Long Travel & Wide body build

[Mike Edwards]

3.73 rear gears and springs are done. No pictures of the regear process. My hands were covered in gear oil the whole time.

I should have measured before and after, but going from a stock spring with a Deaver mini pack to these R81’s should have netted 1.5” of lift. Since I have a longer shackle, it’s probably back to stock trail boss height. These springs are crazy heavy, I had to have help putting them in place.

 

[Mike Edwards]

Next up, 3.73 front gears, Dirt King long travel fox shocks, and new 37x12.50 BFG K02’s. The tires on there now are noisy used Toyo’s from a friend and don’t have much life left.

 

[Jmzvet]

Looking awesome. Thanks for contributing great content to the Forum

 

[Mike Edwards]

New Fox Long Travel Shocks are installed. New 3.73 gears front and rear. And a fresh set of BFG’s on deck once I get the alignment set. If GM made a competitor for the Raptor R and TRX, this would be it. 700hp supercharged, long travel Silverado!

Front gears in these 19+ 1500’s have one tricky part. The drivers side stub shaft in mine was extremely difficult to get out. No way to attach a slide hammer to pull it out, and very limited access to drive it out from the inside because you can’t remove the cross shaft in the diff due to the welded gear. I had to actually break the snap ring driving it out. It fought hard, but I won.

 

[PistolsFiring]

If GM made a competitor for the Raptor R and TRX, this would be it. 700hp supercharged, long travel Silverado!

Good job is an understatement, but good job. I have no where near the technical knowledge but it was great following the documentation along. Maybe GM will get some ideas! Let us know how test and tune goes.

 

[NoGuru]

What an amazing job you did on this build.

 

[Mike Edwards]

Thanks! I hadn’t done anything to it for a few months. But I recently decided to dig a little deeper into the tuning and trying to improve the drivability with the supercharger. Hp tuners recently added access to some of the throttle tables that are applicable to superchargers. It took a couple weeks to figure them out and tweak them to something appropriate. But now the truck drivers like it should. I have full throttle control. So, why not finally jump up to a 95mm lt5 throttle body.



The paint on the front facing edge of the bedsides is getting beat by rocks. I’m not sure how I’m going to remedy that. But more paint work is in my cooler weather plans.

 

[Stormin08]

you do a tinted textured coating in that leading edge area, or a heavier MIL PPF....

 

[Mike Edwards]

I’ve thought about both. The ppf is a possibility, but the chips are 3/4 of the way up the bed. There’s no good body line to end it on and I don’t want to do the whole bed.

I can’t find a tinted bedliner that’s anywhere close to the blue on my truck. Seems like 90% of pre runners are white, black and silver.

 

[Stormin08]

the higher quality films have such a thin edge....i have a few coworkers rocking new Denali 2500's, and you really have to look for the edges.
most have just the leading edges done, only one has the entire vehicle PPF'd.

 

[Mike Edwards]

I looked into color matched bed liner a bit more and it was easier than I thought. When I did the glass last year, I used TCP Global black bedliner on the insides and tops of the bed sides. They offer a tintable bedliner and you can have it matched to your paint by having a paint supplier mix up the tint from a batch of basecoat. You're supposed to have mixed without clear base, but I read where others had used fully mixed base. Well, I have about 2/3 of a gallon left from the bedsides and fenders, so I wanted to try that. The paint had separated over the year and I was able to draw off the bottom to get more solids and less of the clear base. It turned out pretty good. The flake isn't as prominent and the gloss doesn't match, but it's as close as bedliner is going to get.

I'll post more about the color matched front bumper from the last picture when it's mounted back on the truck.

 

[Mike Edwards]

Install of the dirt king front bumper required cutting the original fog light mount part of the bumper off. I had them mounted behind the grill, but they were a little weak there. So, I figured why not french them into what’s left of the bumper since I was planning to paint/bed liner it anyway. I always wanted to color matched the bumper.

 

[Mike Edwards]

 

[Stormin08]

the bumper turned out good. i was really on the fence with the raw pics.
little late now, but did you happen to play with the PSI when spraying your coating ?

i recently used Raptor liner for an under chassis coating, but sprayed it at about 90 psi to smooth it out some.
this was the first go at that PSI, but in person it laid out nicely and is rather slick to the touch

 

[Mike Edwards]

I used TCB Global and their gun has an adjustable nozzle, but it doesn't seem to do much through the adjustment. I sprayed at ~60psi. I wish it had turned out smoother, but the mix was too thick. I would have reduced it with some, but once you add the hardener and 3oz of tint, the bottle is completely full.