The Top 5 Important Lessons I've Learned After Owning This GMT-400 Suburban For 6 Months!

this is our 1999 gmc suburban and admittedly i'm a little bit of a fanboy for these 1990s gm trucks but now we've owned this for six months i've put quite a number of miles on it and let's see has the love affair ended here are the top five things you need to know about owning a 1990s gm truck number five durability and reliability from my experience and from the experience of a lot of folks i've talked to these things are practically indestructible and here's the thing right there are certain youtube channels out there that'll tell you the only reliable vehicles to buy are toyotas and nissans and like yeah okay i get it toyota and nissan build some incredible vehicles and american vehicles typically kind of a reputation for being not so long-lived well these trucks known as the gmt-400 be it the pickup trucks or the suburban or the tahoe or whatever are so incredibly durable and reliable they last forever so the heart of these vehicles for the most part you'll find some variation of the small block chevy v8 in this case we have the vortec 5700 this is a 5.7 liter now the earlier versions of this vehicle had a throttle body fuel injection this one switched to ports these ones are a little bit more complex but the takeaway here is these things are dirt simple dirt simple compared to modern day vehicles the transmission is the 4l60 which isn't quite as known for its longevity but even still with over 200 000 miles this thing shifts like absolute butter as long as you don't tow in drive as long as you tow in gear ratio 3 they just keep going these are some of the most reliable cheapest rigs you can buy i just love that about them and they're easy to fix parts are everywhere push rod v8 simple basic no-nonsense and they just keep chugging hey guys as you know it is that time of year the time of year where we start selling some of our long-term test fleet and to do that we've brought our old auction site back from the dead tflbids.com is back and this week we're going to be selling not only our suburban that we use for the go big video series but also a pretty cool and pretty rare kia sorrento first generation unknown off-roader that will surprise you so go check out tflbids.com and get yourself a beautiful suburban at no reserve or a first generation sorrento more trucks to come on tfl bids now before we get to number four i want to say that this exact suburban is for sale right now this of course was the suburban news in the tfl truck video series go big it's my baby but it's up for sale right now with no reserve so whatever it sells for is what it's going to sell for and all the proceeds are going to a charity uh which is pretty cool a really cool program the colorado state university drone program a great group of folks out there so uh up for sale right now link in the description no reserve please go to a good home buddy now number four is the off-road capability of these rigs uh when you think of offer vehicles you think of like jeeps and toyotas and really not like 90s gm trucks but they are insanely insanely offer capable for what they are now solder axle independent front suspension but the low range gearing the clearance is surprisingly awesome on these rigs i'm going through trenches right now the vehicle was at like a 20 25 degree side slope lots of traction out of these brand new bfg ko2 tires and we're going to get it really articulated here and it's going to spin on up come on buddy all right now one of the cooler options on these vehicles is something called the g80 which is a uh rear differential locking rear diff i don't know if this one has it i got to check the rpo codes it might not um or maybe it's just tired and worn out but it doesn't really matter because the durability and the clearance on these is such that even if you do find yourself a difficult obstacle you kind of just power yourself through with a little momentum you gotta commit though i'm used to driving these modern fancy vehicles which are expensive and precious on these old rigs you just gotta drop the gear and disappear come on check it out there we go there we go it's remarkably comfortable for what it is and with just a little bit of throttle four-wheel drive low we made it through that was awesome that was really really cool so um yeah i mean basically we've got two open differentials but with recovery points in the front right we got a couple skid plates underneath this thing uh it just goes so many places you just have to commit to the old school whale way of off-roading which is put your pedal in into the the carpet and hang on number three the road trip ability of this 1999 gmc is better than just about any other vehicle i've ever experienced now we did take this on like a six seven hundred mile road trip from here in colorado to utah for the go big series and what i probably didn't do a very good job of getting across on camera is just how comfortable this vehicle is if you're getting like a new suburban or new tahoe or even a new escalade the seats are pretty firm there's a lot of bolstering you can definitely tell they were inspired by german automakers like bmw and mercedes but german automakers build their cars for german roads which are tight and technical and twisty here in the us it's like a thousand miles to phoenix from denver and there's like seriously one or two turns you just do this over and over and over and over and over mile after mile and these leather chairs are like lazy boy recliners they are incredibly comfortable it's a very quiet experience in here and the suspension is calibrated like i don't know a 1910s steam yacht it just like floats over everything but that's what makes these so good on road trips the the gearing is good too the v8 just kind of lumbers along at 2000 rpm and you just chill that is one of my favorite parts about this 99 suburban now one other thing i want to talk about these seats you'll notice that the leather is pretty cracked and it's torn quite badly on the driver's side here now david who's uh you know our ranch expert he has owned tons of these and he a lot of other people actually told me that the secret to the seats is to get the cloth so the leather tears and kind of cracks easily but the cloth seats on these just as comfortable and lasts even longer [Music] now kind of complementing the road trip ability in these old suburbans has to be the cargo capacity 149.5 cubic feet worth of space for all sorts of friends and activities and anything you could think of short of a bowling alley back here it's just awesome so when i took this on the road trip i took out the rear seats and there's a lever and it's a little heavy and cumbersome but you can pull it out and then even at six feet tall i can lay at least two of me in here maybe even three that's how much space there is so space per dollar it's hard to beat these 99 suburbans i also like these barn doors they're not like super useful kind of uh the advantage of the liftgate right is that uh in a rainstorm you got a little bit of protection the barn door doesn't offer any of that although it does perhaps swing out a little bit less far than a traditional lift gate i just like them i think they're fun and kind of quirky now one interesting thing i learned about this vehicle these latches for the barn doors now when i bought this vehicle it was broken so i did what you should do if you own a 99 suburban don't buy new go to the junkyard because there are tons of them in the junkyard so i went to the junkyard and there were 10 suburbans with barn doors i'm like great i can get a new latch i searched through eight of them and eight of them had the exact same problem where they just wear out and break the ninth one was perfect but i couldn't actually get the door open because someone had locked it removed battery thrown the key away and then the tenth one is this latch and it's a little better than stock but you still kind of got a yank on it so common issue across the suburbans but uh you know old car quirks now number two thing i've learned about the suburban over the last six months yeah fuel economy is pretty bad and now of course gas is really expensive and we're looking at a 42 gallon tank 42 now the advantage of a 42 gallon tank is you never need to fill it up the fuel economy on this you know if you hit 15 you're doing pretty well but even if you average 10 miles per gallon with a 44 gallon tank that is a total driving range of 440 miles 400 plus miles and if you have 15 miles per gallon you drive it nicely you're doing much better than that of course if you were to drain down to like 40 gallons at four dollars a gallon you do the math you're going to be looking at 160 bucks to fill this thing up if you live in california a lot more than that so the pro enormous fuel tank so big they had to move the spare tire inside actually because the fuel tank lives with the spare tire with the con fuel economy pretty bad and the number one thing i've learned about owning the gmc suburban gmt 400 over the last six months is that these things are still as awesome as i thought when we first bought it now yes this one is a little bit old and a little bit worn out but it's kind of hard to believe that it's the year 2022 and these are kind of approaching classic status and this is in my opinion the sweet spot for classic suv so the older uh suburbans and trucks like the square bodies which were from the the like what 73 through 87 they're amazing but they're expensive now like a good one's gonna be 20 to 25 thousand dollars the next gen which was introduced in the trucks for 88 and suburban a couple years later are so much cheaper they are dirt cheap in today's market and they are so much fun they they are a great combination of kind of old world charm with uh the body on frame construction and the classic small block chevy sound and the basic interiors and the the ease of use and the the cheapness to keep on the road but then they have some modern day conveniences like abs like airbags in this model which is nice you know doesn't feel like you're driving around in a tin can so it's the perfect combination and these are still quite affordable but i don't think they're going to stay affordable for much longer because if you look at the trend first like pre-73 gms shot up in value and then pre-87 gm shot up in value and now this one's next well let me know what you guys think about the gmt 400 suburban this one is for sale right now right now over at tflbids.com i have a link in the description below again it's being sold at no reserve with all the proceeds going towards the colorado state university drone program and if you want to learn more information about this one and some of its niggles check out tflbids.com thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next tfl classics video [Music] you

Channel: TFLclassics

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Id: vdXofFw1KGU

Length: 11min 32sec (692 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2022