I am the orig owner of a 2000 suburban 4wd with about 180k miles. It has HD towing. Being that it is used extensivly for our scout troop, over the years it has developed the rep from the scouts (and my family of 6) as "The rolling turd" due to all the dents, smells, sounds, etc. But it pulls everything great and still runs good. But due to all of the camping type of traveling, towing, 4wd roads, etc, it has a number of rattles, squeeks, eats oil etc. Lately the list of repairs that I know will have to be done keeps growing. Wife has finally lowered the hammer and wants it replaced with something newer that does not sound like it is falling apart and does not smell like a scout troop after a week of backpacking.

Brother-in-law hooked me up with the dealer auctions sites, so I have been watching them for a bit looking at low milage recent Suburbans. There are a ton of them every week on the auctions, and at this point I have solid price data for low milage 2011/2012's LT's. These are cash deals but I'm ok with that. The main problem is all of them are 3.08 setup's - I can't find any with the 3.42 HD towing package. Seems to be that most of these are rentals.

So, I'm curious what is involved and what to expect to pay to retrofit a 2011 or 2012 with the 3.42 diff gearing, trans cooler, reprogram the cpu, etc. Trying to see if the savings from the auction sites still make it worthwhile compared to going to the local dealers to find me ones with HD towing.

Any info on the retrofit process/pricing would help - thanks everyone in advance.