885speed
OBS Enthusiast
Lets have a little story time, shall we?
I'll try not to ramble lol
Welp, for starters I've always loved the GMT400 platform and always wanted one without a doubt.
By the time I turned 16 I was itching to find a decent 4x4 truck to slap some tires on and go have fun. Unfortunately at the time all the trucks available were a fair bit out of my price range. So I chased after my passion for Camaros. In no time at all I found the red one in the picture I attached(I've had it for about 12/13 years now)
Anyways, moving things up now by about 10 or so years I was in the market for another truck after selling the 2000 Silverado single cab long bed with a worn 4.3 I had outgrown very quickly.
One night I found my ole gal posted on FB marketplace for $1200. The owners son had posted it for sale for him, and it was listed as "Needing head gaskets and a computer". Now with it being literally everything I wanted in one of these trucks(minus 4x4) I decided to have my better 3/4's give me a ride up to the guys house that Saturday to check it out. It had 255k on it and clearly needed lots of love. I did a thorough look over on it, inside and out and after starting it up I thought to myself "There's no way this truck needs a computer and head gaskets" But there was no doubt that it needed a water pump, that weep hole was just ******' away.
I wanted that damn truck. The water pump was obvious, and it was running pig rich which was obvious injectors. Went through the same thing with my 4.3
So the better 3/4's and I went down to the store and picked up I believe it was about 20 gallon jugs of water to limp this thing home(I lived no more than 2 miles from where the truck was)
So the former owner had seen us pull back up and came outside with a milk crate full of paperwork, yes a milk crate full of papers. What he didn't mention before was that he was the original owner of the truck, and in that milk crate was every single little thing about that trucks history, from its first oil change to that current day. All tucked away and stacked nicely in file folders. As I was sifting through and glancing at some of them he mentioned that the window sticker and manual is in the glove box if I wanted to check that out too, I couldn't believe it but sure as crap it was there and in good shape still.
So to keep things rolling along, I picked up the truck for $1k cash, got it home and started digging in right away that next weekend, when my AcDelco water pump showed up along with a ton of other parts for the front of the motor to get it to the condition I wanted it to be in. After getting the cooling system up to par and not overheating or leaking, I dug in a little deeper and the fuse for the OBD2 port was blown... So after the water pump went bad and the PO overheated the truck, he had it towed to a shop he trusted, and the guy apparently hooked up the scanner and couldn't read it so I'm assuming he just blamed the PCM for being bad and since it overheated he threw a price out there for head gaskets supposedly being blown.
That's when the owner got fed up and posted it for sale.
Hence why I NEVER let anyone touch my vehicles unless its something I really can't do.
This is the point where I get serious about the truck, I plan on keeping it a long time and have ZERO plans to work on it all the time, fixing this or fixing that, etc. It has to be reliable.
So I rack up a nice hefty bill on RockAuto with all sorts of stuff from the updated Delco injectors that deletes the poppets for real injectors, aluminum distributor, intake gaskets, sensors, plugs, wires, EVERYTHING. The main goal here was to fix all of the typical Vortec issues, even before they became issues. If I touched it going down to do the intake gaskets, it likely got replaced, bolts and all, and not with cheap Duralast junk either. One thing I was purely amazed of was how clean the lifter valley was, after 255k on the original motor there was not a single speck of sludge or grime to be found, hell I could still even see the zinc coating on the pushrods! My Camaro of around the same mileage was surely slapped full of sludge.. Crazy, and goes to show what happens when you take care of things properly.
After going back together and getting a tag on it, I go ahead and prime the pump a few times and bump the key, this thing fires over and is running smoother than even a new truck would. Success.
Sadly, 3 weeks later the trans loses 3rd and 4th...
But $1800 later gets built up with all of the 4L60E goodies to make it much more durable. The guy I had do the trans said he wouldn't think twice about bolting up a 500HP motor to that trans. That's what I'm talking about!
Now that we're getting closer to modern day, everything goes amazing for the next year. Love the truck, runs amazing and gets me roughly about 17ish MPG. Well sadly good things never last and my rear end starts screaming and clunking on my way to work one morning. Luckily I take things VERY easy and limp it the rest of the way to work, even luckier the car dealer I was working at the time had an old drivetrain shop about a mile up the road. Had him put it in the air and found one of the carrier bearings was so bad it had actually worn the hell out of its seating area in the casting of the diff. Come to think of it I'd never saw any invoices for rear diff oil ever being changed, dammit. Had the guy put new bearings in and shim them properly to buy me some time.
So now to current day(about 6 months later), The bad rear end is still in the truck and is driving me nuttier than squirrel turds because that play in the bearing is back and makes the truck hop under decel. and at certain speeds(ruled out all other causes as well)
In the next few weeks, I'll be dropping another pretty penny on the ole gal to get the rest of it up to par with the rest of the truck. a 6 lug axle will get pulled from the JY and rebuilt(unless its in really nice shape) and will fit those Z71 wheels I found for $100. A pair of c2500 Sub front rotors for the front, new u-joints, lift spindles for the front with new springs and control arms, etc, etc.
Then after all that I'll have a rock solid daily driver that I've poured WAY too much money into, but will be fully reliable for years to come. Maybe even hit 500k.
Hopefully that wasn't too painful to read, haha.
Anyways, if you made it this far thanks for bearing with me.
P.S. Yes I know the Camaro looks a little rough, but after the truck is done I'll be saving up to start from the ground up to make a very nice/comfy/fun swap to a 5.3/T56 with many other tasteful but subtle mods.
I'll try not to ramble lol
Welp, for starters I've always loved the GMT400 platform and always wanted one without a doubt.
By the time I turned 16 I was itching to find a decent 4x4 truck to slap some tires on and go have fun. Unfortunately at the time all the trucks available were a fair bit out of my price range. So I chased after my passion for Camaros. In no time at all I found the red one in the picture I attached(I've had it for about 12/13 years now)
Anyways, moving things up now by about 10 or so years I was in the market for another truck after selling the 2000 Silverado single cab long bed with a worn 4.3 I had outgrown very quickly.
One night I found my ole gal posted on FB marketplace for $1200. The owners son had posted it for sale for him, and it was listed as "Needing head gaskets and a computer". Now with it being literally everything I wanted in one of these trucks(minus 4x4) I decided to have my better 3/4's give me a ride up to the guys house that Saturday to check it out. It had 255k on it and clearly needed lots of love. I did a thorough look over on it, inside and out and after starting it up I thought to myself "There's no way this truck needs a computer and head gaskets" But there was no doubt that it needed a water pump, that weep hole was just ******' away.
I wanted that damn truck. The water pump was obvious, and it was running pig rich which was obvious injectors. Went through the same thing with my 4.3
So the better 3/4's and I went down to the store and picked up I believe it was about 20 gallon jugs of water to limp this thing home(I lived no more than 2 miles from where the truck was)
So the former owner had seen us pull back up and came outside with a milk crate full of paperwork, yes a milk crate full of papers. What he didn't mention before was that he was the original owner of the truck, and in that milk crate was every single little thing about that trucks history, from its first oil change to that current day. All tucked away and stacked nicely in file folders. As I was sifting through and glancing at some of them he mentioned that the window sticker and manual is in the glove box if I wanted to check that out too, I couldn't believe it but sure as crap it was there and in good shape still.
So to keep things rolling along, I picked up the truck for $1k cash, got it home and started digging in right away that next weekend, when my AcDelco water pump showed up along with a ton of other parts for the front of the motor to get it to the condition I wanted it to be in. After getting the cooling system up to par and not overheating or leaking, I dug in a little deeper and the fuse for the OBD2 port was blown... So after the water pump went bad and the PO overheated the truck, he had it towed to a shop he trusted, and the guy apparently hooked up the scanner and couldn't read it so I'm assuming he just blamed the PCM for being bad and since it overheated he threw a price out there for head gaskets supposedly being blown.
That's when the owner got fed up and posted it for sale.
Hence why I NEVER let anyone touch my vehicles unless its something I really can't do.
This is the point where I get serious about the truck, I plan on keeping it a long time and have ZERO plans to work on it all the time, fixing this or fixing that, etc. It has to be reliable.
So I rack up a nice hefty bill on RockAuto with all sorts of stuff from the updated Delco injectors that deletes the poppets for real injectors, aluminum distributor, intake gaskets, sensors, plugs, wires, EVERYTHING. The main goal here was to fix all of the typical Vortec issues, even before they became issues. If I touched it going down to do the intake gaskets, it likely got replaced, bolts and all, and not with cheap Duralast junk either. One thing I was purely amazed of was how clean the lifter valley was, after 255k on the original motor there was not a single speck of sludge or grime to be found, hell I could still even see the zinc coating on the pushrods! My Camaro of around the same mileage was surely slapped full of sludge.. Crazy, and goes to show what happens when you take care of things properly.
After going back together and getting a tag on it, I go ahead and prime the pump a few times and bump the key, this thing fires over and is running smoother than even a new truck would. Success.
Sadly, 3 weeks later the trans loses 3rd and 4th...
But $1800 later gets built up with all of the 4L60E goodies to make it much more durable. The guy I had do the trans said he wouldn't think twice about bolting up a 500HP motor to that trans. That's what I'm talking about!
Now that we're getting closer to modern day, everything goes amazing for the next year. Love the truck, runs amazing and gets me roughly about 17ish MPG. Well sadly good things never last and my rear end starts screaming and clunking on my way to work one morning. Luckily I take things VERY easy and limp it the rest of the way to work, even luckier the car dealer I was working at the time had an old drivetrain shop about a mile up the road. Had him put it in the air and found one of the carrier bearings was so bad it had actually worn the hell out of its seating area in the casting of the diff. Come to think of it I'd never saw any invoices for rear diff oil ever being changed, dammit. Had the guy put new bearings in and shim them properly to buy me some time.
So now to current day(about 6 months later), The bad rear end is still in the truck and is driving me nuttier than squirrel turds because that play in the bearing is back and makes the truck hop under decel. and at certain speeds(ruled out all other causes as well)
In the next few weeks, I'll be dropping another pretty penny on the ole gal to get the rest of it up to par with the rest of the truck. a 6 lug axle will get pulled from the JY and rebuilt(unless its in really nice shape) and will fit those Z71 wheels I found for $100. A pair of c2500 Sub front rotors for the front, new u-joints, lift spindles for the front with new springs and control arms, etc, etc.
Then after all that I'll have a rock solid daily driver that I've poured WAY too much money into, but will be fully reliable for years to come. Maybe even hit 500k.
Hopefully that wasn't too painful to read, haha.
Anyways, if you made it this far thanks for bearing with me.
P.S. Yes I know the Camaro looks a little rough, but after the truck is done I'll be saving up to start from the ground up to make a very nice/comfy/fun swap to a 5.3/T56 with many other tasteful but subtle mods.
You must be registered for see images attach
You must be registered for see images attach
You must be registered for see images attach
You must be registered for see images attach
You must be registered for see images attach
