99 Denali

[Snowbound]

For those that haven't done this kind of work, here's a little run down of how it goes back together. I'm sure that if you see how it goes together you can figure how it came apart.

Bottom ball joint is a pressed fit. You need a press to do this.



You have to make sure you line up the grease fitting hole with a little recessed area on lower arm. Not sure if you'll be able to see the recess on the arm but it looks like this.



If you don't line it up it'll be impossible to get a grease gun on it. I hate them little grease zerks so I use longer ones. I have a stock pile of these just for things like this.



This joint looks like they actually moved the grease zerk hole a little higher on the joint. They were always lower and a tighter fit.

Upper ball joint bolts in. I always leave the inside front bolt loose because the ABS wire attaches to it. I've seen some guys bolt the joint to the bottom of the arm to keep the upper arm farther away from bump stop. That's more for lifted trucks and not necessary on this one.



Then the CV shaft goes back in. I didn't bolt it to flange until I had spindle back on. Gives me a little more wiggle room and I didn't want to extend it again.

 

[Snowbound]

Now the spindle goes back on. Slide the lower joint in the bottom hole and get CV shaft back into the hub. Start the nut on the bottom ball joint and that will hold it up. You need to push the upper arm down to get upper joint in the spindle and then start the nut. Tighten the nuts down and the ball joints are done. I always like to double wrench the nuts to get them seated nice and tight. Line up the hole for the cotter pin and install pins.



Put the washer and nut on CV shaft and then I installed the flange bolts. Here you can see the clearance between shaft and grease zerk.



Now the rotor can go on and install brake caliper. Be a good time to check your slider bolts in caliper. Mine were good but if they didn't slide easily I would have pulled them out and greased them. I take a wire brush and clean up the surface area where the caliper slides and put a thin layer of antisieze on them to keep caliper from sticking or binding.



Then I measured old tie rod to get a length and set up new tie rods and adjusting sleeve to that length. I see a lot of people count threads but that's not always a good idea because tie rods can be threaded differently or have a different length. I measure from center of tie rod on the flat side to same point on opposite tie rod. Then tie rod assembly went on. Before tightening clamps on adjusting sleeve I make sure tie rods aren't cocked one way, make sure the ball is centered before tightening clamps on adjuster.



Then I put wheel on and placed a block of wood in front of it to hold it and torqued the shaft nut to 175ftlbs. This preloads the bearing and is important. You don't want this over or under tightened.



Then I torqued lug nuts to 140ftlbs. Took it off stands and test drove to see if my alignment was gonna be too far off to drive it to work. It was good. Still needs an alignment. Anytime tie rods are changed it needs alignment. If I was just doing ball joints it wouldn't have been necessary. And that's it. Back on the road again and this thing is like a different truck with these new tires. Man it feels good to have new shoes. I think I might even get better mileage from it.

 

[Tonyrodz]

You do good, thorough work.

 

[Snowbound]

No updates as of yet. Been driving it more lately. I really need to figure out this fuel delivery system. I'm torn between the marine intake or just going to an LT1 intake. I have the E-tech heads so I can go either way, I'm not limited to the Vortec 8 intake bolt. I really just need external fuel injectors so I can play with them. Found an LT1 complete intake for $75. Looked at Fitech EFI but it would have to be a stand alone system and I need my OBDII system for emissions. Good thing is I don't have inspections, just a self diagnostic check at emissions station. Looked at Edelbrock Pro-Flo also but seems like the fuel rails will share realestate with my ac compressor and I'm not getting rid of that. Trying to find an LT1 with L31 Vortec accessory brackets to see if things will fit. Probably roll the dice and get it and work around issues myself. In the meantime, hope everyone has a merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Years.

And of course I have to leave a pic for the picture ******. Don't feel bad, I'm one too. Hahaha

 

[Tonyrodz]

Merry Christmas brother.

 

[Snowbound]

Just thought of something, LT1 doesn't have a distributor hole. Damn, may have to go TPI. I really hate this.

 

[Snowbound]

Been back and forth on which intake I'm going to do. Bear with me a minute, this might be long winded but you true bowtie freaks will see what I was thinking.

I've been fighting a small oil leak on the front timing cover. Thought it was the crank sensor. After cleaning and sealing it still had a leak. After some deep digging on the good old interweb I found the issue. Putting the plastic timing cover on a non L31 block doesn't seal. I came across some guys that built up the front machined surface with JB Weld and that cured it. I'm not doing that. Found a replacement that works thru EFI connections. Little pricey but bear with me. I'll come back to this but keep it in the back of your mind.

LT1 intake- has no provision for distributor. There is an oil pump drive that bolts in the lifter valley and under intake so that would work. The LT1 utilizes the opti-spark piece of crap. Not an option for me. I still need spark plug wires but no conventional distributor. How you ask, coil near plug just like the LS engines. Still need a 1x cam signal which I found that the fore mentioned timing cover has a provision for a front mounted cam sensor and they also sell a reluctor ring for the front of the cam gear. Ok, I'm on to something. But the stock 4x crank sensor will not run coil near plug conversion so they also sell a new sensor and reluctor ring that is a direct replacement for the 4x but is a 24x which WILL run the coil near plug conversion. There's a bunch of pros to doing this conversion but you can search, I won't bore you with all that. So as I'm looking into this, it's adding up pretty damn fast. The 12200411 PCM swap is a must to do it. I'm doing that anyway just for tuning purposes. So LT1 intake is doable but it's not the best system. So I went on to something else.

Stealth Ram intake- needs some rerouting of things, can get to clear accessories and can even run the Vortec dizzy. Problem is that thing is a high RPM intake and low end power will suffer. Not emission compliant but I'm ditching the EGR anyway. But for the money and the power curve, not interested.

TPI intake- really gave this a lot of thought. Accessory drives would need to be swapped and I've heard mixed things about intake runners lining up right with the Vortec heads. Scoggin-dickey makes a lower intake for the Vortec and TPI. At the tone of $400. Shit was adding up really quick there too.

Back to my original option of just using a marine intake. It clears, external injectors, better flowing runners without the spider in the intake and minimal issues. So after a run around and hours searching and reading I'm back where I originally was.

Anyway, I have to start with the PCM swap. Cheapest I could find one online was $90 programmed with my VIN. They couldn't do any tuning or deleting of VATS or EGR so I ran down to the local pick and pull and grabbed one from an 01 Chevy Express van that had an L31 and 4L60e for $30. That's the base tune I need to make this thing run. I've decided to buy EFILive tuning software and do the tuning myself. Going to be a learning curve but I really like that kind of stuff and been wanting to dive in. So the new to me PCM was nasty dirty so I removed the circuit board and blasted the housing and painted it with some high temp ceramic coating paint. The connectors I took apart and blasted the aluminum housings and then just buffed with a wire wheel. They look fine so I'll leave them at that.

 

[Snowbound]

 

[Tonyrodz]

From what you've posted so far, and what I've read, I have complete faith that you'll figure it out!

 

[Snowbound]

Starting to get things ready for the PCM swap. Have all my pinouts for both and started labeling the wiring. Looks like it's gonna be a straight forward swap. 0411 PCM looks right at home in place of the black box.







Stay tuned, pun intended, working on getting it wired and then need to remove VATS before it'll start.