Friday night was wideband time. My boss finished welding in my O2 bung and on his request I'm not showing you guys because it looked awful and he's embarassed BUT it works and by, "it works", I mean that there was only a small pinhole leak around the bung and I just slathered on some copper RTV sealant and it's probably totally fine...
Anyway, here is the gauge in it's temporary home until I find it somewhere to live during tuning.
After we got the wideband setup we spent WAY too long messing with these engine covers I got. I managed to find the two side pieces used on eBay for cheap and then I ordered the center cover new for $38. The right cover went right on and the center made us realize we needed to reroute the top harness slightly but the left was a huge PITA mainly because I had let the engine warm up while testing things. I think these were from a DBW truck as we had to cut some out from the left cover so that it would sit over the throttle body properly. Eventually we got it handled though and you can't see where we cut.
Yesterday it was sticker time!
After that I decided it was finally time to do some annoying work. When I did the suspension work before and lowered the Tahoe I completely forgot to do the free travel mod so I jacked up the Tahoe and dropped the suspension. Look at my pretty springs! My friend noticed after I pulled the spring on the passenger side that it was actually contacting the frame where the bump stop bit was welded on and since we were cutting all that off anyway we made sure to clearance it on the inside of the frame so alleviate that issue.
Here's one of the offending pieces.
And first cut done.
Of course I didn't take any more pictures of what I was actually trying to accomplish because that would be silly. Luckily for you guys I'm sure there are a hundred other build threads around with better shots. What I did do though was check my suspension travel and verified that my rear inner tires are rubbing the fender liners when near full compression and I saw marks that led me to check that. This means I'm likely to put a 1/2" spacer on the rears to get rid of that.
Finally as I was putting it all back together my friend remembered that I never installed my new sway bars so we at least broke out the rear and put it in. This thing is a BEAST. It is a solid bar, not a tube...
In the end, the Tahoe rides significantly better in the rear over bumps. Is it as good as factory? No, but it's a hell of a lot better than before. I think the rear is in for new shocks to match the front before I go to Colorado in August and I want to get my SS brake lines done before then as well. If I get those two things done along with actually tuning my truck I think it should be a good trip to test it all out.
I saw Reduced Engine Power and the a/c went hot as it slowed to a crawl and died. It would barely stay alive at idle with the a/c off and if I even pressed the brakes it would die. My wonderful new engine covers prevented me from accessing anything that I wanted to check on and of course my tool kit that I keep with the Tahoe was in the garage at home.
