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Then came Efans. I bought a harness from www.LS1fans.com and a set of Flex-a-Lite fans and installed them after the tune.
Rocket Man's 02 Denali Build Thread AKA "THE BEAST"
- Thread starter Rocket Man
- Start date
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Next was a catch-can to collect the oil from my pcv system and keep it from going into my intake. www.catchcans.com was my source for this, along with a trip to the auto parts store for some tubing and hose clamps.
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Thanks @Fosscore !
So much win in this thread. Great mods to a killer looking Denali. Nice work man.
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Oh, almost forgot, I bought a Corvette servo for the tranny and chickened out on the install and had a local tranny shop install it for $50. That helped when I had the tune installed and had BB remove torque management and tighten up the shifting.
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Next I started on the suspension. With my 2/4 drop, it was better at cornering and stopping than stock, but I wanted it to stay flatter during high-speed maneuvers and hard braking. I was having some issue with rubbing on the right rear tire when cornering hard, and after reading up on the rear suspension geometry on these trucks, I got to work. First I reversed the rear shock bolts which helped a bit. Then I ordered and installed a Spohn adjustable panhard bar which allowed me to adjust the rear suspension side-to-side. Then came a DJM rear anti-sway bar and rear offset endlinks to keep that bar from hitting the panhard bar mount. I went ahead and bought a DJM front anti-sway bar and Energy Suspension front endlinks at the same time and installed it all. Now it was handling great, flat in the corners and no nose dive when braking hard. I seem to be missing pictures from most of these mods but here's a couple.
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I noticed some steering play so I took it to a shop and they gave me a list of recommended parts that needed replacing. I decided to rebuild the front end for the most part. I ordered Moog UCA's, lower ball joints, idler arm, idler arm bracket, and tie rod ends, as well as an AC Delco Professional Pitman arm. I was thinking about doing this work myself but since this is my DD I decided to have a shop install it all. What a huge improvement in steering! Sorry no pictures...
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I also decided to help these big wheels and tires to stay straight so I bought a KYB steering stabilizer and installed it. Better steering still.
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I also bought some new front jounce stops but they lifted the front up a bit so I trimmed them down before installing.
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the whole front chrome thing had been bothering me forever but I couldn't find a grill that wasn't chrome for an '02 Denali. I looked into stripping the chrome off a new one but was told by a few chrome shops that wasn't possible. Then I tried it myself by buying a new chrome one off Ebay and trying to strip the chrome off my old one. I succeeded. In ruining my old stock grill. I tried everything that Youtube videos said would work, including a torch, muriatic acisd, and many many chemicals and cleaners. So I talked to my friend who owns a bodyshop and he said he couldn't guarantee how long paint would last. But he did a damn good job,; he sanded the sh*t out of the new one, used a self-etching primer, and sprayed and cleared it. I went with body color for the main part and black for the honeycomb and color matched the GMC emblem. I liked it. But the lights were next since they were all chrome. I ordered some Spyder black with smoke lenses in both corner and headlights, and some Lamin-X film for some new OEM fog lamps.
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Then I had to color match all the front LED and HID lights which took some guessing and experimenting due to the different colors of the tint/smoke on the lenses.
