Thanks for the comments guys. I am following each of your builds. I have debated long and hard about how to do this truck and seriously considered going the "extended cab" route. I hope to get to the salvage yard tomorrow to begin stripping the Trailblazer, but right now we are trying to finish reinstalling the engine in my second son's GTO.
As I said in another forum, the biggest automotive time eater this fall has been the GTO. While it was incredibly fast and quick, we never could get it to tune right for idle and off idle. The engine is an 6.0 LQ9 out of a burned 2006 Escalade. It had 18,000 miles on it when we pulled it. It would pop well before the redline, so we first pulled the heads and had a valve job done. Five valve springs were basically bad, and I attribute that to the fact that this was a "burned" motor. After we reassembled, the popping before the redline stopped, but it still wouldn't tune. We did a compression check and found the number four cylinder was about 60% of the others. We pulled the engine and rebuilt that one cylinder. Yesterday my oldest son helped me put the engine back in the car, and Eric will be home tonight. Should have it running tomorrow night.
Here is a picture of the GTO.
This one sums up the aggravation of pulling the engine:
