This was a real shade tree mechanic type operation. Jack's Suburban was parked on the dirt driveway in front of his house in amongst the two dozen monster trees in his front yard. The ground was covered with tree litter making it a little more difficult to find any parts, like screws, that we dropped. We used a pallet of flagstones that were destined for the patio in the back yard, but being as they are heavy, they haven't made it there yet. It was not the best of tables. If we had dropped any small parts in the cracks between the stones, we would still be shifting the flagstones looking for them.
We were fortunate, the weather was very pleasant and no rain, and we didn't lose any parts into the flagstone labyrinth. The sun was shining and we were working in our shirtsleeves. We also came through relatively unscathed. I jammed my thumb into the pump once, and Jack got a cut on his hand, just big enough to decorate it with a little blood.
The steel strap we used to hold the water pump pulley while we unscrewed the fan clutch was a bar about one inch wide, a quarter inch thick and about 18 inches long. The hole for the screw was about 3/8" in diameter and close to one edge. It was also at the end of the bar. I think it would have been better if the hole had been placed about three inches from the end, that way the bar would work in either direction. As it was it only worked in one direction. In the other direction it would swing around until the square end of the bar was pushing against one of the flats of the hex of the fan clutch and would work against the wrench trying to undo it, so we would have to undo the screw holding it, flip the bar around, and put the screw back in.
It is not necessary, or beneficial, to remove the fan from the fan clutch. Matter of fact, it just makes things worse. You do become dexterous at starting and tightening bolts in the confined space between the fan and the pulley. A 16 penny nail with a right angle bend proved useful in aligning the bolt holes in the pulley to the corresponding holes in the water pump.
It would have behooved us to spread a sheet of plastic under the fan and over the undercarriage to keep dropped screws from crawling into the dark recesses of the frame.
We used a pair of channellocks about 10" long to manipulate the spring clamps securing the water hoses. These pliers were pretty new and the teeth were still pretty sharp, which helped. It sometimes took two or three incremental settings to get the clamp from totally relaxed to open enough to go over the lumps in the hose. For instance one grip would get the clamp open enough to go the over the end of the hose, but then you would have to adjust the pliers and take another grip to get it to open up enough so the hose would slide over the hose bib. Bigger pliers could probably have done it in one grip, but I don't know if you could have gotten them in the confined spaces we were working in.
This vehicle was about a '99 model, and it was about half metric and half American, which is really annoying. I could understand this when they started making the changeover to metric about a zillion years ago, but the fact that they still haven't completely changed over to metric makes me think either they are incompetent or lazy. Professional grade nothing. I suppose there could be some kind of internal civil war going on, or maybe they are just waiting for all the fractional engineers to die off.
GMC doesn't make a Suburban anymore. It's now called a Yukon. At first I couldn't remember what the model name was. After all, it's "Chevy Suburban" I think of right off, not "GMC Suburban", but maybe they used the same model name. But look on GMC's website and there is no Suburban to be found, only the Yukon.
Update. Replacing the water pump did not solve the problem. Turned out to be a bad intake manifold gasket which cost about $500 to have repaired at Master Wrench. They have done a number of repairs for Jack and he has always been satisfied.
Update October 2016 replaced missing pictures.
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