Dustin Jacksons 2008 Chevy Tahoe Build Thread

[Dustin Jackson]

I had some time this morning so I figured I would document the story of my Tahoe.

In late 2019 I sold my civic that I was making payments on and bought a 96 Tahoe so that I wouldn't have a car payment and we needed a family car for car seats and strollers. I loved the size and ability of the Tahoe but this Tahoe had a strange problem that I was never able to figure out so I got rid of it. There was intermittent problems with the ignition and transmission, some electrical problem.


In February 2020 we stopped by a local used truck dealership and I found the rig of my dreams, a Z71 GMT900. I had always wanted one but they were very expensive but this one was only $13.5k out the door but it had a worn out suspension and 160,000 miles on it. My girlfriend at the time (now she's my wife) gave me her blessing and I bought the 08 Tahoe with a $250/month payment which was very doable.

Here is the first picture I took of it right after I left the dealership.


Here are some pictures I took near a local dam a couple days after I bought it.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

I didn't know this at the time but the Tahoe had a rear lowering kit installed. It rode pretty bad over bumps and seemed to bottom out pretty easily in the rear.

This is the kit it had installed when I first bought it.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

First order of business was to upgrade the suspension. Here is how the suspension looked when I first got it.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

I wasn't sure if there was any lowering springs in the front so I decided to go with Bilstein 5100 shocks and Moog HD springs, 81069 in the rear and 81244 in the front. I still know those part numbers off the top of my head lol.

The rear parts came in first so I did the rear first and then the front at a later time.


Here is how the lower kit compares to the new parts


Here is how the Tahoe sits after the rear was upgraded, compared to how it was when I first got it.
Before:

After:


Great results. This fixed my bottoming out problems and greatly increased the ride quality. After doing the rear I was hooked up upgrades.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

I don't have pictures from when I was doing the front for some reason, compressing the Moog 81244 springs to fit on the Bilstein 5100 was very hard so I opted to configure the 5100 to be at factory height so I wouldn't have to compress the spring any more in order to fit it on the 5100.

Here is the style of spring compressor I was using, I used 2 sets so 4 clamps per springs for safety lol.


Here is how the Tahoe sits after upgrading the front to Bilsteins and Moog springs, personally this is an amazing ride just as it is right here and If I had to redo a Tahoe build again I would stop here and not lift it like I ended up doing.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Here are some more pictures after doing the Bilstein and moog upgrade in the front and back.
I got some bird shit on my fender flare and it ate the paint away a little bit on the plastic.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

After the Moog and Bilstein upgrade I took the Tahoe to be aligned but the shop told me the balljoints were worn so they couldn't align it. Time to upgrade!
This time I did RC upper and Moog lower control arms, moog wheel bearings, pads and rotors Detroit axle drilled and slotted with ceramic pads, and 2.5 inch aluminum spacers in the front and rear, inner and outer tie rods, and locking alignment cams which I ended up regretting and removing before I bought my KO2s.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Here is a comparison of my Tahoe before and after the lift upgrade:
Before with just Bilsteins and Moog springs:

After 2.5 inch lift pucks:


More pictures after the lift upgrade and suspension refresh:

Suspension angles:

 

[Dustin Jackson]

The 2.5 inch lift really hurt the ride quality of the Tahoe and it made me sad because I was very happy with it before I lifted it. After months of research and diagnosis I identified a few areas I could upgrade the Tahoe to compensate for the damage to the ride quality the 2.5 inch lift caused.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

The first things I noticed is that my rear axles was way off center

Here you can see the rear tires sticks out of the fender just a little bit of the driver side


Here you can see the rear tires sticking out of the passenger side A LOT



The fix for this was an adjustable panhard bar from Spohn. I went with the ones with adjustable del sphere joints. Make sure to tighten the joints as much as you can because I chased clunking with this for months before I finally just tighten the joints down.



This helped with my OCD but didn't really help with the ride quality, read on.