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Old July 12th, 2014, 07:33 AM
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Ed Snyder Ed Snyder is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Medford, Oregon
Truck: 1962, 1965, 1967
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Default Re: One Ton Suburban

Doug -- although Dad was not a welder or a body & fender man, he did as much of the work as he could on the conversion. I helped him with a lot of it. He cut out the openings for the windows with a saber saw and installed the windows. He gave me the two special hand tools for slipping the windows into the rubber extrusions and inserting the locking bead into the rubber. He installed the supports between the windows after having flat plates welded to the tops and bottoms of those square tubes.

Since the half ton panel and regular Suburban share the same body shell, they're both equipped for installation of either the "barn doors" or the liftgate/tailgate. However, the one ton panel was equipped only for the doors. Since Dad wanted the liftgate/tailgate combo, he had to do a lot of modifications like creating the hinge pockets for the tailgate hinges. Darryl Starbird did the welding on that part of the project. For anyone unfamiliar with Darryl, check out http://www.darrylstarbird.com/starbird.htm. He got his start as a body shop owner in Wichita. I found Darryl's quote from 1968 when Dad took the Suburban back to him for enlarging the rear wheel openings -- $300 -- what a bargain!

Henry -- I was pretty surprised at the condition of those three rear seats. What helped was that Dad stored them in the basement one by one as us kids grew up and moved away. I think the last one went down in the basement about 30 years ago. Two of my brothers helped me carry them up the steps, clean them, and reinstall them the day before the Wichita Mini-Meet.

Here's a photo of my parents. Dad will be 90 on Pearl Harbor Day and Mom will be 87 on New Years Day. Their daily drivers are a 2005 turbocharged Subaru Outback that Dad calls his "closet WRX" and a 2012 Fiat 500, both with 5 speed manual transmissions. Great role models for us kids!
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Ed Snyder
Medford, Oregon
1962 1000 Pickup 401M & Muncie 318 with overdrive
1962 K1000 Suburban 401M & SM420
1965 2500 Suburban 351C & SM420 with Watson overdrive
1967 CM1500 pickup 351E & NP435
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