Well first off......buy the truck. You might want to think about a dealer installed Radix supercharger, exhaust, and cold air intake kit.
My dealer (Munday Chevrolet) offered me all of those mods for a $7,000 option. Warrantied by GM too.
This is very cheap if you do the math. I had to turn down the option due to my better half .
If you can take up on that option, I would do it in a heart beat!
If not..... do these mods:
- break in truck and switch to Mobil 1 semi synthetic 5w-30 oil.
-cold air kits: Volant w/ ram air or K&N FPIK kit.
-exhaust: Corsa Sport kit, Dynatech longtube headers w/ high flow cats (this is a direct bolt on kit and emission legal).
-160* or 170* thermostat
-Then compliment these mods with a Nelson Tune.
Good Luck!

Jim

 

The way I look at is if it was an actual problem with break in that they wouldn't send cars out from the factory with FI. Just stick a 2x4 under the GO pedal for the first 3k miles.

 

Very true. I actually read somewhere that some people (NOT ME) advocate breaking in an engine by absolutely beating the hell out of it. Sounds dangerous, and with an extra 100hp to play with, would be tough for me to avoid.

That said, if I could swing the freight, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

 

05's have efans factory.

 

Actually, you SHOULD run the motor hard on brake in. The ring need the high cylinder pressures that this generates for them to properly seat. If you baby it they don't have the extra pressure they need to seal properly. I worked for a nascar race team and watched them brake in a lot of motors on the dyno. The first start, they would bring them up to temp, set the timing and the shut them off and check for leak and that every thing was tight. Then they re-fired them, and started making hard pulls in creasing the rpm with each pull until they hit redline. Then repeated the proses untill the torque stopped rising and then they knew the ring where seated and the motor was ready to go racing.

 

Check out the new CAI from outlaw, They hook right up to the radix intake, I was the first one to get one,( they did the R&D on my truck) I love it. No noticeable noise. 1.5 MPG increase on the 400 mile trip back home and big HP increase. Haven't dyno'd it yet but it was a huge differance.
Mark

 

Did that just yesterday. I found a black with pewter interior 2wd Sierra 1500 crew cab w/ the 5.3, and cashed in on the employee pricing and the GM Card points that I had been saving up. It is an SLE with the trailering package and not much else.

The fact that is as stock as my mom's Ford Escort is seriously bothering me, so I'm sure to take some of your advice sooner rather than later.

I'll try to get some pics up soon.

Thanks.

 

Not the 2500's .... that's why I added it to the list (I will be going to e-fans in the very near future though).

 

Factory e-fans are a nice touch. The front of the engine is nice and clean and easy to get to. I might have to go with a set of headers, just because they look like they would be so easy to put in. I just sold an LT1 F-body, so everything looks easy to me.

 

well **** i learn something new every day. but now that i think about it i think there was a thread on this couse people were wondering why they didn't