2007 Suburban - MUDHORN

[JeepinPenguin]

Update!

So finally got the Suburban rebadged with her new name: Mudhorn. Anyone a fan of the Mandalorian series will understand where it came from. Ordered the letters and then painted them in a hammer forge iron paint finish (kudos to my roommate for being a paint guy at Home Depot and keying me in on awesome colors and finishes). Got the mudhorn emblem off etsy. painted it to match. Used some 3M automotive adhesive tap to apply. Still needs a total clean up and full body wax to get the perfect look, but i'm already digging how it turned out. Love being different (hence the Sub anyway and not a Jeep/4R.etc.).

This week she also gets dropped off at a local fab shop to do a custom rear tire carrier setup I designed. stay tuned for pics next week probably!

Before


After

 

[fnjeep314]

He man, love the build! Its nice to see someone build a newer body style Suburban. Will be interesting to see what all you do to it and where you can go.

Can I ask you to post a pic or 2 of your Suburban in this thread of Suburbans and Tahoe's?

Expedition Portal

Largest and Oldest Overland Forum

www.expeditionportal.com

 

[JeepinPenguin]

He man, love the build! Its nice to see someone build a newer body style Suburban. Will be interesting to see what all you do to it and where you can go.

Can I ask you to post a pic or 2 of your Suburban in this thread of Suburbans and Tahoe's?

Expedition Portal

Largest and Oldest Overland Forum

www.expeditionportal.com

Thanks - and I think I've already posted over there. I will post again once the new tire carrier is done.

 

[fnjeep314]

Thanks - and I think I've already posted over there. I will post again once the new tire carrier is done.

Oh sorry! My bad! Yeah I will be very interested in how your tire carrier comes out.

 

[Bushcoat]

Following along, looking forward to the process. Need to start working on mine again.

 

[JeepinPenguin]

WOO! Tire carrier done!


This thing turned out great! Huge shout out and thanks to @javajoe79 over at Coffey Fabrication in Nashville. I'm telling you guys, if you need custom fab work done and you're in the Nashville area, go check this guy out. Not only is his work top notch, but he is one hell of a guy. Very nice, super easy to work with, and just a chill guy. He was easy to communicate with on what I wanted. We went back and forth with some designs via email, then I went and took MUDHORN over to his shop. We looked her over, talked about how well the designs would work. Then we discussed best way to get all the parts we needed. He was upfront with telling me things I could buy that would be cheaper than him making, to help keep costs down. Then a few weeks later I dropped it off at his shop once he got space (he's busy). Then boom, a couple days later it was done.

Super happy with how it came out. Only things left to do with the carrier is: License plate relocation, clean up and coat it (he offered to do it at his shop for me but I'm a DIY'er and wanted to tackle it on my own), and I do need to take it back because we forgot to incorporate a locking mechanism when the gate is open so it doesn't swing freely (this is at my fault because 1. the spindle I bought didnt come with this feature and 2. because I just forgot about it in my design).

10/10 would recommend @javajoe79

She's really starting to come together. And with the weather finally turning around, I'm thinking some adventure is in my near future. (I promise to eventually get non-driveway pics for you guys).

 

[javajoe79]

Glad to help man!!

 

[JeepinPenguin]

Rear tire carrier has been primed and bedlined. Just used some Rustoleum bedliner in a can. I had good results with it back in the day on my jeep so I thought Id give it another go here. I am really loving how this turned all turned out. And in the end, the custom work came out to about the same cost as the other solution I was looking at from Wilco, but I am so happy I went this route.\

 

[JeepinPenguin]

Just ordered the final remaining parts to be able to legally drive utilizing my spare (i.e. license plate relocation bracket, quick disconnect harnesses, rear lighting). Should be in within the next week and then I can get that all mounted up and finally be able to drive around full time with my spare mounted up.

Once this is done, all of the necessary mods will be done. My hope then is to be able to get out and use it some and be able to determine next steps and mods. I want to find the balance between practicality and just looking ************. Because lets be honest, I'm just a manchild who wants a cool looking rig, and I'm happy to admit that there may eventually be things on it that will be purely for looks.

Potential future "cool" stuff:
1. Want to do something with the front bumper. Maybe some trimming, maybe add a bar on there to mount lights to
2. maybe add a cool roof rack with lights there too?
3. Rock lights/camp lights?
4. Paint/vinyl wrap

If anyone has some suggestions on a color swap - I am open to suggestions.

Stay safe out there everyone!

 

[Todd n Natalie]

Just ordered the final remaining parts to be able to legally drive utilizing my spare (i.e. license plate relocation bracket, quick disconnect harnesses, rear lighting). Should be in within the next week and then I can get that all mounted up and finally be able to drive around full time with my spare mounted up.

Once this is done, all of the necessary mods will be done. My hope then is to be able to get out and use it some and be able to determine next steps and mods. I want to find the balance between practicality and just looking ************. Because lets be honest, I'm just a manchild who wants a cool looking rig, and I'm happy to admit that there may eventually be things on it that will be purely for looks.

Potential future "cool" stuff:
1. Want to do something with the front bumper. Maybe some trimming, maybe add a bar on there to mount lights to
2. maybe add a cool roof rack with lights there too?
3. Rock lights/camp lights?
4. Paint/vinyl wrap

If anyone has some suggestions on a color swap - I am open to suggestions.

Stay safe out there everyone!

I see you already removed the front valance. That's what I was going to suggest. Mine ended up being removed for me, haha.
If you have the need for it, maybe a bumper and winch?
Personally, I'd skip paint / wrap until it requires is.

 

[JeepinPenguin]

I see you already removed the front valance. That's what I was going to suggest. Mine ended up being removed for me, haha.
If you have the need for it, maybe a bumper and winch?
Personally, I'd skip paint / wrap until it requires is.

Yeah front valance came off a while ago, I think the same day I removed the side steps. Because once I took one off, the other had to go too. Its crazy how it appeared to get lifted another inch at least just by removing those two things.

I would like to do a front bumper and winch eventually, definitely not a need right now though. And I dont like any of the front bumper options we have. So I have been toying around with either building one myself (i.e. buying a welder and start learning all that), or working with the same fabricator that helped with the rear swing and do a slim front bumper design. I like the ADD bumper but for like $2k... thats a lot. So we will see.

The reason I think next up is a mild wrap, is because the hood and roof have almost completely lost their clearcoat, and the paint is starting to peel and fade. So thinking of doing a carbon fiber wrap on the those to act as an accent, avoid the issue of maybe having the black wrap not match the black paint, and to save on costs of wrapping the entire truck.

Also need to get underneath it and clean off a lot of surface rust off the frame and coat that with some liner/protector because this was a NY truck and it shows.

 

[JeepinPenguin]

Apologies to anyone who was following along with the build. Progress has been slow recently. Primarily due to: Burb is in a good place right now and isnt "needing" much work done, and I am working on saving money to buy a house next year.

That being said I got a pic of ol Mudhorn nice and cleaned up before I drove back to PA a few weeks ago.

 

[JeepinPenguin]

So I had a few questions about the tire carrier so I thought I should post up a little more of a detailed write up on it. (here ya go @corneredge)

So for those of you running this body style of suburban, you know our aftermarket choices are a bit limited. Tire carrier options are basically: 1. stuff it up in the spare tire space if it will fit, 2. on the roof, 3. tire hitchgate mount. I didnt really like any of these options so I went custom. First thing I did was remove the entire rear bumper to see what sort of structural supports were underneath that I could tie into with the custom swing gate.

As you can see, there is a nice metal brace running the length that is tied into the frame rails. I knew I wanted the swing gate tight to the body because that was the biggest thing I did not like about the hitchgate mount, added too much length (I do see the irony in this since it is a suburban after all haha). So I knew I'd need like a filler/extension plate to get from the frame out past the lift gate.

Something like the above image. I also knew doing this would require more vertical support (specifically from the frame) for rigidity and to avoid the swing gate flexing and twisting off when fully opened. So I knew I'd need to add something like the below image.

So with a general idea of what I wanted to do, it was time to go and mock something up in a 3D model, because even though these above renderings are extremely professional, I thought some modelling may be required LOL

So I popped into SketchUp and started designing what I wanted it to look like.

This was the general idea I was going for.

Below here you can see a closer view of what those custom brackets looked like


After a few conversations with a local fabrication shop (@javajoe79) - we agreed on the plan and went to work. We discussed it was essentially cheaper if I purchased some parts pre-made already as opposed to everything being custom. So I purchased a spindle kit, and this https://www.extremeterrain.com/smittybilt-src-classic-tj-yj-7665102.html tire carrier. JavaJoe was then able to make the cutouts in the suburban plastic bumper under the taillights (we did this because I wanted to make it as factory looking/subtle as possible. I dont like how some full size vehicles rear bumpers look all square and stuff when you buy aftermarket bumpers/armor). After he made the cutouts, he was able to fabricate the brackets and then assemble the swing gate. Since the swing gate was for a Jeep TJ it was too narrow, and straight across. So JavaJoe had the brilliant idea of cutting it on either side of the triangle part and add extensions to reach both sides and keep the tire center, as well as angling the extensions to keep the tire tight to the lift gate.


Then all I had to do was bedline it, and get a license plate relocation bracket and boom, done.

I am super happy with how it turned out and anyone in the Nashville area who needs fab work done, I highly highly recommend @javajoe79 because his work is top notch, he is cool as hell, and has a sweet shop with alllll kinds of goodies in it.

 

[corneredge]

Thanks for the details, I might be building something similar on my truck this winter.

 

[CrazyDrei]

Apologies to anyone who was following along with the build. Progress has been slow recently. Primarily due to: Burb is in a good place right now and isnt "needing" much work done, and I am working on saving money to buy a house next year.

That being said I got a pic of ol Mudhorn nice and cleaned up before I drove back to PA a few weeks ago.
View attachment 603680

Looking good. Truck sits good and looks very proportional.