Opti's Cheap Family Hauler (GMT800 Content)

I needed a family car. The wife's Jeep is too tight for two car seats for me, SWMBO doesn't mind it, but it's not for me. Car seats barely fit in the ECSB GMT400, and towing capacity is a little lower than I'd like, fuel economy is also a little lower than I'd like. AC In the 400 blows cold (under 40 at cruise) but not hard.

I wanted something that corrected all those and was cheap, because I'm cheap.

GMT800 Suburban to the rescue. It does everything I want perfectly. So I started the hunt. It was very hard to find the options I wanted, 4x4, efans, rear buckets, DVD player, and sunroof. I looked at probably 20, standard marketplace problems. I got sick of looking so I spread my search to 200 miles and decided I was buying something Saturday.

Lo and behold a very high mileage 05 Escalade ESV Platinum popped up about 4 and a half hours away, in the one place I didn't want to drive. So at 9.24pm we arranged a meet, and I hit the road at about 7 am the next day.

Got there and it was considerably rougher than expected but after a 2 minute test drive to verify all for gears still reside inside the transmission, and a half assed bend down to make sure everything wasn't rusty (one thing I won't deal with), we agreed on a price, which was only about half of what I was wanting to spend, so I'll put up with a lot.

I filled it up, very slowly (more on that later) checked trans fluid and oil and drove it 4 hours non stop back home fueled purely by blind faith.

It made it. Seems to run decent, so I parked it and went to have dinner with SWMBO and her friends since it's her Bday, and she just spent 8 hours of it sitting in a car so I could drag home another pile of E36 M3.

Here she is in all her glory

So the pros are she made it, and it's a 6.0 and maybe you could call a 4l65e a pro compared to a 60e. Being a platinum it has some weird features like heated and vented front and rear seats, so even my rear passengers can have cool air blown lightly between their cheeks, heated and cooled cup holders, a DVD player for the 2nd and one for the 3rd row, and a bunch of trims pieces that are platinum only and somewhat valuable.it came with stock wheels and most importantly it was cheap and has frigid AC

Cons. Its beat. Looks like someone E36 M3 on the carpet. Everything is filthy. The suspension or something makes it pretty unhappy when you hit a bump. Got a couple whiskey dents. 280k miles. It will only take .5 gallons of fuel at a time, and I'm told it has a new canister which means there is probably charcoal all through the evap and vent lines which is a PITA to deal with. I'm sure there are many things wrong with it, I haven't discovered and its another project that I didn't need. 

Next up is cleaning, then shake down, stay tuned and join me in my misery

Fun! I've got some suspension stuff, e fans, and a reman booster if any of it helps i will hook you up cheaper than anywhere else

Patrick said:

Fun! I've got some suspension stuff, e fans, and a reman booster if any of it helps i will hook you up cheaper than anywhere else

Thanks but this one came with the efans (05-06), might take you up on the suspension, but I have to shake it down and check it out first.

This is 100% the kind of stuff I get myself into.  I can say that my 2011 Expedition with 159k miles that I grabbed last year on the cheap has served me well, and those GMT800s really are pretty good.  Let Rockauto be your friend and it will be fine!  Tuning in for more!

I still haven't been under the truck or given her a thorough shake down, trying to get it inspected and registered before I dive in completely but I did manage to clean up the headlights this weekend.

Before

After

They were cloudy and a little yellow before. Didn't quite show as well in the before picture, they weren't the worst I've seen, but it made a huge difference in person

Finally got a chance to do a little work to it.

First the truck required priming the fuel system to start, so I figured the pump was dying so I ordered one. Got a 60 dollar Sparta pump off rock auto, I'm sure that won't bite me in the ass later.

It also wouldn't take more than a quarter of a gallon at a time when fueling, so that's either a failed vent valve or a canister that has come apart and allowed carbon through the whole system. I hoped for a bad vent, but expected carbon, because the truck had a new canister and vent. So once I got started I pulled the purged and tapped in on the bench

Alright so need to clear the lines when I get the tank down

Tank down and after lots and lots of work got all the carbon out. Pump looked like it's been in there for a while but this is a gmt800, so it can't be oe.

Getting the tank down was a bear because the strap bolts spun because the speed nut tore. Apparently pretty common even on non rusty trucks. If anyone runs into it Dorm 55157, is supposed to be for gmt400 trucks but I think that's a catalog error because it's perfect for gmt800.

I was running out of time but I wanted to do some maintenance, including flushing the trans. You know what they say, if you have a super high mileage trans of unknown condition and origin, the best thing to do is flush it. I ran 20 quarts of Valvoline max life with BG chemicals.

Before

After

Next I moved to the diffs

Rear was a little low, not sure on how the fluid looked because I didn't pull the cover just sucked it out.

Front was overfilled and pretty nasty

Plug

So I cleaned that off and pretended I never saw it, and filled it up with some Valvoline Synthetic 75w90.

While I was under there I poked around doing a little cleaning and inspected and I found this

In my experience GM doesn't make it a point to paint stuff no one sees, so I'm pretty sure someone's been monkeying around in there. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I ran out of time before I finished everything I wanted to get done, so I might try to do a couple things Sunday.

Seems to have dropped trans temps about 15 degrees, still want to do a bigger cooler, but working on fixing broken stuff for now. It starts without priming and it took a full tank of fuel.

Plan is to make everything work as it did when new then decide if it needs mods and which ones

Yeah, those gm canister charcoal issues are a mofo. Glad you had another reason to drip the tank and got it all done. No one will ever see it but should feel pretty satisfying. 

Had a few mins this morning so I spent it working on the truck.

The passenger side window didn't work so I put a 17 dollar regulator in and a new courtesy light/reflector. Install went fine (I did notice the lower pocket is broken so I'll see if I can grab one off eBay or something) and now the window works.

glueguy (Forum Supporter) said:

Yeah, those gm canister charcoal issues are a mofo. Glad you had another reason to drip the tank and got it all done. No one will ever see it but should feel pretty satisfying. 

I have blown a couple out and it takes forever, just back and forth for about an hour or longer before it all comes out. What I've found that works best is to take the lines on the tank off and just tap them on the ground for a few minutes and it'll all come out, and the line that runs to the purge hit it with a vacuum then blow it out. I don't think I cleared everything to the purge out, but I'll let the purge valve and engine vacuum do that for me. It takes about 30 seconds to pop it off then I can just tap it and whatever's it's caught will comes out and put it back on the engine.

Gentlemen, if you use antiseize on caliper bracket bolts, your caliper will fall off and ruin your Saturday.

I got a couple caliper bolts and pulled the left side off, cleaned all the anti seize up, put some THREAD LOCKER on the bolts and torqued them to their spec of 1 million ft lbs. Debated about yanking the other side finally decided to not be lazy and took it apart and the bolts were barely hanging in there.

I did order some small stuff and some suspension parts I plan on putting on in a weekend or two, this was an unscheduled repair 

I've been working on other projects lately so the Escalade has mainly been sitting, but I had a little time this morning so I wanted to show it some love. 

Started with an oil change.

I've been using the Valvoline Restore and Protect lately. Couldn't find much info on it when it came out but it promises to clean deposits (not just sludge) after 4 oil changes. It's full synthetic and the GMT400 has good oil pressure with it, so I've been running it out of curiosity, and want to pull a VC to look after the 4th change (I think I just did the 3rd). Ever since I was chasing a low oil pressure AFM issue and I found GM has a tsb about an updated oil filter to increase pressure, and it actually worked, I just run GM filters on my GM stuff.

Then I put in my new reflectors and lights in the other 3 doors (already did pass front when I did regulator)

The hood release was broken when I bought it and had to grab the cable with pliers, so I ordered a replacement on the Amazon and put it on. Kind of a tight job but not terrible, if anybody does this job you don't have to take off near as much as it looks like. Just move the module and pull the 3 bolts for the parking brake and you can install it. After it was installed it was still very tight, and Im pretty sure I found why it broke, I readjusted the hood latch and now it pops very easy.

Last time I was under it I noticed the bump stops, especially the tears were smoked so I popped now ones in, again just cheapos from Amazon.

I never got around to changing the transfer case fluid, so I decided to do that next. I drained dthe old stuff and it didn't look terrible. It takes Dex 3 but like manual transmissions the updated Dex 6 doesn't work, the only brick and mortar place I've found to get dex 3 is the GM dealer and they call it manual trans fluid, but I didn't want to go to the dealer so I went to AutoZone and found some stuff that works in place of auto track 2  which is GMs transfer case fluid for shift on the fly stuff, and made no mention of Dex 6, and many of my GM guys tell me they use it in every Tcase.

While I was under there I noticed some oil leaks. Mainly the VCs and the oil cooler hose gasket, so I decided grab some VC gaskets but I forgot to grab the oil cooler gasket so I just ignored it for now.

Started on the VC job.

Pretty sure I've got a leak there. I will say the Escalade engine cover is a pain in the ass to take off and it did not get reinstalled, and won't until I've done all the catch up maintenance and repairs on the engine.

She was a little crusty

I guess now I have a baseline for this fancy Valvoline stuff. Cleaned up the VCs pretty good (it's still a beater) and replaced the gaskets and grommets. 

As soon as I started the pass side I looked at the heater hose connectors that were looking pretty haggard and hadn't been done in a while, and told myself I'm going to end up breaking them, but then realized I'm a halfway decent wrench I'm sure I can avoid breaking them if I'm careful. I then proceeded to immediately break one, I barely touched it I swear.

It's good it happened now and not on the road so I grabbed some the hoses the tees and the connectors.

I'll hear no comments about my hose clamps, I forgot to grab some and they were the only ones I had laying around. If I remember, I'll swap them out for some constant tension clamps.

I also broke the super crusty pcv hose from the intake to the pass side VC. I just grabbed some 3/8s hose and tossed it on there, with a plan to order the Delco hose, but the bulk hose fit pretty good, so maybe I'll leave it.

Afterwards I hit the engine bay with some engine degreaser and gave her a spray down. Looks like the valley cover is also leaking, when I do that I'll do the knock sensors, harness and intake gaskets also. I went ahead and gave her a proper shake down and it looks like both uppers bjs are smoked and have a ton of play and one lower ball bj is real bad, so I'll be doing some ball joints real soon.

After that I was all done and went for a drive. After about 30 miles she was showing over 18 mpg.

Pretty happy with that considering it has BFG KOs on it and the alignment is obviously not great. I think it's not out of the realm of possibility to knock down another 1 or 2 mpg with some good street tires and wheels pointing in the right direction. Also noticed the new bump stops seems to calm the rear down quite a bit when going over bumps. I assume this is because the rear springs are said to be too soft to work properly without the air shocks (mine are completely blown) and now when I go over the bumps I've actually got a bump stop to engage. Obviously I need to get the new rear air shocks and compressors on, I haven't fixed the problem only masked it.

Hoping to be able the new ball joints, control arms, shocks and compressors done next weekend

One thing that bugged me about the truck was it had an aftermarket key, just a generic chrome key. Nothing to show the unwashed masses that I didn't drive a normal Chevy (ewe just imagine) but a Cadillac Escalade. This just wouldn't do for a distinguished gentleman like myself. I felt bad just inserting that generic key into the ignition cylinder of such a fine automobile.

So I bought some cheap blanks from the Internet and had the cut.

They work. I'm happy 

I ordered some parts this week and had a few hours Saturday morning.

Main focus was going to be suspension, want to have that sorted before I buy new tires. I ordered some good lowers but saw rockauto had some upper controls arms on closeout for 20 dollars and I couldn't resist. My rule is if it's a pain to change, get the good ones, if it's easy try the cheapies first, the upper arms are real easy so I took the chance. They worked fine, except the bushing weren't pushed in quite far enough, so had to push them in maybe another 2 mm to have the arms fit in the frame pockets nice. Lowers punched in just fine

Repeat on the other side and reassemble

I also ordered new rear shocks. Wanted to keep the air stuff. Went with Vigor because they have good reviews on the gmt800 groups and the pair is only 200. They have a ridge that retains the bags, many of the other cheap options don't have a ridge on the shock body and the bag ends up just falling down the shock.

My old bags were smoked which means the compressor would have run until it died, because in their infinite wisdom GM put no protections for the compressor. Didn't even bother checking it, just ordered a new Dorman one. An added benefit is Dorman adds thermal protection to the compressor so it's less likely to kill itself if I develop a leak.

One more thing before the jobs done, a dying compressor seems to always pop the fuse so I checked it.

All the old parts

Started it and commanded the compressor, pressure went up and held, went ahead and sprayed everything down with soapy water to check for bubbles and everything looked good. Now just needed to align it.

Probably could have done better but I was in a rush and the right tie rod was seized so fine adjustment was quite difficult. When I have a little more time I'll take some camber out of it.

Impressions on the test drive, HUGE IMPROVEMENT. Rides well, rear is composed going over a bump, less crashing from the front when going over a bump. This thing rides great even with the BFG KOs, small impacts are a little harsh but I'm willing to bet that's from having an LT all terrain on the truck, I think next step is a set of nice P rated street tires, right now I'm thinking OE wheels and Dueler LXs.

Got the tires and stock wheels put on yesterday. Went with Bridgestone Dueler Alenza AS Ultras. Found out my stock wheels are missing two center caps, need to order a couple.

Impact harshness is much improved and road noise is down quite a bit. I haven't checked the impact on fuel economy yet. They did a terrible job of balancing so it vibrates like crazy above about 55, I miss having a balancer.

I rechecked the alignment and tweaked it slightly. 

I worked on the carpet a little and went after the headliner again. The headliner was bad enough I would notice it in the rear view mirror.

Good enough to not immediately notice it, so now its lower on the priority list. 

I think the main thing bothering me now is seats and the radio. Probably the next things I tackle 

Love it!

Platnium trim is pretty cool for all the little touches. Guys spend a fortune piecing together those interiors on trucks. 

In reply to Run_Away :

Thanks. This started as a 5.3 suburban hunt, but the ventilated seats made me look for a platinum, I hate pretty much all modern features, except ventilated seats and when I found out they were available in the GMT800 in the platinums and were difficult to retrofit into everything else I was looking for one. The 6.0 is a nice added bonus.

I didn't realize how expensive some of the platinum only parts are until I started looking for parts.

I am digging it though, wife like it's more than the GMT400. It is already a considerably nicer vehicle than when I bought it

Forgot to mention, I also dropped some TransX in the crankcase to try and swell the oil pump pickup o ring. I've used it with success in the past. I've noticed oil pressure a little slow to build on startup and that's normally a sign of a bad o ring. I plan on changing it but not until I drop the diff to replace it, then I'll also do a pan gasket and pickup o ring