1998 K1500

My friends think I talk about my truck too much so this is a perfect place for me to post about it and what I'm doing/ plan to do.

I'm 22, I used to have a 98 dodge durango that I bought for dirt cheap because at the time there were slim pickings here for Chevy trucks that weren't covered in rust or only 2wd. I wanted a 4x4. I had fun with it and really just bombed the **** out of it every chance I could cause I didn't really care. Also, first 4x4 vehicle so you know I would just send it. I ended being a part of a 3 vehicle accident and they wrote it off. Got $3700 back from the insurance place. Not bad. So I took that money and looked up and down for a chevy that I always wanted. It didn't need to be fancy, it just needed to be what I wanted. I was almost willing to go across the country if I had to.
All I wanted was a 96-98 2 door tahoe with barn doors. Not that difficult, right? Wrong. Eventually I came across my truck and instantly fell inlove. I had to have it.
She's a 1998 Chevy K1500 5.7L extended cab Z71. These are the photos that caught my eye in the ad.




She was far from perfect. With 383xxxkm (so like 288k miles or something), a cylinder 2 misfire, hole in the third door and paint chipping on the rockers from driving down gravel roads for years. On the plus side it had a cowl hood, true dual exhaust, high flo cats (he said he paid $1600 for the exhaust system from a local popular performance shop), it was a nice color and a very clean beige interior besides the tear in the driver seat. It came with an aftermarket Alpine deck installed with kicker speakers. Besides the misfire, it started drove and ran pretty nice.
He was asking $3000 for it but after some haggling I got him down to $1700. Went home, got some money and came back to pick it up a few days later.

The day I picked it up, in September. My boyfriend taking pictures of me, taking pictures of my new truck lol. He likes smaller quarter ton trucks, but he supports me so that's cute, haha.

My brother helping me wash it before I went to show it off to my friends.

My best friends 2 door tahoe. Love this beast.


The next day, I started really digging in the truck and figuring out what all it would need. So far I had no running tail lights and no horn. I found out the trailer harness was all mangled so I went to buy a new one, ended up getting the wrong one somehow. I didn't want to go back, so I just cut the hook up piece out and used the wires from the one I bought to connect them straight to the tail lights. Wasn't a professional job but it works. I don't have a trailer to pull at the moment, anyways. When I get another one, I'll redo it properly. I didn't like the gold bow tie so I painted it black, then took out the door chime cause gosh that drove me crazy.

My driver side was grinding when I was braking, so I popped the wheel off and found this.

A bunch of nice old rusty seized parts. There was nothing left of the brake pads so I grabbed some new ones, planning on doing passenger side too. Except the caliper bolts are stripped and rusted and the bleeder valves are rusted and broken. So I fought with it and took the sleeves off the bolt so I could use vice grips and get the bolts out. I only ended up doing the driver side pads as the passenger side was even worse.

I hooked up my obd2 code reader and it came back with p0302 and p0302(p). It had rough idle and slight loss of power and hesitation.I ordered platinum spark plugs, plug wires, distributor cap and rotor, pcv valve, air filter, oil filter and serpentine belt. When they came in I did all of that, including an oil change and cleaned the MAF sensor. It didn't fix the misfire.

I bought a sub box with 2 10" Alpine type R subs and a 1200 watt amp. I hooked it up and it works well but I ended up draining my battery once and after I charged it, my horn works sometimes if I push it in the right spot. Weird, I haven't figured it out yet. The box is also made to fit under the back seats of a truck cab but it doesn't sit properly because of the center hump. So I'll have to do some modifications on that to make it fit.

Next week I will be going to go from my 265/75r16s on stock rims to 285/75r16 on American racing baja wheels 16x8 with a 0 offset. I'm hoping they will fit.

Now it's winter and cold as hell and without a heated garage, I'm not very motivated to spend more than 10-15 minutes outside. So in about 2 months it will start warming up and I can tolerate the cold. What I have in-store for the truck is:
Add a second battery
New front end parts: tie rods, ball joints
4-6 inch rough country lift
Upgrade shocks
New doors, fix a hole in the cab corner
New paint
Intake gaskets & mpfi fuel injectors
Proper brake job: calipers, rotors and brake pads
Fuel filter next time I do an oil change

Quick photo dump

Got some new tires and rims. I went with duratracs over the ko2s because they saved me $300. I don't mind duratracs anyways. I love the stance the wheels gave my truck. But there's some clunking when I turn on full lock still, which I'm not sure what it is but I'll figure it out when I do my steering and suspension.

Before and after a wash


When I was trimming my fender a little to get the tires to stop rubbing on full lock, I noticed a leak of fluid under my truck which turned out to be power steering. The high pressure hose needs to be replaced. I bought one, but I haven't dug in there yet because -30 Celsius weather. I keep topping it up. The next day I lost my brakes. Leaking brake line. Tried replacing it, had to remove the gas tank and the strap bolt broke in the process. Yay cold weather and seized parts. Put a new line in at the fitting and put it all back up. Bought a new bolt, it wouldn't get close enough to thread. Got a longer one, so now it holds it good it seems. Went to bleed my drums and the bleeder valve snapped. Yay. Also, brake line is still leaking. I'm pretty sure the fitting needs to be replaced so I'll just go ahead and do the whole line, I guess. Also, means I will need to replace the wheel cylinder so I can bleed it when I do. While I'm doing that I'll replace the hardware and shoes if necessary which I'm sure it will be. For now it still brakes but super spongey and I top up the fluid every few days.

And today, amongst pulling my brother's Ranger out of being stuck, I noticed more dripping fluid! I didn't have time to check it out in depth but looks like it's coming from oil pan area. Also need to top that up until I can fix it. I'm currently hauling around power steering, brake fluid and oil with me. Great times. She looks good though, lol.

Fixed the power steering hose, put in New calipers, rotors, pads and wheel cylinders.
I took it to a shop to get the line done and supposedly the master cylinder is leaking which is to me because I haven't noticed any fluid in the area.
I'll replace it anyways, just need a way to bench bleed it. It's March and I'm still waiting for warmer weather. Smh

Ordered the 2-3 inch RC suspension lift with rear blocks and a stabilizer bar.
Placing an order for my inner and outer tie rods, pitman and idler arms, sway bar links and lower balljoints.
Also picked up some pocket style fender flares to help cover my tires because the VIU here are assholes about tires outside of the fenders.

I did the lower intake gasket and upgraded my fuel injectors to the MPFI system from Delphi hoping to fix my misfire. Also cleaned out a lot of gunk and build up while I was in there. During the process of taking apart the intake, I had to twist off the EGR tube because it was seized and wouldn't come off. Haven't yet fixed that.
The injector for cylinder 2 looked burnt and I was certain that these new ones were going to fix it. I put it all back together and it wouldn't start. Ended up replacing the starter and reconnecting grounds.





Throwing codes for timing, o2 sensor (bank 1) and after awhile the cylinder 2 misfire. I'm assuming the timing just needs to be adjusted from doing the gaskets and 02 sensor is from the egr tube not being there. Now I have no idea what to do about this misfire as it's clearly not fixed. The AC also no longer works which I'm not sure why because it was fully functional beforehand. Heat works great still. I couldn't get the fuel filter out so I had to cut the lines and put in a universal filter with some rubber line to attach it. Eventually I'll replace it with a Ford inline filter that I can attach with the rubber line and get rid of the small one but for now it works.

Picked up new rust free doors, driver passenger and back door, a grille and parking lights. Driver door has very small dent in it but they're maroon so they're similar to my color but you can still tell they're different. Grlle has 2 small spots but still better than my current grill which is flaking off and turning green. I switched the door cards from my truck into the new doors which was more of a pain in the ass than I want to admit. Havent switched grilles yet and I don't think I'm going to for awhile, at least until I'm ready to paint the truck. but I did put in the parking lamps. Also put in pink led bulb in my dash and ac controls.





Drove the truck to my garage where I'm going to start suspension and front end stuff. I still need to order tie rod sleeves because I forgot them when I ordered my parts. We're starting with the back and working our way to the front. Blocks, shocks and brake line are going to be done first. I'm using a compression fitting instead of flaring the brake lines.