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

[Reluctanse]

End of day status:
Distributor in, fuel rail in. Spent more time than I thought I should have drilling out the rivets for the coil. Got the correct new hardware for that, and new ICM installed on the mount plate.
Time to grill some thick boy burgs.

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gonna hit it hard tomorrow.

 

[Reluctanse]

Got everything done:

-new bosch injectors and acdelco FPR
-upper/lower intake gaskets
-every vacuum hose
-heater core hoses and replaced the dumb intake fitting with a hose barb
-new mevotech TTX upper balljoints

Noticeable improvement in throttle response and drivability. It even sounds different. I did absolutely nothing to the tune yet. New injectors are a HUGE improvement. Front balljoints also made a big difference. There's still other front end parts that definitely need some attention, but those were by far the worst and getting those replaced (MAJOR PITA) made a nice difference. Man these were an ordeal to swap out. Grind off the rivets, DRILL them out, get it hot and beat on it with an air hammer. Finally got the old ones out. They were definitely done for.

Looks pretty nice... too bad the rest of the bad is so crusty. I should at least give it a good wash-down one of these days.

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Barely had to tweak my distributor on startup, it was almost perfect. Here's adjusted, can't get any better than that.

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Here's the barb I used for the intake heater hose. Just an amazon piece, going wide open. We'll see if it does any of the reported weird things some have mentioned.

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My evap canister fix turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. Ran new line for that and the PCV, those hard plastic lines were one bad bump away from shattering.

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I do need to tweak the tune a bit, but otherwise I think I'm good to go. No leaks I could see.

Heading up Santiam Highway with my trailer Thursday, so hopefully everything is good. Supposed to be upper 90s here.

 

[Reluctanse]

OK report time!

250 mile camping trip hauling my 4000lb trailer and everything that goes along with that, up to 4800ft, so some pretty good elevation gains in the drive.
Engine is running great, no leaks, no weird behaviors or misfire codes under load. I don't love the transmission shift points I have set, and really wanted tow/haul mode but just didn't get to it, so I ended doing a lot of manual shifting. For whatever reason, hopefully something in the tune, manual downshifts would be like full pressure firm. Still some things to work out there. Also it has a tiny hiccup when I start it, if I don't crack the throttle it will fire up but die immediately. A tiny bit of throttle for the first 1-2 seconds on startup gets us through that, again some minor tune tweaking should resolve.

Oh and my trailer brake controller only gets brake signal intermittently, works, then doesn't. I'm sure it's related to the pre-existing crappy wiring tie-in that I ignore many posts ago. Add that to the list to fix. Luckily the controller itself is working fine, so when I needed it I just used it manually and g2g. Also the brakes have a weird pull to the left issue I need to resolve, it's not major and I thought related to upper balljoints but it's not.

Have a new HVAC blower fan gremlin to work out as well, have another post about that.

A few things to work out but overall we are making progress, happy overall with the behavior of the rig!

 

[Supercharged111]

So for the crappy fire up behaviour take a good close look at VE and MAF. That ended up being what made my truck do the same. It would fire right off, then stumble for a bit then chill out and run normal. Make sure none of the adjacent cells have big variances and that they're all within a couple percent of where they need to be. The nice thing here is you don't need to go for a long drive with lots of different driving conditions like you would for the whole map(s).

 

[Reluctanse]

It's summer, lots going on. Haven't spent much time with the truck but did take a trip to the treasure yard and picked up a few goodies. Unfortunately had a little HVAC drama which my parts trip did NOT fix, see here if you care. I think I've got it nailed down, parts ordered. Going on a 2 week trip for work and will be back mid-August, with really about 1 weekend before my next trip. So hopefully it'll be quick to throw things back together.

Other thing I need to fix is my trailer brake controller, thanks to this thread it looks like a nice easy connection for the brake signal, so I'll be getting that done.

It's just been summer, and hot, and lots going on, and work has been sucking my brain dry so I haven't wanted to work on it. I have a few little projects in the queue but really they will all probably wait until fall at this point, other than above.

So that's where we are at!

 

[Reluctanse]

Replaced the blower motor... replaced the blower resistor... also replaced the recirc blend actuator. Everything working good now.

I didn't fight with the upper recirc actuator screw, it was a battle getting it out. Anyone else replaced theirs and left that screw out?

 

[Grogu]

Unless that was the color of your cosplay when you put it in you might want to flush your system and put in premix or concentrate with distilled water. To me that looks like there is rust in the radiator.

 

[Grogu]

Unless that was the color of your cosplay when you put it in you might want to flush your system and put in premix or concentrate with distilled water. To me that looks like there is rust in the radiator.

Coolant

 

[Reluctanse]

Coolant

I did a cosplay once, but I used orange coolant when I did it

 

[Grogu]

Sounds Good. Most people still use the green stuff.. and don't know about the color specific ones