Tell me a sound that’s better than a big turbocharged American V8 ripping and tearing away under the hood of an old work truck while a pair of tires out back get shredded for no good reason other than it looks cool. You can’t think of one, can you? You want to live in a world where you can lay elevens on the pavement all day long, don’t you? Then what you need is some big fat turbocharged LS power in your old GMC Suburban. And make sure that intercooler is air-to-water, for good measure.
This LS-swapped Suburban came to its current owner as a result of a trade for a motorcycle, and he’s since added the turbocharger setup and tripped this mad machine across the country from Alaska to Florida and everywhere in between. Not only that, but he races it at drag strips. The fastest run down the quarter mile in this big beastly 4,700 pound truck was a low 10-second scoot, which is pretty dang serious.
In this video, the Suburban owner drops by Finnigan’s Garage to tackle some impressive power adder work, including moving from a standard air-to-air intercooler setup to a more efficient air-to-water intercooler. It’s hard to describe a car that runs 10s as “cobbled together” but that’s exactly what this Suburban is. It’s been rattled apart and fixed so many times that it barely has any of its original parts. It was done on a budget, and that shows, but like, in a good way.
If you’re a fan of watching some major car dorks wrench on stuff on YouTube, this is a good video for you to spend the next 40 minutes watching. If you just want to watch a cool old patina-heavy 1984 Suburban whip shitties, this video has that, too!