When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Watch Me Ruin My Tow Rig - "The Great White Bufallo" Build
Miatas are cool, but life often times requires utilitarian vehicles such as good ole American pickup trucks for comfortably hauling around broken miatas, pieces of miatas to fix broken miatas, and/or functional miatas to far away places where they may go fast in circles then very suddenly and randomly become broken. By just sheer convenience, they also make nice winter DD's for those of us in the northern states, can comfortably seat up to 6, and are wonderful for hardware store runs and basic homeowner project needs.
To fulfill this requirement, meet "The Great White Buffalo". She's a 2018 Silverado crew cab short box with the 5.3L L83 engine, 6L80E trans, and 4x4 that I bought brand new because I got a deal that very few would have said no to thanks to GM incentives, god-like bargaining skills, and a resourceful use of AutoTrader. I'll be documenting my process of "ruining it" here because I have problems and can't drive stock vehicles for very long. Enjoy my present and future financial misfortune
Miata was just recently fixed from a quick head gasket repair. I didn't have time to get some miles on it to verify my repair at home before MATG, so on the trailer she went. As it turns out, the car performed flawlessly after a week of flogging it through the mountains, but better safe than sorry.
Prior to the trip down, I snagged a low profile Truxedo roll-up tonneau cover to secure and keep things in the bed relatively dry in case of inclement weather. Ended up getting 12-13 mpg (hand calculated at the pump) while towing at 80 mph, which I was quite happy with all things considered.
Having AC, satellite radio, and 12VAC to keep sandwich supplies cold on the trip down were nice features that my miata will never have.
Hill descent control as part of the Z71 off-road package was a nice feature even though the weight being towed was relatively minimal for what the truck was rated for.
Later in the month, decided to toss on my US129 decal and de-badge the rest of the truck. Not having to wash around all the badges on the tailgate or front doors is a nice feature when hand washing it, plus I dig how clean the truck looks without them. I was going to remove the door moldings as well, but opted to keep them as a hopeful saving grace to parking lot door dings.
Added a 5% tint strip to the top of the windshield to help with the morning sun glare during my commute and did the two front windows at 20% so they finally matched the rears.
December 2018
Before the first winter storm of the year hit, I realized I needed to protect my interior. Snagged a set of full coverage huskyliner floor mats along with a DU-HA underseat storage bin. Fitment on the Huskyliner is much better than previous WeatherTech mats that I put in previous vehicles but your mileage may vary. The underseat storage gives a great space to store all the odds and ends that you always end up needing when hauling (straps, chains, jumper cables, ice scrapers, tire inflator, tire plugs, hitches, etc). It's a bit of a bummer than this reduces some of the interior space in the truck when the rear seats are folded up, but for my uses it was the best option.
It was a pretty boring year for the great white buffalo during this time as I was saving for my first house or spending cash modifying the new house. Only mods to the truck were oil changes and the mileage kept racking up. A highlight of the year for the truck was snagging a 6.0/4L80 setup out of a junkyard for a friend of mines 74 Dodge Dart restomod project. I also got Left Lane Designs started up and tossed a decal on the back window for some free advertising.
Location: Detroit (the part with no rules or laws)
Posts: 5,677
Total Cats: 800
16-18 chevs are the best looking IMO.
Hill decent works both ways. Forward and reverse. Nice for boat launching.
Low range on Z71 trucks means actual 4 wheel drive. Diffs locked.
Driving in auto 4wd won't hurt it, but it will hurt your t-case fluid life and fuel millage. It's actually not bad to use it during winter months, just leave it in auto.
Hidden offroad menu, if you haven't yet.
Decided I was going to go down the stormtrooper white and black theme. Had some leftover 3M gloss black vinyl from the miata that I repurposed to use on the B pillars and front bowtie
Early 2020
Sometimes you get lucky and what you are about to read is one of those cases. I'm known as "the guy with the miata" at work now for reasons I shouldn't have to explain here. One day in January, an older coworker came to me saying he had a miata he was looking to get rid of. He didn't drive it much and soon he was going to be losing his storage location for it. I wasn't really in the financial position to buy another car being in the middle of the Kswap on my NB, but out of courtesy I had to ask for details and check it out seeing as it was right down the street from work. Turns out it was a minty 1991 Mariner Blue B Package NA6 with 60k on it. To this day, I still don't think I've seen an NA with better original paint. The downside, it needed a rear main and clutch. When I asked him what he wanted for it, he said "somewhere around $2k". After picking my jaw off the floor, I told him I'd make some calls and get back to him ASAP. I told a buddy about the deal and we went in on the car together the next day, fixed the basic issues for a couple hundred bucks within a week, and resold the car for a solid $6k a couple weeks later.
Now your probably thinking, cool deal, but how does that smurf miata flip relate to the great white buffalo?
Well, truck wheels and tires are expensive. I wasn't a particular fan of the 18's with huge sidewall that the truck came with, but with my limited project funds being dumped into the Kswap I didn't exactly have extra cash for the truck... until now.. I have never been a lifted truck guy. It makes accessing everything more of a challenge, greatly decreases the handling capabilities of the truck, and kills your MPG while doing it. This truck rarely sees a gravel road, let alone anything offroad, so the point of lifting it is pointless to me for all intensive purposes. That pointed me towards the "street truck" build direction. I was looking for an OEM+ kind of look, so I set my sights on OEM 22" wheels from the Rally package 2014-2018 Silverado's. Luckily my patience paid off, and I found a set on craigslist for $700 with brand new Toyo Proxes on them which is what the tires are worth on their own.
The downside was the wheels saw winter salt since day 1 and the salt had embedded itself underneath the OEM wheel clearcoat and started oxidizing the aluminum finish. The only solution was to remove the tires and send them off to sand blasting and powder coat. Thankfully, I had gained some nice contacts for this work that owed me some favors and got it all done for $50/wheel. I wanted something that would look different than OEM but only slightly. Gloss black looks good, but is a standard GM finish. In my opinion, you lose some of the detail and contrast in the wheel when its painted such a dark color. Having searched through seemingly endless shades of grays and blacks, I ended up chancing it and gambling on Cadillac Gray Metallic from Prismatic Powders.
The color really pops in the sunlight while still looking a nice dark brake dust hiding shade the rest of the time.
After installing the 22's, I promptly sold the 18's with 36k miles on them for an easy $600. The entire wheel swap upgrade ended up costing me about $400 as I got new TPMS specific valve stems as long as I was remounting the wheels. Money well spent. Its crazy how much wheels and tires can change the look of a vehicle. The lower profile sidewall also makes a drastic difference in how the truck is composed around a corner. No more squishy sidewall rolling over when you give the steering wheel an input. It's no miata, but for a heavyweight pickup it was a noteworthy improvement without giving up too much in ride harshness.
16-18 chevs are the best looking IMO.
Hill decent works both ways. Forward and reverse. Nice for boat launching.
Low range on Z71 trucks means actual 4 wheel drive. Diffs locked.
Driving in auto 4wd won't hurt it, but it will hurt your t-case fluid life and fuel millage. It's actually not bad to use it during winter months, just leave it in auto.
Hidden offroad menu, if you haven't yet.
I was initially shopping for a 14-15, but I honestly snagged this one cheaper new than I could find a reasonably mileaged used older gen for.
The low range features are neat, but I have only used it once when I was yanking out a small tree from my yard and didn't want to rut up the rest of the lawn. Worked well so props there.
I do use the auto 4wd while in snow. One of the compromises I made on tires is that while they are great in wet rain and for dry traction, they aren't phenomenal in snow. I still need to be careful on corners and braking zones, but the auto 4wd helps with acceleration substansially in those snowy conditions.
The offroad menu is cool, but its more of a showpiece than anything that is of value for me. Its almost like the dummy oil pressure gauge on a miata. Nice feature, but useless to reference
Probably my favorite lesser known features of the truck are:
Hill Start Assist: keeps brakes applied when starting on a hill to prevent you from rolling backwards. Not super useful without a payload, but with a trailer or heavy payload in a hilly area like Fontana its definitely a nice feature.
Auto Window Rolldown w/ Keyfob: Double tap and hold the unlock button on the key fob and all 4 windows automatically roll down to cool the truck off in hot summer months
Integrated Trailer Brake Controller: This was an option to get, and completely worth it. Love the OEM fit and finish of this piece instead of having a clunky aftermarket controller screwed to the bottom of your dash.
I went through why I didn't want to lift the truck in the above posts, so naturally if someone doesn't go up with their truck, they must go down. Lowering a 4x4 is generally frowned upon because "you are ruining it for its offroad capability", but as mentioned, I never go offroad. I utilize the 4x4 solely for low traction situations on the street and ground clearance is never an issue. Lowering a truck generally makes it more stable due to a lower CG, and as long as you retain your OEM spring rates, the ride quality and towing capability is almost always unchanged as long as you aren't going crazy low. MPG doesn't change by going lower (if anything it improves). Last but not least, it gives the truck the street truck stance I'm going to be chasing after.
Starting at the front end... The Silverado uses a double wishbone front suspension, much like a miata, so a lot of the suspension design trade-offs are the same. Instead of having the camber bolts on the LCA's, the Silverado has them on the UCA's. If you go too low on a Silverado, you end up needing to get aftermarket offset bushings that give you a bit more travel to get closer to a 0 degree camber target. I don't think I'll get low enough to need them, but its a backup plan. For my uses on the truck, I don't intend on making it a corner carving machine, so 0 degree camber will be the target to minimize tire wear. To achieve the proper drop the correct way, you can use lowering springs, drop struts (which have spring perch spacing rings that you can remove or add to change the perch height anywhere from -2" to +2" from factory), and/or 2" drop spindles (which shift the hub bore upwards 2" from factory on the spindle, effectively lowering the vehicle 2"). I'm aiming for a 3" front drop, so to maintain proper CV angles and alignment without needing offset bushings, I picked up drop spindles and the drop struts which I plan to run at the 1" drop setting. You can see both of them pictured below. As an added benefit, the shocks/struts have much better valving than the OEM Rancho garbage that GM puts on these factory Z71 trucks so I'm expecting improved ride quality to boot. I went with Belltech parts all around, which have a very well known reputation.
For the rear, its very much unlike a miata being a straight axle vehicle , so I had a lot more homework to do here. The truck comes from factory with the axle underneath the leaf spring with a 1.25" thick spacer between them acting as a lift block. The easy button to lower a truck is to do a flip kit, which as the name suggests, flips the axle to mount to the top of the leaf spring instead of the bottom. The issue with just running that is, it gives you a 7" drop from factory and that's too low for me as I'm looking for a level look. I need to achieve a 5" rear drop to get the desired look, so the solution is to run lift hangers in addition to a flip kit. The lift hangers flip the shackle orientation around and raise the truck either 1-2" depending on mounting holes to the frame you choose to use. A longer shackle with mounting holes 1" and 2" further apart from factory shackles also lets you fine tune the rear height. To keep it short, while using the flip kit, the shackles and hangers allow you to run between 3"-6" of drop from factory by simply choosing which mounting holes to use instead of being stuck at 7" with a flip kit alone. Once this setup is all done, I'll have to measure pinion angle to verify I won't have driveline vibrations. If there is an angle delta, its as simple as buying the correct pinion shims. OEM bump stop towers need to be cut off and aftermarket bump stops are attached directly to the frame to keep the gap between the bump stop and axle the same as OEM. Flip kit and hangers shown below. Shocks and shackles shown above. Again, all Belltech.
Overall, the OEM springs are being retained so the expectation is for the truck to ride close to factory with the main notable change being the dampers. Excited to get the parts on, but I should probably find time to finish my Kmiata first. Oh the joys of project vehicles
Haven't had time to get the Belltech parts on yet due to other projects taking priority... but...
Lowering a 4x4 is generally looked upon in a negative light in my region of the country for a multitude of reasons. Annual registration was due, so it was perfect timing to get creative on the vanity plate in advance so the local rednecks aren't as triggered. #RUINED
In a great show of irony, a few days after the plates came in the truck decided it no longer wanted to start. Did a self diagnosis and it seemed likely that it was a starter that failed. Called the dealer and they mentioned that the starter was only covered under the bumper to bumper warranty which conveniently expired 4k miles ago. How a part that physically bolts to your engine block and starts your engine is not considered a powertrain item and covered under that longer warranty period, I'll never know. Regardless, I wrote it off as a lost cause to continue arguing with the dealer given the cost of the part. $120 later and a week of waiting on shipping thanks to Chicago rioting, I had a new OEM starter in my hands. Props to GM for at least making their horribly unreliable starter easy to replace. Did the quick 20 min repair (mostly of which was spent removing the 20 screws that held the wheel liner in) and all has been well with the world again.
I love the look of a lowered full size... but on a 4x4.. at least pull the z71 stickers off
...but it will still have all the handy/good looking Z71 features like skid plates, color matched bumpers, hill descent control, G80 locker, and recovery hooks!
The lowered 4x4 thing is honestly becoming pretty popular for the guys who drag race them. They can run standard all season tires and still dead hook from a dig as long as you are okay with the additional weight from the T-case forward.
The factory plastic and chrome lower valence clashed with the rest of the stormtrooper theme I am going for on the truck, so I got those painted white/black
Then I started getting the lowering kit installed. One of the biggest frustrations to work through is that there is a pretty large variance in just how much each part will drop the vehicle as vehicle options (cab size, bed size, driveline type, etc) can vary weight distribution and total weight so much. Trying to hit a set ride height out of the box with this big variable is a challenge. I decided to put just the front drop spindles on for now to see if they meet the advertised 2" of drop. They ended up being 1.5" for my case. Install was pretty straight forward once I got the hang of getting the ball joints released. This week I'll get the lowering struts put on so then I can get the front end sitting exactly where I want it and brought into the alignment shop. For now, this is where it sits with 4" of forward rake. I'd like the front another 1-2" down from here, then I'll get the rear to match the front when I'm happy with where it is at.
Good start on the lowering. As a lowered 2wd RCSB driver, I have to say the hate on lowered 4x4 trucks is kind of silly. I still tow, haul, and do everything my truck could have done at stock ride height. Plus it's easier to get in and out of, handles better, and is way more convenient to load and unload the bed. What does the average z71 driver lose from lowering? I bet the % of full size truck drivers that ever leave pavement and need the extra ride height is well less than 1%.
Good start on the lowering. As a lowered 2wd RCSB driver, I have to say the hate on lowered 4x4 trucks is kind of silly. I still tow, haul, and do everything my truck could have done at stock ride height. Plus it's easier to get in and out of, handles better, and is way more convenient to load and unload the bed. What does the average z71 driver lose from lowering? I bet the % of full size truck drivers that ever leave pavement and need the extra ride height is well less than 1%.
Agreed. I owned a 99 RCSB 2WD with drop shackles some years ago (pic below for old time memory sake). It did absolutely everything I needed a truck to do from a towing and daily driving perspective. Hauled home improvement things around. Towed any sort of medium size car without an issue (which was rare). My motorcycle comfortably fit in the bed. It got 20 mpg on highway consistently even as an old NBS chevy. Even without sand bags in the bed, I found that it drove nicely through deep snow on the all-terrains I had for it during winter. I even took it hunting and ground clearance was never a problem. I would have kept it, but rust was starting to show its ugly face, and the regular cab isn't the most convenient for storage.
As far as what the average z71 owner loses from lowering? I'm not really sure. Ground clearance argument is the only thing that comes to mind. Aesthetic preferences aside, everything else is a benefit to the lowering argument (mpg, loading convenience, stability, handling, etc). 4x4 is a nice feature to have when launching a boat on a slippery ramp or wanting to accelerate quickly in low traction environments, so lowering a 4x4 is kind of like a win-win to me. Nobody gets mad when lowering an AWD car or SUV, so I don't get the hate for the lowered 4x4 trucks. Either way, that's why i got the vanity plate for it. I enjoy the "ruined 4x4" comments.
Got the drop struts on last night which dropped the front down an additional ~2" from the ~1.5" drop that the spindles gave. Overall, the truck is sitting just over 3" lower in the front than it was from the factory while retaining great CV angles and not messing with the front end geometry past the point of being able to adjust it with the OEM alignment hardware.
Another added benefit is the struts have spring perches which are adjustable by 8mm increments (as can be seen by the spring perch rings in post #9 above). Most of these trucks sit taller on the passenger side for whatever reason. I was able to run 8mm lower on the perch on the passenger side to accommodate the "chevy lean" issue and get the truck to truly sit level from L to R within 1/8". I've only driven the truck a handful of miles to the parts store and back to return the spring compressor tool I rented to do this job, but man are the belltech struts a great upgrade. All of the harsh bumps in the street are managed so much better on these dampers.
Looking good! Now you have to do the "fun" part of chiseling off the stock leaf spring hangers. That was definitely my least favorite part of the install, and I ultimately regret doing it because I ended up wishing I had a half inch or so more drop in the rear.
Here's mine with ~3.5" front and 6" rear:
And here is is with a pallet of laminate in the bed... basically sitting with the axle on the frame. I'm either going to add helper bags or a notch (or both) in the future, but that's a heavy load for any truck to haul.
I'm not exactly looking forward to the chisel portion of the install for the hangers either, but I do plan on moving forward with it. I can always reverse it if needed. Ideally, I want the truck to be sitting between 0-1" of rake unloaded. A little rake has some functional benefit until I get a set of bags to air up the rear when hauling/towing anything substantial. I believe the flip kit with hangers in the 1" lift setting should get me there, so that's what I'll start with.
Got it all together last weekend. Decided last minute to put the hangers at the 1" lift setting in conjunction with the 7" drop from the flip kit to see where the ride height would sit. Theoretically, it should be 6" drop. Turns out this advertised drop was right on the money in reality. There is an ever so slight bit of squat (0.25" or so) that the truck has right now. I have a longer shackle that I can toss on the truck to lift it an inch to get positive rake in it that I'd like. That'll come shortly, but for now here's what I've got to work with. Everything aligned into spec great on the front end.
Seeing as the miata isn't done yet, I'll be giving the great white buffalo a run at the local AutoX this weekend in the attempt to not place dead last RAW time on the day. I'm oddly excited to be the complete and utter underdog for the event.
05-11-2020, 05:59 PM
Watch Me Ruin My Tow Rig - "The Great White Bufallo" Build
1
, so I had a lot more homework to do here. The truck comes from factory with the axle underneath the leaf spring with a 1.25" thick spacer between them acting as a lift block. The easy button to lower a truck is to do a flip kit, which as the name suggests, flips the axle to mount to the top of the leaf spring instead of the bottom. The issue with just running that is, it gives you a 7" drop from factory and that's too low for me as I'm looking for a level look. I need to achieve a 5" rear drop to get the desired look, so the solution is to run lift hangers in addition to a flip kit. The lift hangers flip the shackle orientation around and raise the truck either 1-2" depending on mounting holes to the frame you choose to use. A longer shackle with mounting holes 1" and 2" further apart from factory shackles also lets you fine tune the rear height. To keep it short, while using the flip kit, the shackles and hangers allow you to run between 3"-6" of drop from factory by simply choosing which mounting holes to use instead of being stuck at 7" with a flip kit alone. Once this setup is all done, I'll have to measure pinion angle to verify I won't have driveline vibrations. If there is an angle delta, its as simple as buying the correct pinion shims. OEM bump stop towers need to be cut off and aftermarket bump stops are attached directly to the frame to keep the gap between the bump stop and axle the same as OEM. Flip kit and hangers shown below. Shocks and shackles shown above. Again, all Belltech.
