Truck Tech 2

Details: Written by: ken; Category: Uncategorised; Published: 12 April 2022; Hits: 1310

Truck Tech 2

Published: Monday, 20 May 2019 00:43

Written by Super User

08 May 2019:

Placing new Entry Here. I will be archiving this project on the Diesel Chevy Colorado truck. It was with sadness, I had to trade off the 2016 Chevy Colorado. Since the first month I have had this truck, I had continuing issues with Air Conditioning on this truck and a couple other issues. The straw that broke the camel's back was while towing light trailers of 3000 pounds or less this truck left me stranded in Limp Mode. The Diesel emission system on these early trucks were not up to the task. Twice in one year, while on vacation, I had to go to the nearest dealer and request emergency help to restore the truck to full power.

The second time was pulling a new 17 foot by 7 foot cargo trailer I bought for my new project. Building a trailer to camp and hunt in. That will be another story under the heading "What if You Wanted to Build a Camping Trailer".

08 May 2019,

SO GOOD NEWS, I have a 2019 Chevy Colorado 3.6 liter V6 Gasser truck that is my new project.

So what is the goal of this truck? What is my requirements?

So, Here is my requirements

- First keeping cost spread out over time for prepping this truck for true easy four wheeling trips, maybe even moderate difficult trails with a four wheeling club; not spending the money all at once, and GOING into debt. Breaking bad habits here.

- Secondly, now that I have the trailer, I need to consider how high a lift I can accomplish and not compromise the tow rating of this vehicle

So design goals are:

- Improve torque rating of this truck at the wheels

- Consider safe limits for of lift kits

- Some New 18 inch wheels that can run with the factory height

- Tires that can run with the current factory height on the new wheels

- A lift kit that meets design goals

- A tune for the truck

- A cold air intake

If these are enough for the design goals then maybe I might look into some type of power adder to the truck. But, this may be too extreme cost wise

19 May 2019,

So I am still playing catch up on what has already been accomplished on this 2019 Chevy Colorado.

- A tune for the truck:

Affter much research and patience I went with a TriFecta Advantage + tune. This tune kept with the design goals to improve torque.

- A Cold Air Intake

I went with a S&B cold Air intake. I could not feel much improvement with this other than it removed the shroud off the engine. Together with the TriFecta Tune and the S&B Cold Air Intake I was ready to implement the next mod on this truck

- Wheels and Tires

Last Fall I had already purchased Mayhem Prodigy 8300 Wheels and had them in the Garage. They are bolt patter of 6 x 120, with a negative -6 mm offset.

I just purchased some BF Goodrich 265/65R18 tires. Well the installer showed me that I will encounter wheel rub until I trim some plastic from Wheel well. Well, I did that and solved most of my issues. But, when turning and I hit a bump the Tire rubs on wheel well somewhere.

Well that is the last of the updates on this until I can save up the money for a lift kit of sorts.

03 Nov 2019

Ok, so it has been a very long while since I did an update. I went with Ready 3.5 " SST Lift kit that provided 3.5 inch lift and leeling of the truck. It has been a good fit. No cutting of frame members to reach 5 inches of lift. The rear provided 1 inch of lift to level the truck. It works well with the truck and still pulls the Camper build project. I do feel I need more torque at the wheels. The engine cannot pull confortably the light trailer. But, at least the emission system is not leaving me stranded. So, I am giving a great atta boy to Ready lift for this kit.

I'll provide pictures as soon as I can figure out how.

Ken the project man signing off for today

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20 Mar 2020

Well, it again has been a while since I posted. I have started building the frame of a camper shell on my truck using 8020 inc 15 series extruded tee channel aluminum. That has been a fun experience. More will occur when I get more tools to tighten up the connections. The frame is really solid. I used 1.5 inch x 3 inch aluminum and 1.5 inch x 1.5 inch aluminum. I did not really want to drill into the truck box so I had to figure out how to make the stake pockets useful and strong enough. Almost endanger the loss my hand on that cut. Next time I'll figure out how to cut this small piece of aluminum safer. The camper shell frame allows me to mount several more LED lights to point toward the front of the truck. Also, I added two narrow set of LED lights under the rear bumper to provide extra backup light for the backup camera. It is currently, temporarily connected to the truck trailer port on the rear bumper. As soon as, this COVID 19 event is over and and some more parts come in I will be able to fabricate a centralized relay box. So, I can enable those rear facing LED lights on demand as well as for backing up. Also, provide the relay ports necessary for the other LED lights. Trying to clean up the temporary work I've done so far.

I finally figured out how to make my LED Switches appear more neat and clean within Colorado center console. I'll be using 16 MM stainless steel LED push button switches. This eliminates the the stock aluminum bar I used before.