UofAZCats Victory Red Rally Silverado

UofAZCats · October 3, 2021

Decided to make a change and took off the chrome bug deflector. It really changes the look and I really like it. Just worried about chips so I ordered the form fitting bug deflector from AVS that tapes to the front face of the hood. Before I put it on I am going to get it painted red to match the truck.

Before:

After:

UofAZCats · October 3, 2021

Picture of the painted caliper once the truck was put back together (note this taken was before I removed the bug deflector). I was not entirely sure how they would look but I am really happy with them.

shakenfake · October 3, 2021

Thank god it looks so much better lol

What drop is on that? 4/5?

UofAZCats · May 19, 2022

Been a while since I did more than wash and drive her around. Not that I drive her much now that I daily drive my 05 Suburban. Last weekend I took her to the Battle in Bama in Mobile. Just short of a 1000 miles on the trip and she drove great. That said I got tired of the rubbing of my front tires. My truck is lowered 2/4 on 22" stock wheels and has rubbed on tighter turns no matter the adjustments I had made, short of getting smaller tires. I didn't want to get smaller tires because she rides smooth now and I didn't want to impact that. Since I did just get new tires I figured it was time to do something about it.

So today I was able to take the day off from work and perform surgery. Inspired by the Nor Cal mod that the big wheel boys have to do to avoid rubbing, I performed a Cen Fla mod (just made that name up). Basically I pulled the inner liner out and then usign a grinder I trimmed the metal seam down where it was rubbing. Not as involved as the a Nor Cal sicne I didn't actually cut any of the metal parts out. Took about 3 hours total. Now the rubbing is gone and I am immensely happy.

UofAZCats · May 19, 2022

On 10/3/2021 at 1:51 PM, shakenfake said:

Thank god it looks so much better lol

What drop is on that? 4/5?

Sorry I missed your question. My drop is 2.5/4.5 basically though I typically just say it is 2/4 to keep it simple.

UofAZCats · August 22, 2022

The exterior trim on the truck always kind of annoyed me. Not sure why GM chose to ship these trucks with dark gray colored exterior trim. On my red/black truck it always struck me as wrong. I really like what they are doing now on the premium versions, particularly the red line edition GM vehicles where the trim is a smooth, gloss black. I had been researching had to either buy new black trim or to re-color it. I couldn’t find any good replacement trim for sale so re-coloring was the way to go.

I tried using Solution Finish to darken the trim. I really love Solution Finish because it did a great job, when combined with Cerakote, on the trim of my 2005 Suburban. In this case though, Solution Finish did not darken the trim color. So I moved on to painting the trim.

After looking at a bunch of YouTube videos ranging from useful to low quality, I found a guy, Monty Crisp, on Lowered GM Fullsize Facebook group that does this type of work in Georgia. Not having the time or energy to drive to Georgia to have him perform the work, he was good enough to give a quick explanation of how to paint the trim. He has his own shop and the pictures of his truck and its trim look phenomenal. Armed with his advice and the YouTube input I decided to give painting a try.

Having a shop Monty has access to better painting tools than I do. I don’t have an air compressor, paint booth or any other fancy tools so I had to do it with rattle cans. For the most part I used paint and supplies from local auto parts places. I did order a couple of items from Amazon, including a can of SEM Trim Gloss Black paint. The items I used changed as I went along as I found different options at different stores. The following ware the items I used:

Sand paper 180, 600, 800, 1000, 1500 and 2000

3M 7447 Scuff Pad

Blue Hawk Painters Tape

Tape and Drape 6’

Disposable gloves

Adam’s Polishes All-Purpose Cleaner mixed with water

Tack Cloth

Dupli-Color Plastic Adhesion Promoter

Dupli-Color Primer Sealer

SEM Trim Gloss Black Paint

Raptor 1K Gloss Black

Steps:

1 – Removed the trim around the wheels from the truck, which required removing the wheels. I did them one at a time because I didn’t want to put the truck up on jack stands for the length of the project. I took this trim off because I didn’t want to mask and paint all of that on the truck. It took a while but it made the process easier with those smaller trim pieces. I did not take the bumper trim off. I wasn’t interested in taking the bumpers off.

2 – Sanded the front bumper trim with 180 grit sandpaper. I followed up with 800 grit and then 1500 grit. The 800 and 1500 were probably not needed but I wanted to get the front bumper trim as smooth as possible. The back bumper has more pronounced texture and that I did not want to remove since it is a safety feature (and it would have taken a lot of work). All sanding was done by hand. As with the rear bumper trim, I was not interested in removing the texture from the wheel trim so I used the scuff pad as part of the next step.

3 – Cleaned everything down with All-Purpose mixed with water. Once clean the plastic has a dull gray color due to the sanding.

4 – Masked up the front and rear bumper. This always takes longer than I want.

5 – Applied adhesion promoter to the plastic. I followed the directions but Duplicolor uses the same basic directions regarding coats – 2 light coats and 3^rd medium cost. With the adhesion promoter I am not sure that isn’t too much or maybe I just put it on too heavy.

6 – Applied sealer within 10 minutes of applying the adhesion promoter. Same coating directions as the adhesion promoter. After putting it on I noticed that the surfaces that were sanded smooth on the bumper trim had a gritty look along the surface. I did not have the issue with the wheel trim. I attribute the grit to too much adhesion promoter though it may well have been something else.

7 – On the front and rear bumper trim I wet sanded the gritty sections with 800 grit sandpaper and smoothed them back out. Since I sanded I washed them again with All-Purpose mixed with water to get the residue off.

8 – Painted the wheel trim with the SEM trim paint in 3 coats and left to dry for a couple of days.

9 – Painted the front and rear bumper with the 1k Raptor paint in three coats. After the second coat I ended up sanding down some more gritty sections that were missed with earlier sanding and are now more obvious with the paint on. Used 800 grit to wet sand then cleaned again with All-Purpose mixed with water. Waiting for it to completely dry in humid Florida was a chore given at this point in the process I am ready to be done with this thing and have my truck back.

10 – Pull masking and re-attached wheel trim.

I did buy some SprayMax 2K Clear Gloss but decided not to use it. The pain that goes with applying 2K gloss is more than I ultimately wanted to deal with on this project. Also the trim is already more glossy than I really wanted let alone adding more gloss. I am concerned about durability without the clear gloss but that is part of the reason I chose the 1K Raptor which is supposed to be harder that typical paint. I am really concerned about the SEM Trim paint. I don’t think it was intended to be placed over sealer and won’t soak in as intended. I noticed that it scuffed pretty easy before it putting on the truck. I may have to pull it off, sand it and paint it with the 1K Raptor it doesn’t last. Time will tell on both of these decisions.

This process took me about two weekends plus fitting these steps in between my work schedule. It took most of the last two Saturdays, a few hours on each of the past two Sundays and a few hours on Friday. This doesn’t include all of the research time which I did a lot of before undertaking a project like this.

Original color: (I didn't paint the sidesteps but I didn't get a before picture of the pieces I did paint).

Compare/Contrast:

Final product: (I will get more pictures).

UofAZCats · February 19

Changed out my original struts for Viking adjustable coilovers. Didn't take any pictures but after some trial and error got them adjusted to the right height and feel. The original struts were ok but when pulling into driveways with steep slopes from normal sloped roadways the wheel would scrape the wheel wells if I wasn't going really, really slow. No springs are stiffer and prevent that from happening. Love them so far.

UofAZCats · August 19

Finally got tired of the bumpers. Specifically the front bumper. I detailed in an earlier post that I had used first plasti-dip then painted that with real paint. Well unfortunately while I was washing the truck with the pressure washer the clear cost started to flake on one corner. I lived with it for a months but finally got fed up when more started coming off and pulled the trigger on new paint matched bumpers. I bought them from MBI out of Michigan. The first front bumper arrived and a couple parts of it were bent/damaged from shipping. MBI offered me two choices - a refund a portion of the cost if I think I could make it work or they would just send me a new one. After playing with it a little bit I decided to have them send me a new one. The rear and the second front bumper were excellent and the paint matched perfectly.

Installation was pretty straightforward for the front bumper with several good guides on YouTube. The rear bumper was a bit more invovled and the YouTube videos were slightly less helpful. I referenced two in particular because each skipped or missed certain things that when combined covered the whole thing. Loosening and lifting the bed was tough nerve racking since I hadn't done it before and wasn't sure of what might go wrong. In the end it went pretty well after peicing together the steps from the YouTube videos.

UofAZCats · August 24

Finally pulled the trigger on getting a new radio. My 2015 does not have Android Auto/Apple Carplay and I had always wanted to add that. The cost of upgrading to a new stock radio with the required programming costs associated with it kep me from going that route. After seeing the Ram T-Rex screen I have wanted the bigger screen, which for our trucks requires going with an android based radio. Alpine had an 11 inch screen but like the new stock it was damn expensive.

This last Prime Day in July I picked up this 13" radio for $550. I decided agains the 14" or larger screens because of their price (~$1,000) and because they replace the stock A/C controls with non-stock looking buttons on the side instead of bottom. This screen fills the space between the 2 A/C vents and keeps the stock A/C unit and seat heater controls. This unit has 12 cores with 8 GB /128 GB and the screen resolution is fantastic. I have a Bose system so a I had to buy and install fiber optic box (~$200). The installation went pretty well because I watched several videos from other installs of android radios similar to mine before even buying the radio. The instructions that with the radio are actually for a different but similar model. Having watched many videos helped translation issues or gaps.

The biggest difference between these Android units and the stock is the User Interface. The Android can do a lot more than the stock radio but the user interface on the stock is much smoother initially. The interfaces that came with the radio (this version had 6-7 different options for the interface style) were ok but I finally settled on using Vivid Launcher which I got from the Google Playstore.

Getting the settings right has taken awhile. The customer service has been pretty dang good. Given the number of settings and lack of documentation for those settings the customer service needed to be good otherwise I would have sent this thing back in a heartbeat. I have enjoyed the trial and error and search through the settings doing problem solving. They did have to send me updates due to an issue with getting the Android Auto working wirelessly but the got it to me within 12 hours of notifying them of the issue. The time change between FLA and China was the primary delay.

Overall it is better than what I had with the stock radio.

UofAZCats · August 24

I have been a little slow to get to the standard 90K miles maintenance items but yesterday I got started. I changed out the engine air filter and the cabin air filter. I am amazed how bad the cabin air filter looks after removing it. i have seen others post pictures of theirs and figured they must leave their trucks outside or something else similar. My truck is garage kept and when I drive it to work I park inside a parking garage. The engine air filter doesn't look anywhere near that bad.

Added high mileage Sea Foam to the oil and gas.

Also ordered PowerStop Z36 brake rotors and pads, spark plugs and wires for install here in the near future.

UofAZCats · September 2

Been on a little tear with doing things to my Rally. Unlike the radio, which I did as an upgrade, this past couple of days I jumped on some standard maintenance items that are needed now that my truck is at 97K miles. My front brakes were squealing so it was time to do a brake job. That worked out great because I needed to change out my spark plugs as well and everything I read/watched on that topic recommended taking the wheels off. I installed PowerStop Z36 brake rotors and pads and new ACDelco Iridium spark plugs.

I started with the rear brakes and had a devil of a time with getting the rear rotors off. None of the videos talked about how to get the rears off with the emergency brake engaged, though they all recommended it as part of jacking the truck up. I quickly realized that they were not stuck because of corrosion (given I am in Florida and my truck has never been in snow or on the beach I did not expect much corrosion) but because they were hung up on the emergency brake. What took awhile was how to figure out how to get them off.

While using the caliper screws on the rotor, two pins and two little metal pieces fell off the back of the brakes. I didn't know it at the time but those hold the emergency brake in place. Even with those off and the emergency brake pedal released, the rotors would not come off because while the pedal was released the emergency brake still did not disengage. I finally got the emergency brake to release by starting my truck and putting it into drive. The rotors flew off and fortunately nothing was damaged but in retrospect I was extremely lucky that no one else was in the area with me. I definitely do not recommend this method.

Fortunately the the pin assemblies that hold the emergency brake in place wree not damaged and I was able to get them back on with only a small amount of rehab to the end piece that the pin connects with to hold the spring in place. Getting the spring compressed was tough and I had to use a wire to twisted to compress the spring enough to get the pin through the metal end piece. After I had the one with the wire in place, before I cut the wire to allow the spring to return to normal size, I was able to fit the other assembly into place without the wire because there was enough play. After the second was on I cut the wire and pulled it out.

Everything else on the rear was pretty straightforward. The front brakes and the spark plugs went pretty dang smooth but still took about 5-6 hours. I took my time and did OCD things like clean the area behind the wheel well cover. The break in went smooth but sure smelled bad. Not too bad for the first time did my first brake job/spark plug replacement.

Pictures of my old spark plugs. Not too bad for 97K.