Black Coffee's 98' RCSB 4wd build thread

[blackcoffee]

At shockwarehouse there saying $319.80 for a set of 4 Bilstein 5100's. Not a bad deal at all. But their also claiming for 2-4" of lift.

 

[dirtridinz71]

I thought 5100's were for lifted trucks only?!

I think they are only for lifted trucks. How much crank are you running and anything done to the rear for lift? With a 2" block and crank I had run 4-6" shocks in the back and 2" shocks in the front (cheap superlift shocks). If you can get the shock specs, measurement fully coolapsed and extended you could see if they will fit on your truck easy enough.
Besides having the bushings beat out of my Monroe shocks they were fine, lifetime warrenty covered the bushings and got new shocks.

 

[blackcoffee]

Let me take some pics of the suspension. I haven't touched it yet, looks like its cranked ALL the way up in the front to the bumpstops ha and for the rear he had some add a leaf thing and some added springs to the shocks in the rear I Guess he pulled some weight with it. Tomorrow I'm going to a place to have them crank down the torsion and remove anything weird and then align it.

 

[blackcoffee]

Header bolts are so loose AGAIN. Distributer needs to be timed ALOT more. On the other hand, I put in amber bulbs in the fog lights / turn blinkers (they were white when I got the truck...) and I'm working on putting in my DDM tuning 55W 10,000K HID's HD ballasts and a wiring harness, all coming over from my 2 door. I know most would say their excessive, but... Well they are, but its like turning night to day and my vision at night isn't the best and I could care less about others around here driving, their already trying to run into me without them.

 

[blackcoffee]

So I decided on Indigo Blue and Sunset gold as my final colors I'm almost 100% heres a very rough draft ( used a 2 door as a base )

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[blackcoffee]

Well heres what I'm caught between, my best rendition of the few haha.

Oynx Black

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Victory Red

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Carmine Red

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All with the gold bottom.

 

[dirtridinz71]

Tough choices, the blue would look good, black seems overdone, atleast around here. The red would look good with a darker bottom IMO.

 

[darren250r]

Since you have the chance to paint it, I'd ditch the gold bottom for a solid color. If you want two tone, I think there are far better paint schemes and colors to make the truck look the best it can. Just my opinion.

 

[blackcoffee]

Don't think I'm like crazy change my mind freak... But Darren I agree with you.. So I went back in my mind to what I originally strived for a few years ago with my 2 door. I was obsessed with a couple other 2 door color schemes and I always wanted to change it to from carmine red and gold to victory red and dark grey, a good representation of the color is from bama2door's 2 door tahoe.

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Told my uncle this is the color I'm going with, he liked it. When I brought the topic up to my buddies they agreed.

Back to progress on the truck though (mechanically) yesterday I tightened my donut gaskets behind my headers which were the culprit to the leaking exhaust. I also went about under the truck looking for leaky **** and loose bolts. I tightened a few here and there on the bellhousing and the oil pan. The oil pan was missing one and the bellhousing had a messed up bolt. Both problems fixed. Last night at about 1am I went out for a spin to test the truck out a bit. There a winding paved back road that is open and didn't have any traffic so I took it down there pretty quick. When I was coming off from the side road onto a main highway road I power slided the **** out of it and had the motor up in high rpm for a good 10 seconds until I got up to about 65mph. All of a sudden white smoke appeared all over in the back of the truck and I thought I had blown a tire or something.. No, it was smoke, white smoke. All of a sudden coolant sprayed all over the windshield and the motor began to overheat. I killed it and pulled it over (this all happened in like 5 seconds). It was dark and it was foggy and didn't have adaquate lights or tools access and fix the problem. So thankfully I have a friend thats a AAA super member or something and got me a free tow truck ride home. Finally realized that I had a hose from the heater core to the motor that was rotten and had ruptured near the heater core where it was literally dumping the coolant from. I got a new hose and fittings and put coolant back into the radiator cap. I didn't damage anything, its running great. Thankfully I've already learned my lessons with 5.7L vortecs and their tendancy to blow head gaskets when they get alittle hot, which was my main fear. Even after the new line and coolant the truck was blowing white smoke and there was condensation in the exhaust. That was just from the intake sucking in all the condensation smoke and vaper though and it wore off thank god. I rode it for a good hour and gave it an overall good bill of health I think for the time being.

Now for my rant on the K&N CAI setup. I've had this in my tahoe and now in this (same motor). It is such a PITA when you take it apart to put it all back again and reinstall. Nothing ever lines off, everything pops off, its straight up annoying. I got SO frusterated with it that I destroyed the metal box with 3 sides that protects the filter and also holds the filter to the big fitting to the throttle body. I just couldn't take it, it was poorly designed it really sucks. So now I've got a filter a big plastic fitting and all of it except the protecting box. I think it'll be ok like this for alittle while. I'm not going to do any off road driving or get the intake wet. In the future I plan to do another closed box intake like a volant or something better designed.

Last but not least, I modified my headache rack to be able to mount in the bed. Its in and I'm loving it. Next comes my CB antenna on it and my light rack.

 

[dirtridinz71]

The vic red and gray 2-tone will be sweet when done! I do miss when my truck was red and shiney.

I blew the same hose in same spot a couple years ago in the middle of nowhere, was lucky enough to be able to cut it off and put it back on the nipple.

On a side note I found a link to some camo dipping process doable at home http://www.camodipkit.com/
Might go well on some interior parts to match the roof liner!