to do it again. Considering I've been quoted from $900 to $2500 for the job I'm not complaining. For the actual parts relating just to the manifold I'm about $100 in. Of course I'm replacing a few other preventive maintenance items while I'm in there but they aren't related to the original repair. Hope to have her buttoned up this afternoon and will fire her off tomorrow. Wish me luck!

I really like my '99 'hoe:bigsmyl2:
I'm almost 190k, uses no oil, I do have the intake thing to tackle soon though

I love my 97 suburban, did the intake a while back. just make sure the dist. goes back in the same place it came out (hope you marked it) or you will get a cam/crank correlation code. Mine has 175k on it and should see many more. congrats. mine is the same color too

Watch for the ABS unit to go out. There is a resistor that goes out. ~$400 for new unit + bleeding the system. Or you can ignore it as listen to the tick-tick.

I've had four of this body style. One went 280k before I sold it and was still running good. I changed the manifold gasket on one by myself and it took most of a day, I'm no professional. ABS sensor went bad on all of them, if you don't want to replace it probably should pull the fuse on the ABS, otherwise it can make funny stops, especially on gravel.

that old 5.7 vortex was a hell of a motor. Much better in my opinion then the ls2s that replaced it. Its rare to find one that doesnt go 200k and most go 300k