Riggs - My 2000 Chevy 3500 4x4 CCLB work truck and family play machine

Reluctanse · Apr 21, 2023

Onizukachan said:
Feel free to come by and work on mine anytime. The shots of the assembly will help someone some day too.

I bet FF is short for Full Floater… could be assembly line writing but likely used take offs from some other axle and thus marked that way to indicate provenance.

If you got beers, I'm there. Might take me a bit to get to Texas though.

This weather has me in a bit of a funk. It was 45*F and dumping rain all day, and dark grey out. Look and felt like February, not late April. So I was going to work on the brakes some more today but I just don't have it in me to crawl around under a truck in the dumping rain.

So I tackled another project.
Some of you are going to cringe hard and I don't blame you. But I bought the worlds cheapest Bluetooth head unit with backup camera on Amazon. It's a single din with like a 4" screen for... wait for it.... $26.99. Expectations are LOW haha. But I am a long ways from having spare cash for a nice Atoto and a Metra double din dash kit. Hopefully this junk will work for a couple years until then.

Here it is... so cheap Amazon didn't even put it in a box, just slapped a shipping label right on it, and dumped it on my front porch.

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Unboxed.... wow nice palm tree decal.

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Not pictured, is the Scosche single din dash adapter and wiring harness... those combined cost about the same as this head unit. I will say the Scosche parts are nice, the stereo adapter slides right in to the factory mount track, and the wiring harness adapter has all the butt connectors pre-installed. This is a $50 stereo install people. Oh, did I mention it came with a backup camera?

Here it is. I didn't install the camera yet, because dumping rain, that will come this weekend, and we'll find out if it's all been worth it. I'll wait until all that is done to button the dash back up. It's grimy in there. Also need to figure out something for the hvac controls, all the mounts are broken off, would be nice to come up with some zip tie fix to hold it in place better so it doesn't flop around.

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Head unit has apparently been swapped at some point in the past. This unit is flaky too, often resets the clock. I dunno....

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Teaser of a future project, since I ditched the CD player, working on mounting ideas and getting a couple thoughts.

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I got a long list of stuff to get through this weekend in prep for another trip up to to the cabin, leaving next wednesday and I'd like to get some stuff buttoned up before then.

But hey, tunes! This little P.O.S. actually sounds decent.

Onizukachan · Apr 21, 2023

When you get ready to run your camera wiring, I can tell you how the PO did mine and I just followed his routing when I redid it.

do NOT rely on the built in wire in the RCA to work amd reliably carry the reverse trigger or power depending on how your is set up.

. When you are running it, run another normal wire along with it for that trigger.

mine runs along factory channel on drivers side to about middle of rear door, then goes thru a drilled and hole in the floor, follows the parking brake bracket path thru one hole then jumps to the inside of frame rail and thence to the rear of truck.
when I re did mine I added split loom right up thru the hole as a grommet and down until it was inside the c channel of the frame rail.

df2x4 · Apr 21, 2023

Reluctanse said:
It's a single din with like a 4" screen for... wait for it.... $26.99.

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Reluctanse · Apr 23, 2023

Good progress today, amazing what some decent weather and an early (well... 9 am

) start will do for productivity.

"AC Delco Gold"

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I got all the soft brake lines swapped. I didn't love the way the driver side pads were looking - keep in mind I JUST replaced these, since the maiden voyage the pads that were on the truck when I got it left the chat. The rotor is slightly gacked and needs to be replaced, but that has to wait. The outer part of the pad is wearing REALLY fast, compared to the inner, and the other side. So I thought, maybe give a good r&r on the caliper.

Not great

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Passenger side, you can see the two pads wearing basically even.

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Got the caliper up on the healing bench and disassembled and all cleaned up.

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Thanks @Schurkey he has a nice post here about "rebuilding" calipers for $0.

Put it back together and lubed up some of the metal-metal contact areas as well as the bolts with some of this stuff.

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Reluctanse · Apr 23, 2023

With the caliper hopefully all nice and fixed up, put everything back together and got in to bleeding things.

First up get the old junk out of the MC and clean it up.

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I got this crazy massive thing to go with my Power Bleeder, it is HUGE!

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Had to keep the PSI down on this setup but it definitely works good, these are great for solo bleeding brakes. Not cheap, especially with adding extra plates for different MC styles, but worth it. I did manage to make a HUGE mess, but you'll get that on these big jobs.

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Got that done then used that new Foxwell NT630 to do the ABS bleed, with some assistance from my daughter. No pictures of that process, use your imagination and picture a guy crawling around under a truck and just blowing brake fluid everywhere. But it paid off. That and the new fluid, and maybe the front caliper overhaul, the brakes are SO much better now. Like, correct now, haha. They actually stop without burying the pedal. It was a decent amount of effort, new lines, bleed, ABS bleed, rebuilt front caliper, but definitely did the trick.

Before getting it back on the road though I did a trans service and filled the rear end.
After a lot of searching in circles I landed on this as being the correct fluid for a 14 bolt with the G80. Time will tell. It took 2.5 quarts.

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Trans service. Everything in there looked great. Threw a NOS (I mean it's been on my shelf for like 3 years

) WIX filter in, reused the resuable gasket, and cleaned the pan up real nice. Put 1 gallon and about 1 qt of fluid back in, I used AC Delco Dex VI I got in gallons from amazon. I bought 3, the '07 is next up.

Looks fine, PO told me a trans service was probably about due so I figured it was time. Turns out, IMO, if you A) don't over heat the s h i t of your auto, and B) change fluid and filter every ~40k miles, they will actually hold up a LONG time.

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Reluctanse · Apr 23, 2023

Pan all cleaned up

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Use my customized Harbor Freight parts washer. It's been handy the last few months.

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These come with a "water based" solvent pump, with is basically an aquarium pump. Put that into the trash IMMEDIATELY. Used a fuel transfer pump, an old laptop power supply, some hoses and filters, to convert it something useful. The trick with these is fill them about half full first with WATER, then the second half with low odor mineral spirits. All the junk you clean out settles in the bottom in the water half, then set your pickup tube in the upper half where the mineral spirits sit (because oil is lighter than water), and you pump reasonably clean fluid through. Works good. Added wheels to it here recently so I could move it around, for now it will hang out right where it is, have no shortage of things I need it for.

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Oh here's that foxwell. Again if you got OBDII and want a tool for ABS it's a pretty good deal, $113 when I ordered it.

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Reluctanse · Apr 23, 2023

Running and driving functions all done, brakes are good, trans is good. Went back at getting this "stereo" install done and the backup camera.

Came up with this as the mounting location, had to trim the bumper step plastic. Happy with out it turned out. Haven't test it yet though....

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Now to get it wired... Ugh this truck is long.
BUT! Good news, the trailer harness had a purple wire which I *thought* was for the backup circuit. Tested it out and it appeared to be correct, except something was strange.... why is it only 9 volts? Oh, I left the hood open for a day and a half and the battery was dead. Always something.... Anyways that is a functioning reverse trigger wire, so I can power the camera, and back-feed it up to the head unit for the camera trigger. Thanks to @Onizukachan for the tip on running a dedicated wire, digging through my parts bin I have enough random wire to run up so there will be a nice solid 16 ga run for that, not using the junk built in with the RCA cable.

This whole area, where the trailer harness for the 7 pin terminates, is a mess. I mean its better than when I bought it, but I'm going to have to do some real work here at some point. Future me's problem.

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Ran out of cable (and time) to get the camera connected. Did I mention how long these trucks are? Cable came up short, somewhere under the driver's door. Good news, hopefully, because I want this done... hopped on Amazon and ordered a 9' RCA cable and paid $2.99 extra to get early delivery tomorrow. Hopefully gets here and I can wrap up stereo install and put interior back together, and make sure this cheap @$$ stereo/camera setup works.

So, summing up. Truck is running and driving great, brakes are so much better! I also adjusted the tune and made some changes. Added a bunch of black box stuff back in, included all the stock shift points. The Van tune just shifted weird. I only have one drive to the store on it but I'm much happier with the change. Also tweaked the fuel gauge voltage, because that's a whole section in there, and it seemed to fix the gauge - it was off a little on the low end and bringing this in seemed to fix it.

With the tune, I want to "finish" getting the MAF dialed in, which I'll do this week, and then call it, until I get the new injectors installed.

All in all a fun day, even got a hand full of outside things done, while it was sunny, and before the rain again (it's raining now).

Also, side project, my daily driver '05 Toyota Matrix has had an odd behavior since I bought it that I finally diagnosed as literally 2 missing motor mount bolts, luckily they were easy to get to, I fixed that today. While it was on jackstands, there was another odd behavior that I wanted to see if I could address. There has been *something* rolling around left to right, in what felt like the front subframe, since I owned it. While getting the motor mount bolts on, I fished around in the the holes I could reach a finger in, and yep, we have the culprit. This is a big win, because every big left or right turn would have this thing rolling around, plus, I mean, who doesn't need another 14mm deep socket! Score!

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So after all that, someone made a huge mess on my work bench, now who could have done that...... took almost an hour to deal with this mess.

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Any my neglected projects staring at me while I did all this stuff today, judging...

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In other news, as previously identified, the front upper balljoints are DONE. The whole front and rear suspensions need a full overhaul, but that's about $3k when I price it out with everything I need. Yeah.... eventually we'll get there.

But for now, I think the front upper BJ's should get addressed, and ignore the other problems for now.
How bad is it to deal with replacing the UBJ's while on the truck?

termite · Apr 23, 2023

Reluctanse said:
Running and driving functions all done, brakes are good, trans is good. Went back at getting this "stereo" install done and the backup camera.

Came up with this as the mounting location, had to trim the bumper step plastic. Happy with out it turned out. Haven't test it yet though....

You must be registered for see images attach

Now to get it wired... Ugh this truck is long.
BUT! Good news, the trailer harness had a purple wire which I *thought* was for the backup circuit. Tested it out and it appeared to be correct, except something was strange.... why is it only 9 volts? Oh, I left the hood open for a day and a half and the battery was dead. Always something.... Anyways that is a functioning reverse trigger wire, so I can power the camera, and back-feed it up to the head unit for the camera trigger. Thanks to @Onizukachan for the tip on running a dedicated wire, digging through my parts bin I have enough random wire to run up so there will be a nice solid 16 ga run for that, not using the junk built in with the RCA cable.

This whole area, where the trailer harness for the 7 pin terminates, is a mess. I mean its better than when I bought it, but I'm going to have to do some real work here at some point. Future me's problem.

You must be registered for see images attach

Ran out of cable (and time) to get the camera connected. Did I mention how long these trucks are? Cable came up short, somewhere under the driver's door. Good news, hopefully, because I want this done... hopped on Amazon and ordered a 9' RCA cable and paid $2.99 extra to get early delivery tomorrow. Hopefully gets here and I can wrap up stereo install and put interior back together, and make sure this cheap @$$ stereo/camera setup works.

So, summing up. Truck is running and driving great, brakes are so much better! I also adjusted the tune and made some changes. Added a bunch of black box stuff back in, included all the stock shift points. The Van tune just shifted weird. I only have one drive to the store on it but I'm much happier with the change. Also tweaked the fuel gauge voltage, because that's a whole section in there, and it seemed to fix the gauge - it was off a little on the low end and bringing this in seemed to fix it.

With the tune, I want to "finish" getting the MAF dialed in, which I'll do this week, and then call it, until I get the new injectors installed.

All in all a fun day, even got a hand full of outside things done, while it was sunny, and before the rain again (it's raining now).

Also, side project, my daily driver '05 Toyota Matrix has had an odd behavior since I bought it that I finally diagnosed as literally 2 missing motor mount bolts, luckily they were easy to get to, I fixed that today. While it was on jackstands, there was another odd behavior that I wanted to see if I could address. There has been *something* rolling around left to right, in what felt like the front subframe, since I owned it. While getting the motor mount bolts on, I fished around in the the holes I could reach a finger in, and yep, we have the culprit. This is a big win, because every big left or right turn would have this thing rolling around, plus, I mean, who doesn't need another 14mm deep socket! Score!

You must be registered for see images attach

So after all that, someone made a huge mess on my work bench, now who could have done that...... took almost an hour to deal with this mess.

You must be registered for see images attach

Any my neglected projects staring at me while I did all this stuff today, judging...

You must be registered for see images attach

In other news, as previously identified, the front upper balljoints are DONE. The whole front and rear suspensions need a full overhaul, but that's about $3k when I price it out with everything I need. Yeah.... eventually we'll get there.

But for now, I think the front upper BJ's should get addressed, and ignore the other problems for now.
How bad is it to deal with replacing the UBJ's while on the truck?

UBJs aren't that bad if rivets have been previously taken out. If its OE and riveted on, drill/grind the heads off and knock them out with a punch. Other methods out there as well.

Whats the cost for that pressure bleeder if you don't mind sharing?

Mangonesailor · Apr 23, 2023

Reluctanse said:
Any my neglected projects staring at me while I did all this stuff today, judging...

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OOOHHHHHH, YOU LIKAH DAH SUUPARAH?! YOU TAKE TO TOKYO FORAH MEGA WORLDWIDE DRIFTA COMPETISHO?!?

You have HP tuners, or EFI live? If you ever want to check out my trans shift points you're welcome to it in HP tuners format. I really prefer it over the stock and van setup. Well, as long as our tire and axle sizes are the same it should work.

Reluctanse · Apr 23, 2023

termite said:
UBJs aren't that bad if rivets have been previously taken out. If its OE and riveted on, drill/grind the heads off and knock them out with a punch. Other methods out there as well.

Whats the cost for that pressure bleeder if you don't mind sharing?

Motive Products, they are on Amazon. But you can check their webpage for the right adapter parts. It was about $50 for pump itself, and then the new plate for the GM master cylinder was another $50. It's not cheap, but I do enough of this stuff on my own that it's been worth it.
UBJ's look stock, but I got a grinder. Was maybe more worried about getting it out of the spindle, but maybe that isn't too bad, assuming the old loosen it and what the spindle with a hammer a bunch of times works here.

Mangonesailor said:
OOOHHHHHH, YOU LIKAH DAH SUUPARAH?! YOU TAKE TO TOKYO FORAH MEGA WORLDWIDE DRIFTA COMPETISHO?!?

You have HP tuners, or EFI live? If you ever want to check out my trans shift points you're welcome to it in HP tuners format. I really prefer it over the stock and van setup. Well, as long as our tire and axle sizes are the same it should work.

Ahh hahaha

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If it ever moves on it's own power again I'd like to take it to Supras In Vegas. We'll see.

I have HP Tuners, but I can read EFI live files also. Would definitely take a look, I still want to make some changes to it, but it's a process for sure getting things dialed in.

Riggs - My 2000 Chevy 3500 4x4 CCLB work truck and family play machine

Reluctanse

I'm Awesome

Onizukachan

Great Teacher

df2x4

4L60E Destroyer

Reluctanse

I'm Awesome

Reluctanse

I'm Awesome

Reluctanse

I'm Awesome

Reluctanse

I'm Awesome

termite

Definitely NOT Awesome

Mangonesailor

I'm Awesome

Reluctanse

I'm Awesome

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