Will in Nashville's 2005 Yukon Denali

[willinnashville]

I've actually been a member here for over a decade now, but I never really considered my 2005 Yukon Denali a "project" until recently. Truthfully, I'm not sure I would've if I hadn't been coming here for this long.

Anyway....

I bought my Denali back in 2011 for the wife to cart around the kiddos. I come from a long line of mostly GM vehicles, so I thought an AWD 6.0 LS-based platform would be great for us. Plus it has a ton of room and was a highway beast. I bought it at a Chevy dealer, where it had been traded in by the original owner at 90k miles. I paid $16k for it, which is laughable for almost any 6 year old vehicle nowadays, much less 6 year old Yukon Denali. Since it was the wife's kid taxi, I didn't really do anything with it other than maintenance and upkeep. At the time I was daily driving my 1985 GMC C/10 (technically C/15 but nobody ever knows what you mean when you say C/15).

1985 C/10


A bit later I needed more space so I did some trading and ended up with this bagged 99 Yukon 2 door 2wd:


The Tahoe was super clean, but getting rid of my truck for that was probably the worst automotive decision I've ever made. A year or so later, I sold the Tahoe, bought a new car for the wife, and took over the Denali full time

At that point it was just a stock 05 Yukon Denali, and it remained that for a pretty long time

 

[willinnashville]

My older daughter played travel basketball for a few years, then switched to volleyball for a few years after that. I didn't do a lot to the truck during that time since it was needed for long trips to out of town tournaments.

During this time I got a subwoofer for Father's Day, so I put in a new head unit, amp and the sub in a tube enclosure that it still there. It's great. I rigged up a tablet to play songs from spotify

 

[willinnashville]

A few years later, the truck was still holding up great aside from a transmission rebuild, but it was starting to look pretty trashed inside and the clear was starting to look pretty gross

 

[tooleyondeck]

subbed! That tablet mod is interesting. My hood and roof aren't quite that bad but they're getting there, especially the roof.

 

[willinnashville]

I saw a youtube vid where someone recommended polishing the paint, even where the clear was flaked off. I tried it, but I wasn't especially stoked with the outcome. The basecoat underneath was now shiny, but the hood still looked like garbage

 

[willinnashville]

subbed! That tablet mod is interesting. My hood and roof aren't quite that bad but they're getting there, especially the roof.

I went through a whole bunch of iterations with that tablet mount. In the end I used magnets to keep it in place and metal plated sandwiched between the tablet and its case. It still works that way, although I ended up getting a head unit with android auto so I don't use it much anymore.

 

[willinnashville]

About this time I was doing little stuff like tinting my windows, switching out to LEDs and changing the headlight and taillight housings since I really don't like how the amber looks. For whatever reason, I didn't take many pics of this.




LEDs in the old housings and fog light LEDs

 

[willinnashville]

I also replaced the air shocks and compressor. As you can see, they were pretty trashed

 

[willinnashville]

About this time COVID hit, so the Yukon stopped being a taxi service. I have worked at home for a pretty long time now, so it pretty much just sat in the garage. I did start going to junkyards as a way to get out of the house and collecting parts for future fun. I found a 3rd brake light, roof rack, caps and vent covers that were already black, and finally a rimless escalade back glass that I rattle canned. It come out decent. It looked so much better than the flaking hood and roof that I considered spray bombing the roof and hood. Thankfully I didn't do that

 

[willinnashville]

I started getting quotes to respray the hood and roof and was either blown away by the price and/or lack of quality for what I was being quoted. I knew that if I paid what some of these places were asking and I got something less than perfect, it would eat away at me. After spray bombing the esky hatch, I had a nagging thought in my head that I wanted to try painting it myself. I could live with it if I screwed it up for the ~$600 or so I figured it would cost me. Besides, how much worse could I possibly make it?

After watching some YouTube vids, I picked up a Sprayit 33000 clone gun from Summit, a cheapo purple gun for primer and some Spectrum disposable paint cups from Harbor Freight. I grabbed some paint, clear, primer and supplies and turned my garage into a decent paint booth. I bought a circular sander, interface pads and some sandpaper and went to work on the hood and roof

Before:




After some sanding:



Masked off and ready to go: