There is a crewcab 3/4 ton 88 chevy with 350. Anyone have any experience with this vintage of tow vehicle? Matt
There are 2 versions. There is a 7200 gvw model that has 6-bolt wheels and a heavy duty version that has 8600 gvw and 8-bolt wheels. Which version are you looking at? I bought a 1988 7200 gvw 4x4 with 3.73 gears new and drove it for almost 15 years and 200,000 miles. Towed a open car trailer with some 4000 lb plus cars on it. Not alot of power (about 200 horses from the 350). The weak link in this combo is the transmission (700R4). The heavier version of truck comes with a th400 I think.
The seller says in the ad that it has a "miss" and smokes a little. He states it was a parts hauler. I've asked for more information re: axles, transmission and if it smokes only at startup. It appears to be a base Custom Deluxe rust free crew. Besides the trans what kind of problems did you have? Thanks. Matt
If it's a "crew cab", as in a 4-door, then it will be a "classic" style (have an R or V vin# versus a C or K). So, it will have the same body style as the '73-'87 trucks...the crew cabs and suburbans kept the classic body style through '91. It will be a mix/match parts deal, between the previous body style versus the newer body style...and a lot of it gets into english verus metric parts...you'll grow to hate AutoZone or Pep Boys or whatever your parts house of choice is, because 9 times outta 10 it will be the wrong part. I've owned 3 or 4 of these trucks...they're good, tough trucks, because they're still bolted together versus glued like the following body style, but finding parts is comical at times.
The trans was the worst problem that I had. Failed at 105,000. I was told that the target by GM for this trans was 100,000 miles. Looks like they were pretty close. (I knew a couple of other guys with the same model truck and their transmissions crapped out too). I added a large cooler after that and sold the truck with 202,000 miles on it. I heard trans let go again a couple of years after I sold it. The locking differential started to have problems at about 180,000 miles. The side gear teeth were chipping apart. I replaced the locking diff unit. I replaced valve seals a couple of times to eliminate the smoke at start up. Its the exhaust valve seal that fails so I put the style that the intake valve uses on the exhaust valves. It never smoked again after that. All in all a pretty good truck. It was getting rusty after 15 Michigan winters. I almost bought the previous body style which I think is a better looking truck but those trucks really rusted badly around here and the body probably would have fallen apart much sooner.
