Purchased a 2005 GMC, Some Questions!

onecrazyfoo4u · November 13, 2015

Just bought a 2005 Sierra 1500 SLT crew cab 4x4 with the 5.3l motor. It has 135k miles on it and needs a few things fixed. The seller just replaced both knock sensors and harness and sealed them good, so at least that got taken care of. He also just changed out the front and rear diff and transfer case fluid. Also has fresh coolant and fresh oil. And newer brakes and new tires. It drives great, just needs a few things to make it perfect (I'm anal about my vehicles). The vehicle is salvage, had the front right corner smashed, so it got a new bumper, hood, fender, door, headlight, turn signal, radiator, and radiator mount. It was all inspected good, everything lines up perfect, no frame damage and the repair job looks perfect from the outside...but the inside they put the wrong panels on the door and the wrong mirror. Had a few questions to get fixed:

1. The gauge has a few dead light bulbs behind the speedometer. And the oil pressure gauge is totally whack (needle is way outside the L-H range, and doesn't reset to 0 when I turn it off). From my research, it looks like the gauge needs a new stepper motor (not the oil pressure sensor since it doesn't go back to 0) to fix the oil pressure, and you have to manually solder in the light bulbs. Is this a hard job to tackle? Is there a good How-To to follow?

2. The passenger door has the wrong door panel, which is missing the power window switch, heated seats switch, and Bose speakers. Currently the auto door lock and light in that door aren't working, so I'm guessing I need to hook up a new power window switch and the harnesses before it'll work, right? Where's the best place to find a cheap/used panel with switches?

3. The passenger side mirror is the wrong manual basic one. I need to get a black one with built in turn signal, no puddle light, (and not sure if it has the power folding or auto dim?). How do I find out if my drivers side mirror has the power folding and auto dimming? Is it the same harness regardless of the options you have? If my vehicle didn't have auto dimming mirrors originally, could I get the ones with auto dimming option and still have them work?

4. I checked the air filter box and noticed there's no opening to bring air into the box. There are two holes that lead to the passenger fender area, but the holes have some sort of plastic/baffle over them...doesn't look like they move. Does this sound right? How does air get to the filter?

5. Also on the air filter box, there is an open hole right by the big air intake tube. Is there supposed to be an intake air temperature sensor in there?

Thanks guys, I'm sure I'll have many more questions in the future!

onecrazyfoo4u · November 16, 2015

Does anybody know any of this???

DareDog · November 16, 2015

Stepper motor are you good at soldering??? Replaced one here and in process burn a hole through circuit board.

onecrazyfoo4u · November 17, 2015

It looks somewhat in depth to replace the stepper motor and light bulbs. I've soldered quiet a bit, but am scared to break something while taking it all apart. I've seen on ebay you can send in the whole gauge cluster, and they'll replace every stepper motor and light bulb for under $100. Has anyone tried that out before? Or is there someone on the forums that does that kind of work?

I figured out the air filter box, that open hole was meant to be a filter change reminder. I just plugged the hole since I don't have that. Also, inside the box, the idiots had put dynamat over the inner finder, completely blocking off both intake box holes. I don't know how the truck was running like that! I cut the dynamat off and now have good flowing air to the filter.

Are the cheap air intake kits with the cone filters for the 5.3l worthwhile? Do they provide any power gains or are they mostly just for noise?

Jvs · November 17, 2015

I put a spectre intake on my 99 with the 5.3 and it bumped up gas mileage a little. Seemed to have a little more power top end but could just be placebo due to hearing the noise.

Thing I liked the most about it was it cleaned up the engine bay a lot and is real easy to take off if I need to pull off my throttle body or intake.