2007 Silverado - Buy Once, Cry Once: 1-tons, 40's & a Custom Camper

[Dougnuts]

Two things, Andrew.

First, I was very excited when you kicked off this build, as all of us here knew it was going to be good. Your own high expectations, supreme craftsmanship, and skillset are recognized by those of us on this forum. Thank you for sharing them with us. Building something at this level is a LOT of work, and sharing it on the forums is even more work, so thank you.

Which leads me to my second item, which is to give the wife and son a big hug. I am going to make the assumption that your wife knows that the huge sacrifice of time and money will pay dividends when it comes to family time in the future, which qualifies her for sainthood in my book.

 

[Glidedon]

Bravo !

 

[YetiX]

Somehow this thread dropped out of my following list, grrrr. On the flip side, it was cool to sit down and read four pages of progress at once! Loving this!

 

[Andrew_S]

^ Thanks for the good words guys. It's kind of fun to look back at this thing from 6 months ago with plywood fenders I screwed into place to where it's at now.

Two things, Andrew.

First, I was very excited when you kicked off this build, as all of us here knew it was going to be good. Your own high expectations, supreme craftsmanship, and skillset are recognized by those of us on this forum. Thank you for sharing them with us. Building something at this level is a LOT of work, and sharing it on the forums is even more work, so thank you.

Which leads me to my second item, which is to give the wife and son a big hug. I am going to make the assumption that your wife knows that the huge sacrifice of time and money will pay dividends when it comes to family time in the future, which qualifies her for sainthood in my book.

Thanks for this. I appreciate the words of encouragement. Glad I didn't disappoint. Hope the camper lives up to this expectation.
When it comes to the wife and appreciation, she's happy now that it's on the road. She will be thrilled once all the work stops and we are out enjoying life with our kids.


Took Saturday off to spend with the fam. Managed to sneak in a few hours on Sunday.

Got the exhaust buttoned up minus the last 2', 3 new hangers welded to the frame and this thing is as sturdy as it could be. Everything worked nicely together, lots of space around the passenger side shock and the muffler clears the driveshaft with lots of room.

Next up I tidied up my front trans cooler lines. They were a bit sloppy and not nicely secured. Now everything has a perfect home with no rubbing or chaffing through, easy to service and no leaks. Also tweaked my bumper mounts slightly to get the bumper better aligned.
Very happy with how this front-end turned out. I can have the entire thing dropped off the truck in 15 mins, very serviceable.

Put it all back together and hit a bush road for a minute to shake down a few things.

I've had a roque abs/service brake system alarm come on since this hit the road. I can only make it a short distance and it starts chiming away at me. It took me a minute to wrap my head around this and how to solve it.
The ECM is tuned with efi live for the new gear ratio and tire size, so why is the abs system pissed off?
Well turns out the ECM doesn't talk to EBCM (brake control module) and it has no idea the tire size changed. So the passive abs system is getting a really fast signal from the VSS because of the gear change and a much slower pulse from the front wheel speed sensors biggest of the larger diameter tire. This discrepancy is causing it to say "cannot compute" and then it kicks out the abs system and affiliated codes.

I was fortunate enough to borrow this fancy scanner that has some pretty nice features.

Here's the codes it was kicking out

Luckily the topkicks and kodiaks of this vintage came with a 9r22.5, approx 38.3" diameter tires. This got me within the +/-10% tolerance the EBCM will accept and just like that my dash lights are all resolved, hallelujah.

 

[Heavyhoe02]

^ Thanks for the good words guys. It's kind of fun to look back at this thing from 6 months ago with plywood fenders I screwed into place to where it's at now.

Thanks for this. I appreciate the words of encouragement. Glad I didn't disappoint. Hope the camper lives up to this expectation.
When it comes to the wife and appreciation, she's happy now that it's on the road. She will be thrilled once all the work stops and we are out enjoying life with our kids.


Took Saturday off to spend with the fam. Managed to sneak in a few hours on Sunday.

Got the exhaust buttoned up minus the last 2', 3 new hangers welded to the frame and this thing is as sturdy as it could be. Everything worked nicely together, lots of space around the passenger side shock and the muffler clears the driveshaft with lots of room.

Next up I tidied up my front trans cooler lines. They were a bit sloppy and not nicely secured. Now everything has a perfect home with no rubbing or chaffing through, easy to service and no leaks. Also tweaked my bumper mounts slightly to get the bumper better aligned.
Very happy with how this front-end turned out. I can have the entire thing dropped off the truck in 15 mins, very serviceable.

Put it all back together and hit a bush road for a minute to shake down a few things.

I've had a roque abs/service brake system alarm come on since this hit the road. I can only make it a short distance and it starts chiming away at me. It took me a minute to wrap my head around this and how to solve it.
The ECM is tuned with efi live for the new gear ratio and tire size, so why is the abs system pissed off?
Well turns out the ECM doesn't talk to EBCM (brake control module) and it has no idea the tire size changed. So the passive abs system is getting a really fast signal from the VSS because of the gear change and a much slower pulse from the front wheel speed sensors biggest of the larger diameter tire. This discrepancy is causing it to say "cannot compute" and then it kicks out the abs system and affiliated codes.

I was fortunate enough to borrow this fancy scanner that has some pretty nice features.

Here's the codes it was kicking out

Luckily the topkicks and kodiaks of this vintage came with a 9r22.5, approx 38.3" diameter tires. This got me within the +/-10% tolerance the EBCM will accept and just like that my dash lights are all resolved, hallelujah.

Man that abs issue would of left 99.99% of people scratching their head trying to figure it out. Strong work!!!!!!!

 

[Andrew_S]

Definitely a head scratcher, way to much time reading forum posts that led to dead ends. Thankfully there is a fairly active GM SAS group and a few super helpful guys on it.
Still picking away at small projects, street legal here requires mud flaps on the rear. Picked up these super thick tandem mud flaps for $52 total. When I was shopping around I was blown away to find specialty mud flaps for $6-700, but who am I to judge.

Cut to fit, can get 2 spares out of these as well.

Mud flaps installed and mocking up my tail pipe.

First time tig welding stainless, definitely nowhere near perfect, but it should hold.

One clamp away from calling this exhaust completely done

Had my first major failure, on my way home last week it blew a transmission line and leaked $200+ in fluid everywhere, entire truck was covered.

Very happy with how this front-end turned out. I can have the entire thing dropped off the truck in 15 mins, very serviceable.

This statement proved to be very timely.... This was a stupid mistake. When I was extending the one trans cooler line I used a piece of rubber hose I had in my box, no info on it or pressure rating. Completely forgot I was planning to swap it out and then never did. Apparently these cooler lines can spike upwards of 100 psi, go figure. Whatever this was off of, it was not meant for this application.

I was able to patch it together and fill it with fluid and drive it home. Drained the fluid today, check the magnet on the plug and filled it back up with some transynd and it appears we may have dodged a bullet and not hurt the trans. Luckily it didn't completely drain the trans, even luckier it happened 1 min from home and not 100 km's deep into the woods.

Took it out for another family picnic/hunting trip. Working through a few squeaks and rattles, but one by one I'm getting them solved.

 

[Pacific Northwest yetti]

That reminds me, I still have a bobby pin on mine I had fashioned into a tranny clip like 100k miles ago... I should probably fix that, ( and a few other things) ..


Also where the heater hoses go through the firewall, are prone to failure on these rigs if you have not replaced them, or carry some spares

 

[Andrew_S]

^ Thanks, that one has been on my radar for a minute now. Picked up these PPE fittings and replacement hose to address it, just waiting on the second hose to arrive.

I've got a short list of modifications I plan to make the next time I drain the coolant, including this L5P oil cooler.

Got a couple hours in yesterday, noticed my PS pump was slightly out of alignment so I spaced it out 1/8" with some washers and sucked the compressor in a 1/16". Belt alignment is spot on now.

Final resting place for the tail pipe, this is tight. I've check at full droop and the shackle doesn't hit, I may need to change out the shackle for a 1" longer one under full compression though, time will tell on that one.

I also got the F350 parking brake cables installed, took some custom mounting solutions, but they are secure and out of the way of everything else.

To my surprise, the stock super duty cables were the perfect length and didn't require any additional modification, sometimes you get lucky. I just need to sort out one intermediate cable and these will be functional.