This truck is way up there on the list of my all time favorite trucks. Absolutley love everything about it

 

I have the same problem. After driving the '00 T/A for a while then getting in the truck, I find myself pawing at the wheel more. I thought I might just get a rack and pinion off an f-body and swap into the truck. Here's my post of what I found so far. Steering Post

I havent done anymore research as of yet but I will get back on it soon.

 

Spoolin' your truck just screams mean and fast just sitting still. Looks bitchin

 

Thanks for all the great compliments guys!! Sorry I haven't updated this thread in a while but I've been having fun with the truck now that it's running right!!

Alot has happened since my issues with the truck in mid May, to the point where I almost sold it. I was frustrated and just tired of dealing with it and frankly TIRED of putting money in it with no results and getting hosed by people who claimed to be "professionals".
Around late May Jake (smokeshow) drove up from Arizona to SoCal to look at a engine out here and I suggested since he was coming this way that he should tow my truck back to Arizona with him see if he couldn't figure it out and get it running right.
He said sure and thought to myself he has no idea what he's agreeing to!!
I think he finally understood what he was in for when we loaded the truck on the trailer in L.A. and I want to say it was running on 4 cylinders...it sounded really BAD!!! Jake really had his work cut-out and I was wondering if he secretly regretted accepting to take on my pile of parts.
Anyways, off it went...



I was gone and out of town for a couple months and when I got back Jake had found out a few things and replaced a few things, such as:

1) It had two bad injectors and a third one that was on it's way out and working intermittently.
2) He replaced all the coil packs since there was suspicion that some of them were bad.
3) He also pulled the coil packs down off the firewall and put them back down on the valve covers.
4) Truck also had two plug wires that were burned through and another 3-4 that showed signs of cracking and melting.
5) As much as I liked the Edelbrock Pro-Flo for it's looks and performance I really wanted to swap it out and Jake had a TBSS intake laying around so we swapped them.

I'm sure there's a few other things that I've forgotten but after new coil packs, new plug wires, new injectors and a new intake...it ran on 8 cylinders again!!
He did a bunch of tuning and I think he had the boost up to 14-15lbs at one point and he'll have to tell how well it did at those boost levels but I do remember saying he was losing traction in third gear at triple digit speeds.

I drove out there and towed it home and it's been running good since then and I've been having fun with it. Because my meth wiring is still screwed up and the gas out here in Cali is we turned the boost down as far as it would go 8-9psi and pulled a few degree's of timing for safety and left it there for now.

 

On Sunday the fans quit working for some reason so when I got it home I checked the fuse and found this guy...



My truck likes to burn things!! I have a new policy that I don't drive the truck if it's hotter than 85 degree's outside!!

So Joseph (1FastBrick) is building me a new rear-end for my truck. The 10 bolt that's back there is on it's way out. Henry and Dusty found that the axle tubes had twisted inside the pumpkin housing while they built the rear suspension. They welded them up but that's kind of a stop gap and it's also leaking in a few area's. If I ever got decent traction with that rear-end I'm sure it'd go

So far this is what Joseph's got, I'm sure he can explain better than I can where he's at with it and what he's done but it's a big bad-*** 14 bolt.




This is where my axle tubes were twisting inside the pumpkin on my 10-bolt:


I'm pretty sure I won't be having that problem with this one!


I stuck the brackets on the axle tube just for ***** and giggles:




And I caught Joseph doing some tube straightening:




He should have the brackets welded up and the axle ready to go to the powder-coater tomorrow I think and it should be done by Friday, getting it power-coated black.
Hope to be filling the pumpkin with goodies early next week and get this one swapped in right afterwards. I'm going with 3.42 gears since the 3.73's top out too soon when i did the Mojave Mile. And I've always like tall gears (lower numerically). I think they'll do a good job of loading the turbo and it should get be to 175 mph in 3rd gear with the converter unlocked.
I'll hopefully be able to update this by the end of the week with pictures of a complete rear-end!

 

Your truck is sick man. By far my favorite silvy hands down. I wanna do that stripe on the r/t but would have to get your approval first lol keep up the work man

 

Also, while Joseph was molesting the rear-end as only he knows how
His friend and pretty badass welder to boot fixed my intake tube which had popped off while in boost earlier in the day. Ever since I got the intakes swapped I've had alignment issues with it because the Edelbrock Pro-Flo TB flange is almost vertical and up higher than the stock GM stuff. The TBSS intake is lower and pointed up about 15-20 degree's it seems like.

I don't have a good picture of it with the Edelbrock Pro-Flo but you can kinda see how well it aligns in this picture


And here it is with the TBSS intake, you can see how much of the TB is left uncovered:





So he did a little cutting and slicing on the intake tube...




Followed by some welding....








Next weekend I'll be bringing the truck down to Joe @ leftcoast in San Diego and he and I are gonna go through the meth harness and see if we can't get that to finally work properly. If we can get that done then the last and final thing to fix on the truck will be to get the converter to lock which isn't that big of an issue with me power wise, but it really helps when cruising and trying to get good fuel economy. I think that the transmission wiring harness has some wires crossed which probably happened when I re-spliced the harness together a while back. We'll see what happens.

 

PERMISSION GRANTED!!!
I can't pretend like I originated it since I stole it off the ACR Vipers so by all means grab it and go for it!!

 

Looks like he's doing a top notch job on that rear end! Going to need 3.08 gears to hit 175mph unlocked in 3rd. You will be at 8000rpm with 3.42's and converter slip. You will be at 7~7200 with 3.08's and a 28'' tire.