'03 GMC Sierra 2wd build... Liv.

[XJLI]

I've learned that sometimes its just best to "buy the kit."

Camburg Chevy/GMC 1500 2wd 99-06 Performance 6.5 Kit

The next best thing to a long travel kit! The Chevy Silverado Performance off-Road system will give you 10″ of wheel travel and 1.5″ wider per side track-width. This system is designed to give you great off-road performance. By eliminating the upper stock ball joint ( weak link) with a 1″...

camburg.com

 

[rho]

I've learned that sometimes its just best to "buy the kit."

Camburg Chevy/GMC 1500 2wd 99-06 Performance 6.5 Kit

The next best thing to a long travel kit! The Chevy Silverado Performance off-Road system will give you 10″ of wheel travel and 1.5″ wider per side track-width. This system is designed to give you great off-road performance. By eliminating the upper stock ball joint ( weak link) with a 1″...

camburg.com

That is one we're looking at, in fact. with the addition of replacing the coil buckets with a tower for coilovers.

 

[CrazyDrei]

Holy cow, the upper ball joint angle!!! It's ridiculous. Did you try the same thing but with the factory spindles to see if the angle is better? I have a 4wd and couldn't do the spindles but my angles look factory with the Atomic Fab coilover setup. But then again I am running DS401s which have less travel than the 501s you have.

Interested to see where you go from here.

 

[rho]

Holy cow, the upper ball joint angle!!! It's ridiculous. Did you try the same thing but with the factory spindles to see if the angle is better? I have a 4wd and couldn't do the spindles but my angles look factory with the Atomic Fab coilover setup. But then again I am running DS401s which have less travel than the 501s you have.

Interested to see where you go from here.

I suspect the lower shock location on the 4wd trucks is a bit more outboard than on the 2WD, but I'd have to measure one. The lift spindles are about half an inch taller than the stock ones and the angles are about 3deg better. From the factory the 4wd shocks are like an inch longer or so. Either way, a tower is in the near future. Because even when we do a camburg kit we'll still do coil overs.

Here's a backside shot of the spindles. My tube of locktite didn't survive unfortunately.





Front end at the moment, One inch spacer on the stock springs and the medicore rancho shocks.

 

[mobydick 11]

I am glad to have run across your build . I was looking at a new jeep but after they only offers me 3 G trade in for my 09 !! I decided to have some fun with it and do some thing similar as you . I also only have 2 wheel drive ,but limited slip rear. put a set of KO2s on it and ordered a 2 1/2 front and 1 inch back leveling kit . I do not want to raise the back to much because it will be a truck camper with an ARE aluminum cap and an off road 4x6 trailer . my truck is a regular cab and 6 foot box . Have fun

 

[rho]

I am glad to have run across your build . I was looking at a new jeep but after they only offers me 3 G trade in for my 09 !! I decided to have some fun with it and do some thing similar as you . I also only have 2 wheel drive ,but limited slip rear. put a set of KO2s on it and ordered a 2 1/2 front and 1 inch back leveling kit . I do not want to raise the back to much because it will be a truck camper with an ARE aluminum cap and an off road 4x6 trailer . my truck is a regular cab and 6 foot box . Have fun

Good tires and a traction device in the rear axle means you can get a lot of places with a 2wd! Ours has 33's on it right now and the factory G80 locker and it does a lot better than most people expect.
One of the biggest things we found with our truck is that the short wheelbase lets you get a lot of places and through a lot more narrow trails and tighter switch backs that'd be an issue with the longer trucks. For reference my JKU has a 116" wheelbase and our truck is 119" and the turning radius is only a little tighter on the jeep.

Have fun with it and explore! A lot of this is just about getting outside and exploring with whatever means you can, imo its better to get out there in a 2wd vs spending tons of time and money building the perfect 4x4 and never using it.

 

[rho]

Welp, got back from a 3 day trip with both trucks (my jeep and my wifes truck) overall the truck did awesome, over 200 miles off road, only hiccup was that she broke a front shock. Which isn't a huge surprise given she tends to haul through stuff.
First day we went out from auburn to Sugar Pine reservoir then camped rather late that night.
We met up with a larger group on the second day and did a run with those folks, camped out, did some mild trails then departed from bowman lake on the third day, after we departed from the main group she dropped me like a hot potato. Dirt roads and stuff my jeeps speed is somewhat topped out around 40 and uh, yeah. Didn't see her again for like 5 miles till we got back to pavement, haha.

Found the busted shock when we got home, so time time to think about stuff a bit more. Limit straps are on order, replacement (cheap) shock on the way so hopefully its not going to be too bad.

Also I got a bunch of steel in over the weekend for building the shock towers for the truck. So I'll be looking at that and refining a design for these towers, I already got a rough sketch laid out so I'll be designing it this week and hopefully I can start fabbing brackets and welding it up in the next week or two.

Another project that I'm considering for this is to do a GMT900 front brake swap whenever we do new tires down the road as that would be a good time to go to a 17" wheel and well, the GMT900 brakes require 17" wheels... so might as well look into it, I haven't done all the digging and gotten the part numbers yet but its a thought for the future.

 

[6gun]

Mo brakes = Better driving! I'm planning on upping to 20's next tire buy but I already have the wheels in the shop so I don't hurt so bad all at once! Sounds like she is due for a true long travel setup soon! Glad y'all had a good weekend!

 

[Mr. Merk]

My 05 Crew has the bigger brakes. I've blown through a couple pair of ACDelco Durastop pads and 2014+ rotors which were supposed to be better.

I just recently installed the Powerstop Z36 brakes, despite personally hating cross drilled AND slotted rotors. They grab much better than the ACDelcos did and so far are holding up better to my aggressive braking and towing.

 

[rho]

Mo brakes = Better driving! I'm planning on upping to 20's next tire buy but I already have the wheels in the shop so I don't hurt so bad all at once! Sounds like she is due for a true long travel setup soon! Glad y'all had a good weekend!

Yeah. A LT setup is kind of being planned on.... Not sure if we're going to do a midtravel or full long travel kit.
I'm leaning towards a full LT setup, because I know she won't destroy it quite as fast. Of course if we do a LT setup... that means good coilovers, glass fenders, 14bolt rear end... etc...

My 05 Crew has the bigger brakes. I've blown through a couple pair of ACDelco Durastop pads and 2014+ rotors which were supposed to be better.

I just recently installed the Powerstop Z36 brakes, despite personally hating cross drilled AND slotted rotors. They grab much better than the ACDelcos did and so far are holding up better to my aggressive braking and towing.

Good to know... I have hawk pads and a big rotor kit on my JKU and its awesome. I'll look at the powerstop stuff when it gets time to do the fronts again. Super good to hear that they're holding up to uh, spirited... driving.

 

[Mr. Merk]

Good to know... I have hawk pads and a big rotor kit on my JKU and its awesome. I'll look at the powerstop stuff when it gets time to do the fronts again. Super good to hear that they're holding up to uh, spirited... driving.

I'll add that these were recommended to me by a friend who uses them on his Tundra that tows his 4runner rock-crawler up and down the Ozarks. Otherwise I would have never picked them. I was going to go with EBC yellows and slotted rotors which is what we use on the Cayenne that tows the Airstream. They were about double the price.

 

[rho]

How is the skid plate project coming along?

We're still in the planning phase for em, I don't want to end up with a huge mess of unplanned work or not having stuff figured out so i'm trying to at least get a rough design/sketch done before I start bending metal. Where the factory tow hooks attach there are some good hard points to attach some slider tubes that can run down to the front lower cross member that the factory splash shield attaches to, and having a plate that goes over that sounds like it'll work out very well.
I want to keep the whole thing removable because my wife is much more interested in getting a winch now... some of this was caused by our trip this last weekend and it sounds like she wants the extra security and getting unstuckness of having a winch... Especially with the 2WD. So, its becoming a thing now.
There is plenty of space behind the factory bumper and between the frame rails so its just a matter of getting a plate in there and mounting the fairlead and then making sure we have access to it after the install.

I feel like I'm in a design cycle at work in which the scope creep is occuring and suddenly what was supposed to be one thing turns into something that does ALL the things, haha. Luckily this isn't too bad. I'll def be trying to get a full drawing of this when I get finished with it as it sounds like the GMT800 mafia would be interested in it.

 

[rho]

Started sketching up a new upper shock/coilover mount. Gonna mock it up in cardboard soon, and start doing fit checks. Prob going to have a few rev's of this before I get around to welding it up...

 

[rho]

Went through a couple more rev's on the shock mount design and I got it to a point where I was comfortable with my CAD model to make a drawing and a very rough cardboard model to do fit checks with. I would have 3d printed something but my stupid printer blew up the extruder a while back and I haven't had a ton of time to fix it yet.
1/2" drill bit for a super ghetto upper bolt mount. I'm undecided if i'm going to use a couple big shim/spacers to take up the gap between the upper bearing and the sides of the bracket or if I'm going to add two additional tabs to provide support inboard of the sides of the bracket. I need to look at some numbers for the strength of 1/2" hardware in shear loads before deciding on anything.

Of course this is all depends on how well this mockup fits ontop of the existing coil bucket and what my options are for actually mounting this thing. There is still the possibility that this all will get tossed out and I have to just cut the bucket off and weld a tower on.

 

[mobydick 11]

so i finally got around to installing the 2.5 front an 1 inch back lift and level kit on my 2009 gmc Sierra today . It sits real nice now . sorta wish i had bought the longer shock spring lift tough . it was a lot of work and my shocks are original and it would not have been any more work to replace them .