1971 Chevrolet Suburban - spark Plug Heat Wrap - Photo 9040119

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These Taylor spark-plug booties, which we found at Performance Automotive Warehouse, protect our MSD wires from the headers and the intense heat they throw off. They are basically miniature Nomex fire suits for our spark-plug wires.

In this final shot of our engine bay, you can see the GM Performance Parts HT 383 V-8 and how it all wound up. Dropping the engine in wasn't hard. Finishing off all the details to make it fire and run was hard.

Our V-8 is going to suck a lot of air, so proper breathing is important. Also, making sure no dirt gets into our fresh engine's intake tract is a major concern. With this in mind, we topped our Jet-built Quadrajet with a 14x3-inch K&N air filter, along with its chrome housing. A great feature of the K&N element is that it is washable and reusable.

We also decided to spruce up our engine a bit with these aluminum valve covers from GM Performance Parts. They add a nice bit of gleam to our engine bay.

K&N valve cover breathers were also put into place. Like the air filter for the engine, they are washable and reusable. We selected ones with a chrome top, but black ones are also available.

To ensure that enough juice was getting to our spark plugs from our MSD distributor, we used a set of MSD 8.5mm Super Conductor plug wires. They feature an ultra-low resistance of 40-50 Ohms, ensuring that the maximum amount of spark gets where it needs to go. We selected a universal set so that we could cut them to the proper length.

These Taylor spark-plug booties, which we found at Performance Automotive Warehouse, protect our MSD wires from the headers and the intense heat they throw off. They are basically miniature Nomex fire suits for our spark-plug wires.

Radiator hoses were a bit of a challenge, since we were now using a serpentine belt system that we also got from GM Performance Parts. We came across these flexible radiator hoses on the Summit Racing Web site and they bent right into the proper shape.

Another reason we chose the hoses from Summit is that the steel-braided cover helps to protect them. We needed this protection because our lower radiator hose has to make a funky bend and then come across the frame, where it makes slight contact. Hopefully the steel braiding will keep abrasion to a minimum.

To keep the big 'Burb cool, we went with an aluminum radiator from Custom Aluminum Radiator in Kingman, Arizona. We were able to use the stock mounts by simply spacing them upward a slight amount. Initially we were going to run an electrical fan on our 'Burb, but decided to use a mechanical fan for sheer simplicity. Since the serpentine belt system uses a reverse-rotation fan, we had to find a fan with the matching pitch. We found one at Performance Automotive Warehouse. While it might look like the fan is too far from the radiator, this is actually its stock position.

Part of the reason the fan sits so far back from the radiator is that it uses a very deep shroud. We reused our stock shroud after modifying it to make it fit our new setup.

Power-steering hoses also presented a slight challenge. Our original '71 Chevy box uses standard fittings, but the newer style pump that came with the serpentine system is metric. The folks at Orme Brothers in Northridge, California have hoses and fittings for just about any application and were able to build us a set of hoses with the appropriate fittings.

Moving underneath the Suburban, we can see how the new NV4500 five-speed manual transmission from Advance Adapters mates to our original crossmember. We played with several transmission mounts for some time, but they all required us to space the crossmember downward to let the transmission clear the body. For strength and ground clearance, we wanted to avoid this and finally came across this smaller mount from Energy Suspension.

The smaller mount also meant that the transmission, and therefore the transfer case, would sit a bit lower. Therefore we needed to grind part of the crossmember to make room. After some grinding, we finally got the proper fit.

Our NP205 also used this side mount from the factory and we wanted to keep it. The mount also had to be moved back 2 inches, just like our crossmember, since the new drivetrain combo was 2 inches longer. It took a bit of work, but we finally got everything to fit.

A small detail that reared its ugly head later is that we lost the original clutch rod while doing the swap. We made a new one by using some all-thread and a rod-end on one side. Since all-thread isn't the strongest of materials, we sleeved it with steel tubing.

New driveshafts were also needed for our Suburban, since everything had shifted 2 inches toward the rear. We turned to Jesse at High Angle Driveline in Paradise, California for our shafts. Jesse 'wheels, so he knows what 4x4 guys need when it comes to driveshafts. This was readily apparent when he asked us questions like what size tires we are running, how much horsepower we have and the intended use of the vehicle.

Since our 'Burb is lifted just 6 inches, Jesse didn't use a CV joint for the rear axle. When Off Road Unlimited built our rear 14-bolt, they installed a 1350 U-joint, so our shaft comes equipped with 1350 joints front and rear.

Our front shaft from High Angle uses a CV joint on the rear. If the 'Burb had a ton of articulation, Jesse would have equipped our shaft with one of his long-travel slip-shafts. However, since our suspension is fairly standard fare, this was not needed. After talking with Jesse, we decided to keep the 1310 U-joints. They should hold up fine, since our 'Burb is not going to be a hard-core trail rig.

After getting our front shaft in, we noticed that it was a tight fit with our Hooker Super Competition headers. We also noticed that the header was very close to the spring shackle. After looking at part numbers we discovered that we had received the wrong headers and were immediately sent the right set.

With the new headers on top of the wrong headers, you can see how the new headers made for a 4WD have the collector farther forward and up higher. This should alleviate our clearance problems.

You can see how the new headers, once installed, fit better than the first set did. With the collector moved forward and up, there is no longer a clearance issue with our driveshaft or spring hangers.

After throwing on our headers, we were ready to bolt on our exhaust system, which also came from Hooker. It features all mandrel-bent tubing. However, we discovered that again we got the wrong part-this one was for a two-wheel drive. The system would not fit and unfortunately Hooker has ceased building 4x4 exhaust systems for out application, which means it is off to an exhaust shop for us.