Megan the Tahoe

[gtrslngrchris]

Well the Tahoe stranded me yesterday just as I was about to merge onto the highway at 4:40pm I saw Reduced Engine Power and the a/c went hot as it slowed to a crawl and died. It would barely stay alive at idle with the a/c off and if I even pressed the brakes it would die. My wonderful new engine covers prevented me from accessing anything that I wanted to check on and of course my tool kit that I keep with the Tahoe was in the garage at home.

After AAA towed me home I found that the pigtail harness for the throttle body that was replaced on warranty was only connected with butt connectors and wasn't done how GM specified and doing nothing but fiddling with those I got it to start up and run perfectly again. I will be re-crimping and soldering all of those connections this weekend hopefully because that will not be the reason I am stranded again. Since I was already a little dirty I went ahead and re-routed the wiring for 12v for my wideband and re-routed the 5v and ground to be easily accessible to my HPtuners VCM so I can have it all nicely hidden when I'm not logging or tuning.

 

[Tonyrodz]

Well the Tahoe stranded me yesterday just as I was about to merge onto the highway at 4:40pm I saw Reduced Engine Power and the a/c went hot as it slowed to a crawl and died. It would barely stay alive at idle with the a/c off and if I even pressed the brakes it would die. My wonderful new engine covers prevented me from accessing anything that I wanted to check on and of course my tool kit that I keep with the Tahoe was in the garage at home.

After AAA towed me home I found that the pigtail harness for the throttle body that was replaced on warranty was only connected with butt connectors and wasn't done how GM specified and doing nothing but fiddling with those I got it to start up and run perfectly again. I will be re-crimping and soldering all of those connections this weekend hopefully because that will not be the reason I am stranded again. Since I was already a little dirty I went ahead and re-routed the wiring for 12v for my wideband and re-routed the 5v and ground to be easily accessible to my HPtuners VCM so I can have it all nicely hidden when I'm not logging or tuning.

Who did the pigtail? A gm dealer?

 

[gtrslngrchris]

Who did the pigtail? A gm dealer?

Not sure because I've only had this Tahoe ~5 months but it IS a factory pigtail so my guess is that a dealer did it. Either way my roommate is sourcing the new crimp tool that GM wants used on current repairs and I'll crimp/solder/heatshrink it this time around to prevent it happening again.

 

[Tonyrodz]

Not sure because I've only had this Tahoe ~5 months but it IS a factory pigtail so my guess is that a dealer did it. Either way my roommate is sourcing the new crimp tool that GM wants used on current repairs and I'll crimp/solder/heatshrink it this time around to prevent it happening again.

I priced that pigtail through GM, my cost is $163! That's just for the pigtail. I bought mine from Amazon.

 

[gtrslngrchris]

Pigtail redone and it might just be in my head but I swear the pedal is more responsive. I know that these are very sensitive to resistance so it's totally possible but who knows.

First we remove the crappy crimp connectors that were oversized for the wiring and didn't hold it very well in the first place. Then we strip and crimp with the new GM crimp connectors.



Then solder and heatshrink.



Finally we wrap it all up with the super fancy fabric electrical tape and plug it back in!


I think the original tech that did the repair put each crimp at a different length so that there wouldn't be a giant bulge of crimp connectors in one spot so I just went with it instead of making them all the same, and then much shorter overall, length. Either way, I now feel much better about this truck making it to Colorado and back in a week and a half. Coming soon is panhard bar, front upper control arms along with an alignment and hopefully SS brake lines all before the trip.

 

[PG01]

Normally do that when splicing stuff in, fits in wire loom better and less chance of things shorting if they come loose somehow.... not that yours will, but generally a good idea if you you have the slack in the wire to do it that way.

 

[gtrslngrchris]

Normally do that when splicing stuff in, fits in wire loom better and less chance of things shorting if they come loose somehow.... not that yours will, but generally a good idea if you you have the slack in the wire to do it that way.

I like to as well. I guess I should have said that the original tech attempted to do this but it didn't turn out so well.

 

[gtrslngrchris]

My roommate took the Tahoe to work with him today to replace the oil pressure sensor for me since it was stuck at 4.59v and wasn't giving any useful information since I got stranded awhile back. He says it's not in my head that my tuning is making it feel noticeably better to drive and more powerful and I haven't even added any timing yet!

 

[gtrslngrchris]

So while the Tahoe was with my roommate at the dealership he went ahead and started to put my SS brake lines on as a surprise and then my surprise turned out to be a text saying that my fronts were done but the rear caliper bleeder screws had both snapped clean off.


So off I went after work to O'Reilly's to get some reman calipers to replace them.


While I was poking around I noticed a couple of things. 1: I still haven't put my new front end links on my new sway bar and 2: My tires rub my new sway bar and probably the old one so I may try a 1/4" spacer up front since I don't plan to change to a wheel with a different offset.


Still to come this week? Panhard bar, more tuning, a good interior clean and if I get really saucy then front UCAs and an alignment to match.

 

[gtrslngrchris]

Didn't get a lot of pics today because I wasn't planning on doing most of what I ended up working on and I was covered in grease pretty much the entire time BUT I went out to swap my panhard bar after getting the correct one in the mail and got that installed. Very easy job for anyone wondering and adjusting it is very easy as well.



Then I decided to put the 1" spacers on the rear that came with my lowering kit to see if it would improve the ride in the rear even more and it REALLY did! I didn't get any pics but it's kind of boring seeing 2 plastic donuts get put on springs. This also gave me back the raked look that I love and while I was doing that I had to pull the wheels off. While doing that I decided I would rotate the tires since it had been too long since that needed done anyway and while doing that I decided I'd just go ahead and install the new DJM front upper control arms.



They look good, they seem to work well and overall the Tahoe does feel much better now. I want to talk some shit on DJM though because one of the control arms was not powdercoated very well, it was already flaking off in multiple spots NOT from poor handling in the box and during install a lot more came off so I just hit it with black spray paint to keep it from being exposed bare metal. In addition to that both the lowers and uppers all had powdercoat in the threads for the grease zerks which makes for a lot of unnecessary work to clean out the threads just to you can install the part when someone could spend 5 seconds putting something in the hole to prevent it in the first place.