06 Silverado Crew Cab Build

[drdave81]

I guess I'll make one of these for this truck too, since it's become more of my focal point than my Yukon right now. A couple months ago I picked up an 06 Silverado crew cab with a 5.3 4WD. Got it for $5200, big thing being no rust (I'm in Michigan, this is a big deal lol). It had just under 274k miles on it when I got it. Right away I knew it would need some work, which is part of the reason I bought it, I can't stay away from projects.

First thing I did when I got it home was gut the interior. Previous owner(s) smoked in it. It also came from a dusty area in Texas, so a lot of that reddish dust was all over everything. Over time, things got wet, turned to mud, etc etc. I pulled the carpet, padding, headliner, everything but the dash out of it. I cleaned up everything pretty well. There were some spots in that carpet that just weren't coming out, but it doesn't smell anymore.

Before reassembling the interior, I also found a center console out of an Avalanche at a local U-Pull-It. That needed as much cleaning as the rest of the truck. I think every spill was just left there. And it seemed they liked to roll blunts in that console, lots of residue, tobacco, burn marks, wrappers, etc. I do need to find new inserts (cubbys, cup holder pieces) and new rubber pieces. The main body of the console was good though. It cleaned up well. It also has the Bose amp/sub in it. For now I just pulled it out, but if I ever decide to try and use it, I've got it.

 

[drdave81]

I also pulled the headliner since it was sagging in a bunch of spots and had some good burn marks in it. The local fabric stores were all out of headliner material. They said this time of year, its hard to keep in stock since everyone has projects going on. So, since it's a cheap truck, cheap material. Yes, that's fleece lol. Overall, it didn't turn out too bad, a few spots with some small wrinkles, but way better than it was.

I'll update more on the LQ9 swap and trans I just finished up over the weekend once I get the pics. I'll also go over what my other plans for this truck are.

 

[drdave81]

When I bought the truck, I noticed there was some smoke on first start up, looked white so I figured head gasket, not a big deal. Turns out, even though it looked white, it wasn't coolant. The valve guides had left the chat. I was going through oil like crazy. First start up of the day, I could fog my whole yard. With 274k miles, leaking from most gaskets and the guides, plus unknowns internally, I decided to get a 6.0 instead. I found one with 145k miles on it, from a good running Escalade. Previous owner took great care of it, but got T-***** so it was totaled. I was going to tear it down, but I could tell the heads had recently been off it, cleaned up, etc so I just did the oil pan, valley cover.

I also noticed there were some odd little shifting issues, mainly in 2nd gear around 2000RPMs, I would get a stutter. The seller told me the trans was rebuilt a year ago, but since half the work was going to be done by pulling the engine, I decided to pull the trans too. I got the trans to the shop I had to the one in my Yukon. He looked it over and found most parts had been replaced, everything done correctly, but for some reason used the wrong valve body gasket. It already had the sunshell upgraded, corvette servo, all the typical goodies. So he went through just a couple other things, made sure all the gaskets were correct and slapped it back together with a Trailblazer torque converter.

I dropped the engine back in last Thursday over the 4th. Got the trans put back in over the weekend. I fired it up on Sunday and it idled like absolute crap. Popped a P0300, misfire monitor showed all cylinders were misfiring randomly all over the place. I couldn't get back to it until yesterday, so I pulled the intake back off, since I heard a bit of a hissing sound, implying a vacuum leak. I couldn't find any issues. I reinstalled the intake, fired it up again, and ran perfectly. I'll take it!!!

Now I'm waiting to hear back from Blackbear Performance, I've sent a couple emails and our conversation suddenly went quiet, for a week now. So, we'll see. I was hoping to get their sale on a tune over the 4th, but that came and went and never heard from them.

 

[drdave81]

While I was taking everything apart, I pulled the drain plug from the transfer case and about a shot glass worth of fluid came out. I found this one suffers from the infamous pump rub. There is a small crack along the pass side of the case. At this point, I started thinking about maybe swapping to an AWD system, like my Yukon Denali has. The only part holding me back is my gears are 3.42, the Denalis and Escalades come in 3.73. I'm not great, nor do I have the tools currently to rebuild an axle and set it up correctly.
After doing some research, I think I can get away with shifting the truck into 4WD, then remove everything, leaving the front axle in 4WD. I can just swap in the NP149 transfer case (and maybe the front driveshaft? haven't confirmed that is the same or different yet. Ive seen both) and I'll have AWD. It seems the only difference between the 2 front axles are the 1 piece vs 2 piece on the passenger side for shifting in and out of 4WD.
I tried JB weld as a temporary fix, just to keep some fluid in it, but that didn't work, it's dripping out around it at a pretty steady rate. So I'll have to make a decision pretty quickly in order to keep driving it. I was shocked it still held together having basically no fluid in it and I drove it for a couple thousand miles like that, plus how ever long the previous owner did too!!

 

[drdave81]

This chrome crap that someone installed is absolutely brutal to remove. The 3M tape is really holding on for dear life. Heat gun and a vise grip to get the cladding off, then an eraser wheel on a drill to remove the tape. I saw people suggest fishing line, so I got the strongest stuff I could find, it snapped within 2 minutes and barely got through any of it. Some paint pulled off in a couple small spots, which I'm not totally surprised. I HATE this stuff, more than any other lame AutoZone accessory you can possibly install on a vehicle. So far I got the pass fender, pass door and a the front corner of the box, in front of the wheel off. It'll be chipped away at here and there, god this stuff is awful. I need more eraser wheels to show up, I'm almost through the one I have.

 

[adventurenali92]

LQ9 build in a crew will be super fun to drive once it’s all squared away I bet haha.

 

[drdave81]

LQ9 build in a crew will be super fun to drive once it’s all squared away I bet haha.

Even without getting it tuned yet, just normal/light accel feels so much better. Down the line, it'll be getting a cam, long tubes, etc. But I just needed to get a good engine swapped into it and back on the road for now. So a big teardown and upgrades weren't going to happen just yet.

 

[drdave81]

Finally heard back from Blackbear about tuning, so that will get squared away soon. I have a guy pulling an AWD transfer case for me tonight, so I'll grab that this weekend. Still working on getting the front axle thing squared away. I have a test vehicle for work that I'm driving, so the truck isn't here for me to test and confirm if it will stay locked once the actuator is unplugged or not.

 

[drdave81]

I got the front axle figured out. Turns out, shifting to 4hi, and then unplugging the actuator will leave the front axle locked. I still will probably use a piece of PVC cut down to put in place, just in case the actuator would retract, I dont want to burn up my transfer case. The actuator is just plastic anyway, so a piece of PVC will be just fine in there. I'll be swapping the transfer case today and should be good to go with all wheel drive! Then quick pack up and off across the state for a mountain bike relay race tomorrow all day.

Blackbear should have my initial tune file ready next week, then I'll get data logs to them and some final tweaks, we should be good to go. I was pretty curious to find out how it would run on e85, so it was a bummer when blackbear told me the L59 injectors wouldn't be big enough to run e85 on that 6.0L. Maybe I'll look into bigger injectors for that down the line........ we'll see.

 

[adventurenali92]

I got the front axle figured out. Turns out, shifting to 4hi, and then unplugging the actuator will leave the front axle locked. I still will probably use a piece of PVC cut down to put in place, just in case the actuator would retract, I dont want to burn up my transfer case. The actuator is just plastic anyway, so a piece of PVC will be just fine in there. I'll be swapping the transfer case today and should be good to go with all wheel drive! Then quick pack up and off across the state for a mountain bike relay race tomorrow all day.

Blackbear should have my initial tune file ready next week, then I'll get data logs to them and some final tweaks, we should be good to go. I was pretty curious to find out how it would run on e85, so it was a bummer when blackbear told me the L59 injectors wouldn't be big enough to run e85 on that 6.0L. Maybe I'll look into bigger injectors for that down the line........ we'll see.

Glad to hear you’re fitting things sorted! Always a good feeling! Funny that you mentioned a mountain bike race. Tour de big bear annual bike race going on today here in big bear. Happens every year and creates all kinds of havoc for those of us that this is just an another normal work day lol. But brings a lot of tourists into town which is always good for business. Hopefully the drive goes well for you!