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

[NevadaLover]

Cheers to you and your missus, can't wait for the first pics of the little one!🍻

 

[Kingsize24]

Thanks for this, but don't let the looming deadline be misinterpreted as enthusiasm. Due date for kiddo #2 is 1 week from today, I'm just simply running out of time!

Do it! a 4 link would be a fun little project on your set up.

I have the special tool but lacked the mechanical ability to move those nearly 20 year old fittings from their resting place... These units are billet stainless from PPE, nice pieces for a very reasonable price. Thanks for the good words, this is a bit of a rinse and repeat ritual now (work/post/gratification of completing projects), almost there. The check list on the freezer is getting infinitely smaller everyday.

Yesterday I got the new oil cooler installed. This job is a breeze without all of the IFS stuff in the way. I don't even think I would have bothered if it was in it's stock form.

Immediately leaking... Sometimes the simplest jobs can be so...

Got to make good use of my newly installed lower rad hose drain plug atleast?

Finished the evening painting the hubs. These stick out from the rims and were starting to rust already. Small thing that bugged me.

I was having a bit of an issue with wheel balancing or lack thereof. After calling around it appeared my only options were static balancing or tire beads. The tire beads were less than ideal because airing up/down regularly introduces a decent amount of moisture into the tire and eventually the beads will start to clump and freeze together. I've read a lot of mixed reviews about beads, it seems like 80% of people remove them because of the trade offs. Static balancing wasn't a great option either because no one would guarantee it and I can't even fit weights on the inner side of the rim because the caliper is so tight.
After doing a fair bit of research I've decided to give these units a chance.

They are made by a company called centramatic and are quite affordable, not much more than the cost of standard balancing. They are basically just tire beads but they nest between the caliper and rim and don't impact the tire at all. Also, infinitely reuseable, unlike tire beads.
Fingers crossed these live up to the hype as this thing had a fairly good hop between 80-90km/hr previously.

Attempt #2 on my coolant pipe. New gasket and a dab of RTV this time.

New one piece wheel seals, compared to the 2 piece. This is 100% the direction to go for any rig that will get worked on regularly. The 2 piece design is nice for a truck that will hit the road and not get touched for 300k miles, but not this unit.

Time to get busy and get all of this junk back on the truck before this baby comes out!

I think you will like the Centramatics. Ive had Balance Masters on my 3500 since 2018, they definitely have improved my ride.

Congratulations on the coming baby #2 as well. Nothing better than a growing and loving family to share your outings with.

 

[Mekcanix]

Congrats on the new one soon to arrive and as I have said before Awesome work, the quality of your work is second to none. I am always truly impressed by what you have achieved on all your builds. I have the skills, but I do not have the patience to be meticulous in the detail, which means almost everything I build looks like it was cobbled together by a angry rabid beaver with no patience. So as a lot of us have said AMAZING WORK AND SKILLS

 

[yamaha225]

Let us know how the Centramatics work out for you! I bought a set off eBay that turned out to not be real ones, but off brand copies. I had them so I gave them a whirl but they didn’t do much to fix my minor vibration at highway speeds. My curiosity is whether real centramatics or balance masters would fix it.

I love the idea and not having to have tires balanced anymore but these off brand ones aren’t cutting it.

 

[KSM garage]

i love my centramatics. ive had them on my ram 3500 for 4+years and still work great. i have 37s with no wheel weights or balancing beads and i can cruise 80+mph with zero vibration and there is no weird wear on the tires. i will never run without them and i see no reason to balance my tires with them.

 

[Andrew_S]

Congrats on the new one soon to arrive and as I have said before Awesome work, the quality of your work is second to none. I am always truly impressed by what you have achieved on all your builds. I have the skills, but I do not have the patience to be meticulous in the detail, which means almost everything I build looks like it was cobbled together by a angry rabid beaver with no patience. So as a lot of us have said AMAZING WORK AND SKILLS

Thanks for this, we are both really quite happy to bringing our second son into the world in the next few days. I'm the furthest thing from a perfectionist, this truck is a proper 20 footer, so don't give me too much credit. My greatest strength is I'm overly ambitious, get so committed into a project that I just simply don't have any choice to figure it out and finish it. That about sums it up.

Thank you to everyone above on the good words about our upcoming family expansion.
I've been running the centramatics balancers for about a week and so far soo good. They've 100% calmed the terrible vibration I had previously. I've got a very minor vibe from 90-95 km/hr now, and I mean minor. I might try swapping the tires around and see if I can nail it down to a single unit. Just want to make sure I don't have a tire out of round.

This should be a pretty good update. Continuing on the to-do list, needed to check my rear hub bearing preload. I set it up earlier by feel but decided to go back and double check. My understanding is these dana 80 hubs like 15-20 in-lbs of pre load. Made up this little pre load checker thing, and was pleasantly surprised to find I nailed it on both sides, 17 & 19 in-lbs. Sometimes you just get lucky?

All ready to go back together

Wanted to check a few things over before hitting any bush roads, particularly my strike pads for the air bumps and how they would function under articulation. This was the easiest thing I could come up with.

and for scale, not bad for a full size and the rear bar is hooked up

Finishing up with some glory shots during an evening hunt tonight.

Flexing it out on a drainage ditch. Really happy to see this much effortless travel

Super stable with the wide rear wheel base.

All in all, this thing is just about perfect for our needs. It's capable of going way quicker down a forest service road than I have any business doing. The ride is great, and it has tons of power. The 273 works awesome, 4lo is creepy crawly slow in 1st.
Still lots to do but we are definitely on the right track.

 

[shabba]

You and @frojoe officially have the sickest trucks/build threads on here, Thank you Canada! I haven’t logged on here in a while and just stumbled upon your thread. What a treat that was to read through and superb work/craftsman ship with this thing. So sick!!

 

[Kingsize24]

You and @frojoe officially have the sickest trucks/build threads on here, Thank you Canada! I haven’t logged on here in a while and just stumbled upon your thread. What a treat that was to read through and superb work/craftsman ship with this thing. So sick!!

Ohh yeah Sally is a BAD GURL! 🤣

 

[Jeffer949]

Im pretty sure i said somewhere in this thread to build this now because life will get busier and the 2nd kid will come etc...... Congrats. While we all love watching you build this. Dont let us drive you. Remember why your building this. Which is to spend time with your family. And in that make sure you dont destroy your family staying super focused on projects if you get my drift. 2 home remodels have taught me they want you around more than they want what you can build for them. I am not saying you are. I just know many of a mans projects have destroyed a marriage. and its good to step back and think about that some times. Congrats on the kiddo. Cherrish them

 

[Andrew_S]

You and @frojoe officially have the sickest trucks/build threads on here, Thank you Canada! I haven’t logged on here in a while and just stumbled upon your thread. What a treat that was to read through and superb work/craftsman ship with this thing. So sick!!

thanks for this, I'm just a regular joe burning stuff together in my garage, but I appreciate the good words.

Im pretty sure i said somewhere in this thread to build this now because life will get busier and the 2nd kid will come etc...... Congrats. While we all love watching you build this. Dont let us drive you. Remember why your building this. Which is to spend time with your family. And in that make sure you dont destroy your family staying super focused on projects if you get my drift. 2 home remodels have taught me they want you around more than they want what you can build for them. I am not saying you are. I just know many of a mans projects have destroyed a marriage. and its good to step back and think about that some times. Congrats on the kiddo. Cherrish them

Man truer words were never spoken. We were lucky enough to welcome our 2nd son into this world about a week ago and it's definitely got much busier!
I'm off work for a month with the sole intent of spending time with family. I'll pick away at this when I can find time but I'm not making time for it at the moment like I had been earlier this year. Appreciate the check.

I found a few hours over the last week to chip away at a few things. First on the list was this nifty little Switch on the fly mount. It converts the standard 5 position switch to the cigarette lighter for a very discreet mount. One of the tunes is set up as a pedal kill tune for anti theft, this was driving the desire for it be fairly discreet.

Super clean final install.

I started messing around with the rear spare tire mount. I haven't settled on a final design yet but the camper will dove tail off the back something like shown below, the mount will mirror it.

This one really stumped me for a minute... I got all of the studs pressed into one of the TMR spare tire mount plates but it would not fit the rim worth a damn, it was like the studs were drilled on the wrong bolt pattern. Well turns out it's alternating 8x170 & 8x6.5, and only designed to run 4 studs....

I'm embarrassed to admit how many times I tried to fit it up with all 8 studs pressed into place.

Switching gears for a minute. I had to make up a plate to support the Idash gauges in the overhead console. The PPE mount I purchased worked great but I was modifying it to work with these gauges instead of the traditional size.

This is a poor visual representation but you get the idea. I'll grab a better image once my Y splitter cable arrives.

Next up, starting on the lights, front, rear and midship.
First up was the front bumper lights. Opted to try out the XL Pro's from BD.

Really nice little units, curious to see how they perform in the field.

Had to enlarge and profile the bumper a bit to fit these units but the finished product was worth the extra effort.

Going moose hunting for the next week, probably won't get much done in the meantime.

 

[YetiX]

I did the same cigarette lighter kill switch in my old CJ7. It didn't have a hard top so I was always worried about it getting stolen. Thieves tried twice and got nowhere but I still had to replace the lock cylinder both times.