Jacknasco's 2015 Chevy 2500 HD 6.0 gas build

[Jacknasco]

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Here's the first picture of my truck, put in a T-Rex x metal insert and nfab bars.

 

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[Jacknasco]

Put in an air raid CAI and air raid throttle body spacer for a lift in fuel economy and superchips programmer before I lifted the truck. Sorry I haven't been posting the progress but I just learned about tapatalk and I can upload the picture way easier.

 

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[Jacknasco]

Kept the truck that way for about a year while I was saving money and doing research on lift kits. Don't really off road frequently and really like the look of a lifted truck but never had one before. Went with a procomp 6" in front and 3.5" rear lift. Nitto grapplers 35 x 12.5. With the 20" rockstar 2 rims all black.

 

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[Jacknasco]

Took all the plastic pieces off the rims and painted them the tungsten metallic to match the truck. Got an Oreilys to make a can of spray paint ,the code from the dealer was wa121v, which is the same color code as GM iridium metallic, although they look different parked next to each other.

 

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[Jacknasco]

My truck didn't come with the under bed rails lights for the bed, so I found out that the harness is in place for a factory lights. I ordered the lights from eBay part number GM 23145347. About an hour to install, hard to see in the photo though. At the same time I was refinishing a truck bed tool box from my 98 Chevy so I wired in another lead behind the tail light for future use. The tool box got sand blasted and primed with self etching primer and repainted flat black. I replaced the gasket and rebuilt the handles. I ran the lead from the bed lighting into and under the box with2 24" white led strips. They draw so little power when you turn on the cargo lights they all come on very bright, the first picture is before I tied up the wiring

 

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[Jacknasco]

My buddy put dark green led lights in his wheel wells and I liked it so I went with dark blue. I put four behind the grill, one in each wheel well and 6 under the truck, they all run off 3 switches so I can turn some on and not others. Wiring them took the longest and I'm sorry I didn't get alot of pictures, but under the carpet on the drivers side is a grommet the emergency brake cable runs through and there's a plug on the passenger side in the same spot. Theres also a boot in the firewall on the engine side with a extra spot with no wires, I cut a hole in it and used a wire fishing line to get the wire through. Using a fuse tap in one of the spare slots on the panel and gang wired the switches using one hot and one ground off the body.

 

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[Jacknasco]

This brings us up to the last few days. When the grill was off I took the bowtie out and painted it tungsten metallic, hard to see unless in direct sunlight, and I found out that you should always use adhesion promoter like bull dog when painting plastic. I debadged the tailgate except for the bow tie which I plan on painting this week. I took out the tail lights and third brake light. Wet sanded them with 2000 then painted them with vht night shades, 4 coats, then 5 coats of gloss. Wet sanded them lightly with soap, then used a few coats of rubbing compound. I think it looks great and only 40$ instead of buying them blacked out. 4 coats is plenty dark just make sure you wipe the nozzle every few passes as it clogged easily.

 

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[Jacknasco]

Thanks for looking, plan on replacing the front bumper soon. Again sorry for the rapid posts will update as I get anything else going.

 

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[Schmidt0221]

Truck looks very sharp ! Well done. I like the nfab bars. I was thinking about doing the ones from rough country cab end to cab end

[RyanbabZ71]

looks good!

[Full Lock]

Looks great, the tail light tint takes just enough of the edge off. Well done

[Jacknasco]

Alot of stuff done to the truck in the past year. Ill post the picture via taptalk. Just havent had alot of time. More importantly alot of expensive lessons learned.

Audio upgrade. Started off by the wife asking me to clean the garage. Found a Kicker cx 300x4 AMP I had bought a year before and never put in. So obviously I had to install the amp.Ended up removing the backseat, Just use a 18mm deep socket for the main bolts from the bottom and I think it was either a 9 or 10 mm that joins the two seats together with two bolts. Bought a piece of white pine and traced the curve of the bottom of the floor to match. Cut out the insulation about an inch short so when I pushed the mounting board into place it would hold the insulation back. Laid out the new amp for the door speakers and the current amp for the 2 10s. Then decided to install a capacitor, it stores electrical energy so when the amps bass amp draws power it doesn't dim your headlights. Laid it all out on the pine then got a piece of truck carpet from Lowes to match the interior. Used a brad nailer and glue to stick the carpet to the wood. Used liquid nails sub floor glue and two jacks to push the mounting board into place overnight.

[Jacknasco]

Pictures of the audio install

 

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[Jacknasco]

Audio install continued.

A finished picture of the amps and capacitor mounted with the power wiring rough laid out. I ran all new 18 ga speaker wire through he wire channel along the driver side. To the passenger side under the dash as the power supply was laid out in the channel under the passenger side.

I opted to pull the high signal from behind the factory head unit using a 4 channel LOC so I could control the sound better from the front to back of the truck. Used a PAC4 line output converter that was easy to wire but brings me to the first lesson i learned.

It says you dont need to ground the LOC, just do it anyway. You will get a loud buzz through the speakers even when there is nothing playing and will spend alot of time checking and rechecking grounds.

 

So I ended up replacing the door speakers with the Kicker KS 3 way 6x9. The rear with the 6 3/4. I replaced the factory highs under the dash with 3.5 inch speakers.

Running the wire was just time consuming. The door has rubber boots that can be pulled from the top to fold down. I used a coathanger as a fishing line to run the wires into the doors. Mounting the speakers is where you have to spend some time. So you can but adapter plates for the speakers. Or you can make your own like I did as I was at work for 48 hrs and wanted to finish. Cut away all the cone paper. Use a dremel tool to cut the top ring of plastic off. Then lay the new speaker in the hole and drill holes in the old speaker ring below where the mounting screws should go. Then just place some black seal around the plastic ring and run bolts through the holes and tighten.

[Jacknasco]

Speaker adapter

 

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