Marv88 2016 Silverado LS Regular Cab 5.3L

[Marv88]

Thank you for sharing your research, I feel much better about going in there now.

And I got my handle today, and was looking over what I guess they call instruction...just not sure what the instructions were for! A lot of black and white pics with numbers, but no too much detail with words.

Oh well, you and Enough has been a great help, and I'll go with what you two have mentioned.

You're welcome and I agree the instructions were pretty much useless! Edited January 20, 2017 by Marv88

[Marv88]

I bought the smooth tailgate handle from eBay a while back to color match and finally took it out of the package today to prep for paint. Mechanical quality seems very good and it was easy to take apart however there were numerous bubbles as well as high spots, ridges and flashing around the edges that needed to be addressed before painting. I block sanded with 220 to knock down the high spots/smooth out the edges followed by wet sanding to 1000 grit and I forgot to take pics of the bubbles on each side of the camera hole first however you can see in the pics how much I had to sand to get everything smooth. Now I just have to wait for a warm enough day to spray it and will post more pics.

 

 

 

Edited January 21, 2017 by Marv88

[TXTruk15]

I bought the same one off of ebay in order to color match it; I painted it, installed it, and also have the pop-n-lock feature to automatically lock the tailgate (since mine is a 2015). I'm wondering if maybe it was too much stress, because after a couple of days the plastic post that the center white spindle lays on snapped off! Next thing you know, my handle doesn't work to open the tailgate, I'm breaking into my tonneau cover and then opening up the tailgate access panel to reinstall my old handle.....grrrr....

 

hopefully that issue is not one that you will experience....again, I'm not sure if its the same ebay seller either....

 

[HoosierZ]

I just ordered a paintable handle yesterday from Amazon. Hopefully I get a good one that doesn't break.

[Marv88]

I bought the same one off of ebay in order to color match it; I painted it, installed it, and also have the pop-n-lock feature to automatically lock the tailgate (since mine is a 2015). I'm wondering if maybe it was too much stress, because after a couple of days the plastic post that the center white spindle lays on snapped off! Next thing you know, my handle doesn't work to open the tailgate, I'm breaking into my tonneau cover and then opening up the tailgate access panel to reinstall my old handle.....grrrr....

 

hopefully that issue is not one that you will experience....again, I'm not sure if its the same ebay seller either....

 

 

Well that sucks! Its most likely the same seller as it was the only smooth one I could find on eBay. I added a remote opening tailgate so I probably won't use the handle much but if it does break I can still open the tailgate since the actuators connect directly to the rods.

Edited January 21, 2017 by Marv88

[Marv88]

We had a nice warm day here today so I took some time to paint the tailgate handle assembly. Anybody have an idea how long I should wait before handling it? (I put on 6 wet coats with about 10 minutes between each per the instructions)

 

Edited February 1, 2017 by Marv88

[Marv88]

I decided to go back to black trim and black out my emblems so hopefully it is OK to post here that I have the deep ocean blue door handles, mirror caps and tailgate handle for sale on eBay however if a member here would like to buy them direct I will give you a better deal. Also, I bought the complete set so there are 4 door handles available for the crew cabs.

[RDKILL]

Ahhh...I like the color keyed handles and emblems myself, and thought your blue was looking great!

However, I can understand the black out look as well...just think that would look better on a black, gray, gun metal etc. color.

 

BTW, I still haven't installed my driver side assist handle...hopefully there will be time this weekend...that honey do list seems to increase and not decrease not matter what I do!

[TXTruk15]

Looks great - any pics with it on the truck?

 

 

We had a nice warm day here today so I took some time to paint the tailgate handle assembly. Anybody have an idea how long I should wait before handling it? (I put on 6 wet coats with about 10 minutes between each per the instructions)

 

[Marv88]

Ahhh...I like the color keyed handles and emblems myself, and thought your blue was looking great!

However, I can understand the black out look as well...just think that would look better on a black, gray, gun metal etc. color.

 

BTW, I still haven't installed my driver side assist handle...hopefully there will be time this weekend...that honey do list seems to increase and not decrease not matter what I do!

 

I know what you mean about the honey do list as mine seems to grow regularly as well!

 

I never really cared for the chrome "SILVERADO" on the doors/tailgate however I didn't want to remove them as totally de-badged trucks look too "bare" to me so I was looking around the forum here as well as on google for other ideas. On google I came across a similar color blue truck that had blacked out script on the doors/tailgate and thought it looked nice so I just ran some black tape across one on the door to see what it would look like. I noticed right away the truck had a more "subtle" look that I really liked but something was "off". After walking around for a while looking from all angles (my neighbors probably thought I had lost my mind!) I thought the black handle might fit in better with the the black emblems as well as the black shark fin on the roof and all of the other black trim around the windows, bottom of fenders and bed rail caps so I put one back on. I liked that better but once again I found something was still off which I quickly realized was the blue mirror cap so I replaced that with the black cap and found that was definitely "the look" for me! I'm most likely going to leave the front bowtie and wheel bowties blue but I'll see what it looks like once I get the rest blacked out (I may be changing wheels/tires if I have any serious rubbing after lowering it a bit more but I'm definitely not going with black wheels)

[Marv88]

Looks great - any pics with it on the truck?

 

 

I never installed it as I decided to go black with the door/tailgate script so I put the black door handles and mirror caps back on and will leave the black tailgate handle as well!

[TXTruk15]

I never installed it as I decided to go black with the door/tailgate script so I put the black door handles and mirror caps back on and will leave the black tailgate handle as well!

 

I can understand - can't wait to see pix with the black trimmings on the truck - I think it will be a nice contrast

[Donolie]

 

I know what you mean about the honey do list as mine seems to grow regularly as well!

 

I never really cared for the chrome "SILVERADO" on the doors/tailgate however I didn't want to remove them as totally de-badged trucks look too "bare" to me so I was looking around the forum here as well as on google for other ideas. On google I came across a similar color blue truck that had blacked out script on the doors/tailgate and thought it looked nice so I just ran some black tape across one on the door to see what it would look like. I noticed right away the truck had a more "subtle" look that I really liked but something was "off". After walking around for a while looking from all angles (my neighbors probably thought I had lost my mind!) I thought the black handle might fit in better with the the black emblems as well as the black shark fin on the roof and all of the other black trim around the windows, bottom of fenders and bed rail caps so I put one back on. I liked that better but once again I found something was still off which I quickly realized was the blue mirror cap so I replaced that with the black cap and found that was definitely "the look" for me! I'm most likely going to leave the front bowtie and wheel bowties blue but I'll see what it looks like once I get the rest blacked out (I may be changing wheels/tires if I have any serious rubbing after lowering it a bit more but I'm definitely not going with black wheels)

I really like the look of the black bowtie that lights up with the headlights... it would go with your black theme. I recently put it on my white silverado.

[Marv88]

Took a little time yesterday to remove the SILVERADO from one of my doors but the "bare" look didn't do it for me as anticipated and after temporarily attaching the black emblems I found that didn't work for me either so I had to go back back to the drawing board. For my next "experiment" I took the "L" and the "S" from the original chrome SILVERADO emblem and temporarily attached an "LS" with double sided tape where the original door emblem was and found I liked that look much better so I ordered a couple of those.

 

Interestingly enough I came across a picture of a Tundra in nearly the same color as my truck with the exact same Under Cover Classic 1 piece Tonneau Cover I bought and it actually had the black door/tailgate handles and mirror caps along with chrome badges on the doors/tailgate in the same spots mine are. That gave me a pretty good representation of what mine will look like and I think this combination is going to work out well for me but I'll know for sure when my cover and new emblems get here next week.

 

 

 

[Marv88]

I was able to get one of the LS emblems on before it started raining today....

 

 

 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Marv88