In December 2020 at the height of the Covid Pandemic shutdown we were talking about what project we might take on for the remainder of the winter. The son mentioned that he really liked the 1960-1966 Chevrolet C10 body style, specifically mentioning that he liked the way the turn signals in the hood looked. We started looking around on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for something that might be buildable in this first generation of C/K series trucks. We happened on a 1966 Suburban that was mostly just a body (no engine, transmission, wiring harness etc) so we went to take a look at it.

What we found was what you will typically see in this age of vehicle located in the relatively dry climate of Colorado.  That is to say that the rockers from the A pillar to the B pillar were pretty rotten and because it had been outside for many years the top and the hips of the body had some hail damage.  The body was otherwise pretty straight and largely rust free and it had what I consider the better option in the rear with barn doors.  The previous owner had purchased a number of repair panels for the A pillar, the B pillar, the inner and outer rockers and the body mounts and included those in the sale.  He wasn’t willing to negotiate on price but luckily agreed to deliver to my shop.  We spent a couple of months working on repairing the A and B pillars, the floors and the rear lower body panels while constantly having a discussion about the direction of the project.  Early on we talked about creating a slammed on the ground Suburban going so far as to obtaining an airbag kit and some frame mod kits but at the end of the day lowering the Suburban, modifying the frame, adding disc brakes all around and doing an LS swap has been done many times.  Because of this and the cost of doing what needed to be done we decided to go in a different direction and re-body the Suburban onto a Yukon frame. You cant throw a dead cat without seeing something at a car show or cars and coffee that has an LS swap but what you rarely see and almost never see done well is a chassis swap.
 

After much research we decided this was a good match as the Suburban wheelbase is 115 inches and the Yukon wheelbase is 116 inches along with the fact that the Yukon with the Denali package comes with the 6.2 LS and the 6L80E transmission. 

As you can see from the pictures above the 2 vehicles are very similar. We are going to cover what steps we took to build the project in the 1966 Suburban chassis swap build post.

So the question will probably come up, why the Yukon and why the Denali specifically. We live in Colorado and we want to be able to drive this Suburban in any situation and in all seasons. We want to have some modern amenities like air conditioning, a decent heating system, 4 wheel drive, ABS and possibly even something like cruise control. In order to make that work we need to consider how to dismantle the Yukon in a way that allows us to retain as much of the root systems as we might need. We need to get the engine/transmission controller, the body computer the wiring harness from the front of the vehicle to the back doors as well as the steering column and the pedals.