Good morrow my dudes,
I just became the owner of a 2006 Hummer H3 Adventure package from a sad situation. I cosigned on the loan for the truck for a friend of mine and he passed away last month, and I have just taken primary ownership of it and the loan today.

It's decently clean, a sunroof model, so that means that the floor is perpetually wet when it rains, which in Washington is pretty common, I have a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.9 Limited as well and it's sunroof doesn't actually close all the way but nonetheless it doesn't leak into the cabin. Anyone have any success widening out those sunroof drains? Thinking about making it a memorial build in the name of my late buddy.

I figure I'll start with a little rundown of my car hoard (am I admitting to hoarding? No, they are projects....right, projects)
This Hummer happens to be my 8th vehicle (4 of them run now!) so something is going to have to go. During the last year I have gone on to acquire a 1989 Chevrolet 1500, 2500, and 3500, and the Jeep. Only the Jeep runs, but the other three all have parts that would make at least two of the others run. I've had a 1980 Chevrolet C10 longbed lowrider since high school that has had as many engines in it as there have been presidents since I've had it, it is currently waiting on the machine shop to build up a 400 SBC for it, so that will get done this year sometime. I have a small fleet of sedans, two of which are work vehicles, a Camry and a Sonic, and a 2013 Dodge Charger Pursuit, the daily driver. Together I spend more on maintaining and servicing my fleet than I do on rent and retirement savings combined so that must be a sound long term plan.

I plan to build up the Jeep first, as I only paid $400 for it and it is in a condition that you would expect it to be in for that price, and it needs the works suspension and tire wise, solid drivetrain. It was in fact the vehicle I was going to build up to shove in my buddy's face about how the Hummer makes no power, but I guess I have them both now so...I guess like, swap the 5.9 into the Hummer? No that would not make sense. Might sell the Jeep though.

How are your fleets doing?

Got any advice for first mods? I'll post pics when I get some time

Anybody in WA want to go wheelin' I actually have not been out for about a decade when I had a K5 Blazer.

 

Oh yeah, I've got a 2003 Mini Cooper S 6 speed with a blown engine, and a new used engine to swap into it this year sometime.

 

There is a permanent fix for the clogged sunroof drains posted here stuck to the top of the H3 section section. My sunroof has never leaked.

 

Had some down time at work today, so I did some tinkering on the H3.
I observed that after last night's rainfall that only the driver's footwell was getting wet and that there was moisture on the headliner above the A-pillar.
With this in mind I took the A-pillar cladding and the driver's visor loose and observed that the sunroof drain was actually not attached to the hose!!!
I reconnected it and will report back the next time it rains.

I still plan on doing the drain grommet modification but this may get me through a few weeks until I get the time to dig into it further.

 

Some updates for ye,

A tale of woe really.

The Fleet has shrunk and grown both, I have sold or disposed of all of the 1989 Chevrolet trucks, the 3500 to a friend back in 21', the 1500 was harvested for engine, transmission and interior trim and scrapped, the 2500 had it's clutch replaced and was sold last month to a friend. The Cherokee 5.9 was sold for twice the price I bought it for, $800, and is still sitting in the friend that I sold it to's yard with out a closing sunroof, the Chevrolet Sonic was sold from the business fleet and a Second Camry was acquired, lastly I picked up a 1980 C10 Short bed step side project truck. I just paid off the Charger last month and, predictably it has sprung a mystery leak of some fluid from somewhere, so it has been parked pending further investigation. Oh and I also have a 2003 Mini Cooper S that needs an engine, I had that before but forgot to include it.

The Hummer, this is a Hummer forum, was wheeled over the summer of 2021, and I took it down for service in the fall of 21'. I was experiencing poor fuel mileage, like 10 mpg freeway, and a stumble on idle and sometimes under acceleration, but no check engine light was coming on, so I figured it was all good, just a run of bad gas or something. So the first run of service was to preform a tune up, replacing the spark plugs to see if there was an effect.

I started with the spark plugs, AC Delco units that looked factory. 3 were carbon fouled one was obviously running waay to hot and one was oil fouled. the oil fouled one had an obvious valve cover leak in that hole and the ignition coil was soaked in it, so I realized I had more work to do so I fired the parts cannon at the truck buying new ignition coils, valve cover gasket, and intake gaskets as the intake was part of the deal to replace the valve cover gasket.

Upon removal of the VC, it was observed that the O2 sensor wires were just taped in.... That is an issue... Sooo fouled plugs, non functional ignition coils, terribly connected O2 sensor, misfires.....no check engine light though. Something does not add up. I keyed the ignition on and noticed that THE CHECK ENGINE LIGHT NEVER TURNS ON DURING THE BULB CHECK PHASE. Wooooow, I'm really starting to think that my buddy got taken advantage of on the sale of this H3 because there are some issues that were clearly covered up before I got ahold of it.

Not one to be deterred, I fired up the parts cannon again and bought a couple of O2 sensors, this time from gmpartsdirect. 5 full weeks after I placed the order and not having received the parts I followed up and they had not been shipped yet and they could not give me an ETA, great. So I ordered two more O2 sensors on fleabay which arrived within a week. Keep in mind I always go OEM with O2 sensors, and no local parts stores could source the GM Genuine units and the local stealerships were on one asking about 5 times what I could get them online for, even with having bought them twice, I still saved money.

Things were going well enough, I got the VC gasket and the pugs and coils and intake reassembled, and set in to get the O2 sensor changed. Well in the process I made another startling discovery: The frieaking O2 sensor on the maiverter is rust and mud welded to the O2 Sensor bung it aint budging, I tried to heat the manifold to no avail, in the process of trying to get it off I broke off the old O2 sensor to try my 3/4 impact, It. did. not. budge. soo Parts cannon engage, a new manivertor in the middle of a catalytic converter shortage! I wanted the Magnaflow high flow manivertor, but at $700 it was too expensive for my taste, and so in the interest in getting it running, I bought a suspiciously cheap fleabay unit for the princely sum of $130 delivered and I must tell you that it was not even worth that. By the time I resolved to spend the extra cash on the Magnaflow, it had doubled in price to $1400, nope nope nope, even now they are in the $1000 range. I did end up picking up a Manifold from Jagsthatrun though for only about $400 or so, it looks really well made I do recommend them, that in hand I set to removing the old manifold.

Upon the removal of the maniverter it became apparent that there was a bolt broken in one of the exhaust ports, cool, it was broken off below the machined deck of the gasket surface, great. I called in a mobile mechanic that I use to attempt extraction to no avail, It was not going to work.

At this point I am committed, only about 10 months into a 60 month car loan repairs were adding up, Looking at the totality of everything I decided that I would get the head cleaned and the extraction done by a machine shop and I would do the timing chains too while as there was more slack that I wanted to see while I was in there, you know how it is. My Machinist has been in the business since the 60's and he advised me that the valve seats were toast and that it needed a valve grind and some other stuff. Great. Soo $600 in machine shop labor later I have a nice freshly rebuilt cylinder head ready to drop in and $1800 after that I have all the parts to to the timing chains and various other 'while you're in there's' including a new oil pump, new alternator all new sensors, I may have been saddled with a lemon, but gosh dangit I was going to have a good running truck at the end of this. Oh and have any of you bought lifters for this engine recently? because 20 lifters for this engine ran me about $400, I also had the cams reground at Delta Cam in Tacoma why not, another $200.

I was doing soo much work to make sure it was getting done right, it was then that I realized that I was halfway to a rebuild anyways. I've always thought it was unwise to freshen up the top end of an engine without touching the bottom end. What with the tighter tolerances on the top end after such a refresh there is likely more intense pressures on on the rings and such, and before you know it you're in there for another engine-out service for the bearings and rings and then you just leave the head untouched? it just ain't right.......

I would like to take the time to remind you, dear reader, that this started with spark plugs.

I have some experience rebuilding small block chevy's but noting as recent of a design such as the Atlas and I was and am out of my depth here. I started shopping around for short blocks, and you cannot find them re-builders only do long blocks on this platform, I get it though, a clean sheet engine that had a ten year production run that ended ten years ago and that wasn't used in anything but light trucks and some SUV's, certainly there isn't going to be loads and loads of builders familiar with the architecture enough to warranty their rebuilding services. Prices for a reman 3500 were comparable to the only local re builder that would have touched the engine and that was going to be $4000 assembled, I got a couple flat refusals too from two local engine re builders because they don't work on the Atlas's at all.

I then started shopping for reman 3.5's and put in an order for a unit from Fraser engines for $6000 after core charge, as by all accounts they seem to do good work. That was in May of 2022 and they said they would get me an engine with about a month's delay due to a queue of them from other customer's in line before me. come July, I start checking in on things, and by late September it became clear that something was amiss, turns out they were having trouble sourcing some of the internal engine parts for the reman process, ironically they needed a parts that I had bought, I read off the GM Genuine part numbers for the VVT sprocket that they could not source but they could not accept parts from outside their supply chain for warranty reasons, which I understand, but I canceled my order with them after that as they had no ETA on the delivery.

I realized that I was probably going to be the one that was going to rebuild the 3.5, but I do not have the time for this and the truck had been sitting for 10 months at that point so I started shopping for used engines. Since I'm going used I may as well get a 3.7, prices of course were higher than when I started this whole debacle. Back in the before times, before I had any machine shop work done, I came across a decent 3.7 with 80k on the clock for $2500 in Puyallup. That was Fall of 2021, in October of 2022 I bought a 3.7 with 153k along with the PCM and Gauge cluster from a 2007 H3 and a replacement sunroof panel all for $3800 all in, not bad. Me and my mobile mechanic, well frankly mostly him, got the engine in two weeks ago and we should be wrapping up the build this week and hopefully I'll have a running H3 again.

I think I am still going to rebuild the 3.5 though, because it has become apparent that these engines are about to become quite hard to come across, and if I'm going to keep this Hummer for a long time I want some spare parts. I mean who among us has not had 3 or 5 chevy small block engines in various states of rebuild just laying around from time to time, what's another 5/8 of an engine amongst the hoarde of small block's I've got sitting around.

 

STOP wasting money! Get a quality scanner:SCAN TOOL

 

Not an advertisement, just hummerz being............. hummerz. He bought one and used it to program fobs etc. and is letting you/us know that it is a capable scanner and for the price, a worthy investment.

 

I just stumbled on this and it cracked me up. Everything he does is like an ad lol!