Hello everyone! Happy to say that I just recently purchased a 17' Silverado Reg Cab with the 5.3. (Black out edition which took me months to find) My plan with the truck is to lower it and gather as much info I can about the best and safest way to reach 600 rwhp. Since I'm down the street from Texas Speed I was going to mainly use their products with the build unless people have had issues. I'm open to all suggestions and looking forward to learning and wrenching on the truck. If anyone is in the Austin area, hit me up!

 

Welcome! E85 in your area?

 

Yessir! All over the place.

 

Get a nice stage 2 or 3 cam with +32% fuel lobe (fuel lobe is important)
cold air intake
1-7/8" headers (Long tube)
exhaust? - because you most likely will anyway. I had the corsa sport system but dumbed it down with a resonator and put an electric dump after the Y pipe. Nice and quiet and then basically monster-jam when the dump is opened, more sleepy
LT4 injectors
LT4 high pressure fuel pump
Some kind of in take low pressure pump - either single walbro 450 pump will do around 600whp but I had to add a voltage booster to get past 650whp. I also believe there's a nice duel pump set up out there for us ($$$$$).
E85 sensor if you don't have one from factory - run e85 if its not too much of a hassle for you, I love it - smells like racing and fair food!
LT4 supercharger - I found mine for 1200 bucks. Like everyone else I bought the "conversion kit" from Andy at ADM Performance, his kit is pretty point and shoot and he is super helpful. I went with the smallest pulley he offers because I knew I was willing to deal with the fueling if need be. Has to be off a 15/16 corvette 706 I believe - can't remember
Obviously a tune (or many tunes along the way)

On E85 you should be into 600. I ended up throwing an a 10% overdriven lower pulley to crank it up to 13 pounds of boost and i was around 650 but running out of fuel on the low end and think there's more timing ot be made in the tune, installed a voltage booster and will see how I do in the morning. I'm hoping to get into the high 600's. Would love a clean 700whp...might port the blower later....who knows.
There's a lot of little odds and ends that go into all of this obviously but I think this is the right track to the make that power in the most cost effective and reliable way/efficient way. It looks like my truck came from the dealership with the blower on it, love that its an OEM blower. Very well behaved daily driver and an absolute beast when I put the pedal down.
Another thing, i know it's rare for the single cabs but, 4x4 makes it a whole new game if you got it - really puts me in the position to compete with some heavy hitting cars.

 

Thank you! I had pretty much what you had on my list up to the supercharger. All the supercharger kits I've been seeing are $5-6k... 1200 seems way more reasonable.
My plan for exhaust and cam will be from Texas Speed but I'll take take your advice on the fuel lobe for sure!
I'm not 4wd unfortunately so I'm going to be lowering it (got my eye on the Belltech performance handling kit with coilovers) and finding some decent strip/street tires.. hopefully that will help a bit..
I can move those questions to the proper threads tho when the time comes.
Thank you again for the info! Much appreciated.