As an involved mentor, I often get the opportunity to haul robots and tools and parts and stuff for the team. Over the years, I’ve used several different trucks to do this. This past summer, I finally finished building my 57 Chevy Suburban. It’s a great robot hauler, it’s roomy, has only a front seat, has rear doors instead of a tailgate, and gets sort of decent gas mileage. Drivetrain is a tired old 350, TH400 automatic transmission, and Ford 9" rearend with 2.75 gears. Creature comforts include heat, cruise, an amp/speakers, and not much else. And…it looks great!
I will have it at the kickoff event in Phoenix in a couple weeks, to haul the KOP home.
Shown in front of the movie production office for La Vida Robot, in Albuquerque this past October.
I did a double take when I read that it was going to a kickoff event, surely you wouldn’t drive that in January…then I remembered the whole Arizona thing. There are lots of guys with nice classics around here, but you only see them from May to September.
I’m kind of surprised that as a FIRST mentor you aren’t using a MegaSquirt to bring that old 350 into the fuel injection age, or at least a TBI system from a late 80’s GM pickup.
I considered adding EFI, but it’s so easy to just bolt on a Quadrajet and get mileage, performance, and reliability…without the hassle of trying to figure out how to put all that wiring in and make it look good, dealing with a high pressure fuel system, having to tune, the added cost, etc. I literally took the carb off the shelf where it had been sitting for a couple years, bolted it on the engine, and it fired first try. I haven’t even adjusted the idle mixture screws.
