Rusty, crushy, but trysty.

[makman1297]

Truck bed; now available with tailgate.

[Greenlee]

Looks good!
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[makman1297]

Thanks greenlee, I really have to thank my wife for putting up with this whole project. The last month was a little spendy getting this on the road and workring out the drivability issues with the EGR, TCC, Brakes, and Steering. This will be my daily driver soon as I am heading to South Carolina in April for schooling. It will be nice since i can take my bike with me too. I added extra tie downs in the box to make it easier to strap my bikes in.

[Greenlee]

Yep, it seems like the closer you get to finishing the more expensive it gets. I'm going through that right now with mine. Cheaper than a new truck though. And the coolness factor is way better than with a new one!
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[makman1297]

Yeah i know right. At least its down to fuel, insurance, and maintenance. Of course there could be some fun improvements comming. Its funny there are hundreds of these trucks on the road, but I get a lot of looks and smiles when I am driving it.

[makman1297]

I noticed the last couple of days that i have a slight surge at slow speeds like around 25, i can watch my lean rich guage and it coinsides with it. It has a slight speed up at the rich side and slight slow down on the lean side. I noticed my gauge bounces back and forth from lean to rich, but is normally more towards the lean side and i think its a little more lean now than it was when i set everything up. I guess the tranney and all the parts should be broken in now and maybe part of this. I will bump my fuel pressure up a bit and drive it some more to see what it does. It has been driving great, made a slight adjustment on the steering to get the wheel right in the center. I have not had any more EGR issues either, i ended up putting a BWD one in from orileys and that seems to work better than the AC delco ones. I noticed the vacuum hole on it is bigger than the AC delco ones and i think that with the aftermarket cam and a slightly lower vacuum the aftermarket one actually works just fine.

[makman1297]

Well i tried the one turn richer, totally wrong it made everything worse and the check engine light came on for rich exhasut. I hooked up my laptop and found the blm was around 108. So i leaned it out and ran it again, a little better, a little leaner and ran it again. I am going to leave it where it is and see how it runs, ended up with the adjustment screw 1.5 turns leaner than what i was running. The BLM was close to 128.

[makman1297]

Ran it today with the leaner settings. Much better. The surging is pretty much gone. I data logged the trip to work and home, the lower speeds are still richer than the cruise. I am going to turn it a touch leaner and run it again. Its amazing the acceleration around 1700-2000 is much stronger than it was before. Its odd that everyone says these tbi's are so lean, both mine and my father in laws with a mostly stock setup seem to be on the rich side.

[makman1297]

Well a little update. I have the lean / rich adjustment pretty close to 128 across the board, but now i have a random code 32 egr issue. I replaced the valve again under warranty, and it has posted once again after 60 miles of driving, but its always at a slower speed around 45-50mph, odd. I decided that i really didnt care for the glass packs i put on it anyways, so while i was at orileys i got a set of raptor 2 1/4 mufflers and put those on the truck. Its quieter than the glass packs but still has a rumble. I am also hoping this will help with the EGR issue, will get some miles on it and see what it does. I also started working on my car hauling trailer, there were some rot issues in the floor boards and it needed a good cleaning and paint job.

[makman1297]

New mufflers in, reset computer, put on almost 80 miles today varing speeds from 45-66 mph on the highway no CEL so far, hope it stay that way. My BLM and ILM looks pretty good too.

[makman1297]

Well close to a thousand miles since put together, now my transfer case went out. The input thrust washer gernaded. I was able to find a used one, just waiting for a new bearing to put it together. I also got a different drive shaft, almost perfect length, off of a 03 avalanche, even has the same splined input. I also found a small dent on the rear brake line on the dr side, that may be part of the pulling issue that i had to adjust the rear adjusters to compensate for. I also got a new distributor with brass cap and rotor, still needs to be installed. I replaced the connector on the IAC and MAP since the old connectors were brittle and broken. My off idle stumble is pretty much gone now, i am hoping the distributor will fix the last of the small drivability issues. This has definatly been a interesting learning experiance.

[canadian 4x4]

truck looks good, nice to see more square daily drivers

[makman1297]

My new thrust bearing came in, threw the TC back together and got it in the truck, drives great again nice and quiet. The new driveshaft is about perfect fit, good it worked out as well as it did. I also got the trailer cleaned up and a coat of paint on it, looks much better.

[makman1297]

Finished my trailer and got it sold. I had a little time to work on the truck. I noticed that it was shifting a lot earlier than i liked, it would shift at 3,000. I noticed trying to get on it in traffic it was a little slow with the early shifts. I had a cal kit sitting around so i finally pulled the govenor and played with the springs and weights, no it hits about 5,000 for the shift if you hold it, and the other shifts feel better espically the downshifts are better now. I also played with the fuel injection tuning, noticing it really likes to be rich at idle and slow speeds and leans out at higher rpm. I did replace the injectors as one was leaky, that helped some. I also replaced the MAP sensor and now it seems to be more active on the scan tool, will drive it for a few days and see, i may end up having to make a custom chip to cure the fuel map.

[makman1297]

Well i decided to do it, i drove the truck today and data logged the system, there is no way to get it right with out reprogramming the chip. It runs too rich at idle and low end and too lean at high end before the PE kicks in. So in did a little research and ordered from moates the G2 chip adapter which i will need to solder into the computer, 2 programmable chips, and a burn 2 which reads and burns your chips. I already have the data logging tools and already had the tuner pro rt program, so that was half of it. I also went ahead and downloaded the bins for a 87 5.7 tbi, and already altered it based off my last data logging. As soon as my chip gets here i can load it see what happens.

[Your41Plague12]

This was an awesome build. Great work! Reminds me of what I'm doing to mine. Love the truck, and the front license plate!

[makman1297]

Thanks Your41Plague12, now that all the heavy lifting is done i am just fine tuning the truck (and driving my wife nuts). My chip buring stuff should arrive today. I have already mad a new bin file with the a new map altering the fuel table and the idle counts for open loop. I really dont like the 1300 rpm at start up, it sounds way to fast considering its only in the 40's. I will run that and see how it works. More to follow.

[makman1297]

My chip stuff came in, it was a lot easier than i thought it would be, took me about an hour to pull the computer and solder in the new chip adapter and burn my first chip. I got a small soldering iron kit from radio shack, my gun was a little too big for working on circuit boards. Ran the tuner pro edit the bin, and the flash and burn to burn the chips, i got to say it works really good. I started by setting my fue pressure back up to about 13 lbs and reset the iac. I then started the process of editing the chips, it took me about 15 tries to get the idle to 2000 rpm decent, i had to cut back alot to get it lean enough. I took it out on the road nice and slow, took about 3 runs to get the under 2500 rpm range right, and then about 2 more to finish the higher speed stuff. The last run was pretty much BLM between 123-133, much better throttle response and acceleration. Prob will need some more fine tuning and finessing after a few days of running, plus i need to see how well the cold start and warm up are working.

[makman1297]

A few more.

[makman1297]

So i got up today and started the truck, cold weather warm up was a little ruff, so i re did the open iac close to stock. That made it a little better. Needs some more cold weather testing to be sure. I can see how this can be addictive

[makman1297]

So i found a patch to enable lean cruise to help in highway mode to get a little more MPG. I also ordered a wide band o2 kit to install and monitor the AFR more accuratly, cant wait to see how it works.

[makman1297]

Gauge kit.

[makman1297]

Installed the wbo2 it is really fast and accurate. A few more adjustments on the ve table. Also raised the choke multiple and the ae vs tps. The stumble is a lean condition off idle. The lean cruise work too. No knocks detected so far. A little more testing and tuning.
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[makman1297]

The cold warm up seems to be a little better now, i changed the iac filter a little, tuning and testing.

[77ChevySharkBite]

Sharp truck man!! I just wish I knew how to tune major kudos to you my friend! That blue is sharp looking!!