Mike_D's 2017 Silverado 1500 LT Z71 (WIP)

fondupot · August 14, 2020

@Mike_D Truck is looking good! Thanks again for the shout out!

Mike_D · August 18, 2020

So as I mentioned last week, my tailgate handle broke (internally) and was not fixable, so i purchased a new one... Since im doing a lot of blacking out and removing some of the chrome trim, i decided that instead of buying an all chrome tailgate assembly, i went with the stock black look with the handle itself being chrome. Its so much more sturdy then the chrome handle i put on before!

I've also received all the parts i needed to update my switches. Here's a before and after:

And a better look at the after

All of my Lasfit lights and my Du-Ha came in, gonna put those in here in awhile. I also received my Borla ATAK exhaust, going to put that in tomorrow.

Edited August 18, 2020 by Mike_D

kwOH · August 18, 2020

The one with just the chrome handle is OEM too [emoji106]

Mike_D · August 20, 2020

On 8/18/2020 at 8:25 AM, kwOH said:

The one with just the chrome handle is OEM too

Thanks @kwOH I had no idea! The OEM handles feel so much sturdier. The aftermarket handle i bought felt like it was going to break every time i used it, and i always had to lift on the left side of it, the right side would never open the tailgate. With this one, its back to normal and looks great!

I received my Borla ATAK exhaust and i've installed it. It went on very easily with only two issues. The first issue i had expected, and that was removing the stock exhaust. I ended up having to cut it twice (into 3 pieces) to get it removed. The second issue was the the first piece that connects to the CAT approaches at an angle towards the passenger door. The connector on the CAT also angles this way, so they dont go together perfectly, but their construction appears to be made for this so it hasn't caused any problems and clamped on without issues. This exhaust sound AMAZING! I got mine off of Amazon for $1024, everywhere else i looked they were $1195 so be sure to shop around! I saved $170 by doing that which has essentially paid the majority of the cost for my lights!

Because its an exhaust, there's not much to show in pictures, but none-the-less, there's a couple things to see! Looking at the image below, the left half is the before and the right half is the after. I purchased the black polished tips since the exhausts turn black after awhile unless you clean them every few days or so, and i dont put that much work into my truck and the black looks better anyway! Its actually more of a gunmetal grey, its a very dark grey almost black, but they look great! When you look at the right side where i have my old polished chrome tip, you'll notice the Borla sits quite a bit closer to the wheel. Because of this, i can sometimes hear the ding when rocks hit it, with the stock location, that doesnt happen, but i've only heard this so far when driving on gravel roads. Nothing im going to worry about! It sounds incredible though, get one!

I waited for night and installed my Lasfit lights. I have 4 bulbs i was unable to use due to swapping out the tail lights with Winjet LED taillights and not remembering that they cant be changed out. Before jumping into the pictures, i want to say that its hard to take pictures of lights. Cameras auto adjust their brightness, saturation, gain, exposure, and all sorts of other things to adjust for variances in the light to keep things visible and natural. You have to make some of your own assumptions when looking at pictures of lights to understand differences. For everything i've changed, i did a picture with one light installed and not the other so you can see difference. In some of them, you can look at things like the detail in the sidewalk on the floor that the light is allowing you to see. Without the light, its black. With a little light, you cant make out much at all, and with a lot of light, you can make out much more detail. You can use that trick to compare new vs old, or any other trick you might know of! Now lets jump into the pictures!

First was the Lasfit backup lights. These are the white lights that go into your taillights. Stock tail lights have 3 bulbs in the back, one on top, one in the middle, and one on the bottom. This would be the middle bulb. In the picture, the left side is the Lasfit, right side is stock. You can definitely see the difference in the picture (check sidewalk details!), but in person the difference is much larger! These are VERY bright!

And here's after i replaced them both:

Next we move to the front and work on the amber lights:

I have 20% smoke on these too, and in person you can definitely tell. The Lasfit lights bring the brightness back for sure, and i think its even brighter then it was before! Of course its hard to tell in the picture, but one thing i noticed (in person) was that when the lights were on, i couldnt really find any obvious light bouncing off the ground or the garage door or anything from the stock light with the tint, however, the upgraded light painted everything orange on that side of the truck! Its bright!

Now the headlights. Pictures dont do any of these lights any justice, but they do the headlights the worst justice for some reason. Here's a comparison of stock lights with 20% tint on the right, with Lasfit LED's and 20% tint on the left

The easiest thing to notice is how much smoother the spread of light is on the left side. I've done a lot of driving on stock headlights with no tint, and a bunch more on stock headlights with tint. On stock headlights with tint, its a bit rough to see thing but its still a fairly normal amount of light (more-so on older vehicles). After putting in the new lights, its sooo much brighter! I dont think its back to stock levels but its close. A lot of people will likely have an issue with how dim the lights are after putting tint on the headlights with stock bulbs, but after upgrading to these, nobody will have an issue with that brightness! The only issue i have is that the tint does change the color of the lights. I figured this might happen since before putting the tint on, i held it up in the light and it had a brownish look to it which translates to a yellowish look, but its not horrendous by any means!

Polarity on these bulbs matters... I was unlucky enough to put every single entire bulb in backwards on the first try....... I wish there was a way to know which way they needed to go in, that would have helped a lot! I did upgrade the license plate lights too, but they were leftover bulbs that i used on my wife's Jeep, they are 6000k, cheap, but looks good!

Next up, i got my Du-Ha and installed that:

I was taking a couch to my brothers house and my exhaust (you can see the box on the left side) to my friends, he wanted to help install it. Either way, the picture above is of the underseat storage sitting on top.

Here's a picture of it installed with the seats down

There's a small gap, which i like, makes it easy to grab hold of the seat and lift it.

This thing is solely for quick access to underseat storage on the driver side, not the passenger side. I have a car seat on the passenger side, and you can see most of the junk on the seat that was on the floor and under the seats before getting the storage, now its all in the storage, except for the windshield sun blocker thingy (wth is that called!?). I actually cant figure out where to put it now that i have the underseat storage, but if i keep it on the side over there, nobody can or will step on it so i'll probably keep it there. I rarely use it, maybe i'll toss it?

Well, next up is the new tonneau cover and bed rails, and box 2 of 2, of the tonneau cover just arrived, so i'm gonna go throw that in right now!

slj2008 · August 20, 2020

1 hour ago, Mike_D said:

Thanks @kwOH I had no idea! The OEM handles feel so much sturdier. The aftermarket handle i bought felt like it was going to break every time i used it, and i always had to lift on the left side of it, the right side would never open the tailgate. With this one, its back to normal and looks great!

I received my Borla ATAK exhaust and i've installed it. It went on very easily with only two issues. The first issue i had expected, and that was removing the stock exhaust. I ended up having to cut it twice (into 3 pieces) to get it removed. The second issue was the the first piece that connects to the CAT approaches at an angle towards the passenger door. The connector on the CAT also angles this way, so they dont go together perfectly, but their construction appears to be made for this so it hasn't caused any problems and clamped on without issues. This exhaust sound AMAZING! I got mine off of Amazon for $1024, everywhere else i looked they were $1195 so be sure to shop around! I saved $170 by doing that which has essentially paid the majority of the cost for my lights!

Because its an exhaust, there's not much to show in pictures, but none-the-less, there's a couple things to see! Looking at the image below, the left half is the before and the right half is the after. I purchased the black polished tips since the exhausts turn black after awhile unless you clean them every few days or so, and i dont put that much work into my truck and the black looks better anyway! Its actually more of a gunmetal grey, its a very dark grey almost black, but they look great! When you look at the right side where i have my old polished chrome tip, you'll notice the Borla sits quite a bit closer to the wheel. Because of this, i can sometimes hear the ding when rocks hit it, with the stock location, that doesnt happen, but i've only heard this so far when driving on gravel roads. Nothing im going to worry about! It sounds incredible though, get one!

I waited for night and installed my Lasfit lights. I have 4 bulbs i was unable to use due to swapping out the tail lights with Winjet LED taillights and not remembering that they cant be changed out. Before jumping into the pictures, i want to say that its hard to take pictures of lights. Cameras auto adjust their brightness, saturation, gain, exposure, and all sorts of other things to adjust for variances in the light to keep things visible and natural. You have to make some of your own assumptions when looking at pictures of lights to understand differences. For everything i've changed, i did a picture with one light installed and not the other so you can see difference. In some of them, you can look at things like the detail in the sidewalk on the floor that the light is allowing you to see. Without the light, its black. With a little light, you cant make out much at all, and with a lot of light, you can make out much more detail. You can use that trick to compare new vs old, or any other trick you might know of! Now lets jump into the pictures!

First was the Lasfit backup lights. These are the white lights that go into your taillights. Stock tail lights have 3 bulbs in the back, one on top, one in the middle, and one on the bottom. This would be the middle bulb. In the picture, the left side is the Lasfit, right side is stock. You can definitely see the difference in the picture (check sidewalk details!), but in person the difference is much larger! These are VERY bright!

And here's after i replaced them both:

Next we move to the front and work on the amber lights:

I have 20% smoke on these too, and in person you can definitely tell. The Lasfit lights bring the brightness back for sure, and i think its even brighter then it was before! Of course its hard to tell in the picture, but one thing i noticed (in person) was that when the lights were on, i couldnt really find any obvious light bouncing off the ground or the garage door or anything from the stock light with the tint, however, the upgraded light painted everything orange on that side of the truck! Its bright!

Now the headlights. Pictures dont do any of these lights any justice, but they do the headlights the worst justice for some reason. Here's a comparison of stock lights with 20% tint on the right, with Lasfit LED's and 20% tint on the left

The easiest thing to notice is how much smoother the spread of light is on the left side. I've done a lot of driving on stock headlights with no tint, and a bunch more on stock headlights with tint. On stock headlights with tint, its a bit rough to see thing but its still a fairly normal amount of light (more-so on older vehicles). After putting in the new lights, its sooo much brighter! I dont think its back to stock levels but its close. A lot of people will likely have an issue with how dim the lights are after putting tint on the headlights with stock bulbs, but after upgrading to these, nobody will have an issue with that brightness! The only issue i have is that the tint does change the color of the lights. I figured this might happen since before putting the tint on, i held it up in the light and it had a brownish look to it which translates to a yellowish look, but its not horrendous by any means!

Polarity on these bulbs matters... I was unlucky enough to put every single entire bulb in backwards on the first try....... I wish there was a way to know which way they needed to go in, that would have helped a lot! I did upgrade the license plate lights too, but they were leftover bulbs that i used on my wife's Jeep, they are 6000k, cheap, but looks good!

Next up, i got my Du-Ha and installed that:

I was taking a couch to my brothers house and my exhaust (you can see the box on the left side) to my friends, he wanted to help install it. Either way, the picture above is of the underseat storage sitting on top.

Here's a picture of it installed with the seats down

There's a small gap, which i like, makes it easy to grab hold of the seat and lift it.

This thing is solely for quick access to underseat storage on the driver side, not the passenger side. I have a car seat on the passenger side, and you can see most of the junk on the seat that was on the floor and under the seats before getting the storage, now its all in the storage, except for the windshield sun blocker thingy (wth is that called!?). I actually cant figure out where to put it now that i have the underseat storage, but if i keep it on the side over there, nobody can or will step on it so i'll probably keep it there. I rarely use it, maybe i'll toss it?

Well, next up is the new tonneau cover and bed rails, and box 2 of 2, of the tonneau cover just arrived, so i'm gonna go throw that in right now!

Look's Good - Lastfit Led's headlight - Are those the 50 watt ?? is it worth the money ?? Do you plan on keeping the tint ?? Thanks

Mike_D · August 20, 2020

15 minutes ago, slj2008 said:

Look's Good - Lastfit Led's headlight - Are those the 50 watt ?? is it worth the money ?? Do you plan on keeping the tint ?? Thanks

Yep they are 50 watt LED's, truck came with HID's. So far they are definitely worth the money! If these didnt work to resolve the issues I was having, i was going to remove the tint because for me, it was just too dark. There were too many situations where it was just too difficult to see, but with the Lasfit LED's, its not a problem at all! They are bright shining through 20% vinyl. I cant imagine how crazy bright they would be if i didnt have any Vinyl!

I would think that anyone who buys these would surely need to make sure that their headlights are not going to blind anyone, and i wouldnt recommend them for anyone who has a truck lifted more than 3 inches unless the headlights are tinted because they are just soooo damn bright! All of these light upgrades i got from Lasfit are super bright!

So in short, yes they are 50 watts, yes they are worth the money (and cheaper than the 35 watt HID's that arent as bright), and yes i plan on keeping the tint since these work so well!

Time will tell though when it comes to the quality of these lights. They do contain 2 fans, one in the back of the bulb and one in the new cover. So there's more places where these can fail. I've scoured the internet and havent found any reviews of people having a bad time with these headlights though, so thats a very good sign!

Edited August 20, 2020 by Mike_D

slj2008 · August 21, 2020

Thank You - keep us posted how they hold up.

Mike_D · August 27, 2020

6.5" Zone Lift scheduled for 9/15, pickup 9/16.

Mike_D · September 18, 2020

Truck is finally lifted with the Zone 6.5", upgraded the rear shocks to Fox 2.0, and added rear leafs to prevent sag when towing. The leaf's sorta gave me back some of the rake the truck used to have when stock, but not as bad. I'm ok with it, for now.

I'm not sure how i managed to get both the front and back pictures blurry haha, i was in a rush.

Here's looking down the front driver side to see how far the wheels are sticking out:

And here's the rear, i didnt manage to get the image dead on where i wanted, but its still easy to tell that the rear is sucked in far too much.

This is inside one of the front wheels, shows what they did with the cables and whatnot.

And they forgot to install the skid plate, i went back later and they put it on:

I also received my replacement parts for the tonneau cover, not sure if i mentioned that they were missing before? I ordered the RetraxONE MX from carid.com and there was some damage (mostly to packaging) and missing parts. I contacted Retrax instead of CarID and they replaced all the missing parts and so I got it installed. I also purchased the gloss black hex rails from Deezee and installed those. The nice thing is the rails went on top of the side rails for the tonneau cover which helps to hold them down. They felt very flimsy like if i was to get up in the back of the truck and put my hand on the tonneau cover rails, i might break it or rip it off, the bed rails clamping it down seems to do a great job holding it down.

slj2008 · September 18, 2020

Look's good . Do park in Large Garage ?? What's next on your list $$$$$

Mike_D · September 20, 2020

On 9/18/2020 at 3:58 PM, slj2008 said:

Look's good . Do park in Large Garage ?? What's next on your list $$$$$

My truck doesn't fit in my garage, it's too long so I park it in the driveway which is where you see it in the last picture with the new tonneau cover and bed rails.

I've got wheel spacers coming in for the back tires. The new knuckles from the lift pushed out the front wheels around 1.75 inches, so I purchased 1.75 inch wheel spacers for the back. Waiting on those to come in.

I've purchased the tow mirrors from Boost Auto. I got the ones with the paintable mirror caps. They come in black, chrome, and paintable DIY. Each mirror has 2 caps, a large one for the top and a small one for the bottom. I just finished the last of the clear coat layers on one large and one small cap. On the other two, I accidently sprayed too much clear coat and it bled in a very strange way, almost looks like a fold that's going all the way across two sides of each. I need to wet sand those spots down, clean it off, than calm my ass down when spraying the clear coat back on so I don't do it again. I'm hoping to have them installed in the next few days, maybe even tomorrow. I'm in Oregon, in one of the areas that's been burning, but thankfully we finally got rain and a ton of it too! Tomorrow looks like we might not get any so I wanna get these on ASAP.

After the mirrors, I'm likely going to replace the nerf bars. The ones I have are a chrome tube with black plastic steps. The driver side step broke today (GDI!!) so I think that's next.

slj2008 · September 20, 2020

when installed , need photo's . Thanks

On your Lastfit lights -did your order from them, or someone else ? do you have a copy of your order from , Looking for the right SKU numbers - Front turn (amber) , Tailights , Headlights . I have the bulb numbers , but i what to get the right ones. Thanks

Edited September 26, 2020 by slj2008

PMad · November 3, 2020

It appears as though I forgot to post the images of the mirrors! Well, i also bought new nerf bars and installed those, so these images will show both the mirrors and the nerf bars.

slj2008 · November 3, 2020

Welcome back - it been a while . Looks good . Your son letting you drive his truck ??

PMad · November 3, 2020

56 minutes ago, slj2008 said:

Welcome back - it been a while . Looks good . Your son letting you drive his truck ??

Haha yes!

FYI: These are the Go Rhino Dominator D4 dual step nerf bars.

I have only 2 issues with these: 1) When screwing in one of the bolts into the main tube, the rivet that holds the bolt came out very easily, so out of 8 bolts on that side, 7 of them are installed, one isnt. 2) The two steps on each side are made to look almost like they are floating, connected at the bar but they stretch back towards the tube but appear to have no supports in the back, but they do... The problem is that while the front steps appear perfectly flat, the back steps appear to have the floating side up higher, so they arent as level as the fronts. You can only tell if you really look, but once you see it, its super obvious! You cant really see it in the pictures though.