Unlike with the Silvia I wasn’t able to personally visit Speedy to photograph the truck at every step of the process – due to weather and/or restrictions – but the team did send a few extra progress photos our way which you would’ve seen on our Instagram. These photos, however, are the ones we’d all been waiting for. This is the trusty old Suburban now wearing its new, better-than-factory paint!
Today’s post is super quick because there was only a very small window in which we were able to pick the truck up from the shop and quickly get it moved out to storage – where it will remain until the snow has vanished and roads have cleared up – so I only fired off a few photos before we headed out to get it tucked away. As you see it here the truck is probably 95% complete cosmetically, with a few final touches – and many more photos – to come once it’s out of hiding in the next month or two. Even without those final details though the change is immediately apparent!
The body was always very straight – minor door ding here and there aside – but now even those small imperfections are no more. The brand new arch moldings made the real improvement here, with the very rippled originals (top photo) definitely letting the truck down.
The eyesores that were the original bumper and rusting quarter panels are long gone, replaced with a brand new LMC bumper and straight, solid metal respectively. Speedy also took the opportunity to refinish the original plastic trim pieces above the tail lights in a deep coat of black as they were looking a bit tired next to the fresh blue.
Not visible in the photos – since that’s the point of it after all – is also a healthy application of paint protection film (PPF) to prevent the need for future re-dos. The truck now wears a very similar package to that of the Silvia and Mustard with the entire front end, A-pillars (doors in this case), leading edge of the roof, and everything beneath the bodyside moldings all being wrapped. On top of this however the tailgate was also wrapped as it had received a couple of scratches over the years from cargo being loaded through the hatch, being lowered onto the bumper when it was frozen over with ice, and so on.
You may have noticed in these photos that the ‘burb is currently missing any pinstriping, and that’s because new vinyl is one of the final touches that will be addressed come spring. There are also a couple of emblems that still need to go back on (namely the 1500 badging) but the rubber bump strips on the doors – which the truck had worn pretty much since day one – will be staying off as they weren’t really necessary any more. I may end up wrapping the edge of each door in a strip of PPF for protection later on, just in case they should bump anything in the garage for instance.
The final large components of the exterior restoration will most likely be a new grille and possibly a new front bumper to match, just to go all the way. The truck normally runs a clip-on mesh cover (you can see the catches dotted around the grille) so the flaking chrome wouldn’t usually be visible, but with it off the failing finish is hard to miss.
As the final step of everything here the truck will also receive a little bit of mechanical TLC as the oil cooler lines need to be replaced (and I think a couple other seals may be starting to weep) but the end of this refresh is getting very close. We’re not all that far away from being able to bring the toys out now and with them will come the Suburban, ready to get back to work moving parts around and maybe posing for a few photos here and there with certain other ’90s trucks that call our city home. It’ll be time for old KIDNDOG to be in front of the lens more and not just working behind the scenes.
-Bill