Dustin Jacksons 2008 Chevy Tahoe Build Thread

[Dustin Jackson]

I had some time this morning so I figured I would document the story of my Tahoe.

In late 2019 I sold my civic that I was making payments on and bought a 96 Tahoe so that I wouldn't have a car payment and we needed a family car for car seats and strollers. I loved the size and ability of the Tahoe but this Tahoe had a strange problem that I was never able to figure out so I got rid of it. There was intermittent problems with the ignition and transmission, some electrical problem.

In February 2020 we stopped by a local used truck dealership and I found the rig of my dreams, a Z71 GMT900. I had always wanted one but they were very expensive but this one was only $13.5k out the door but it had a worn out suspension and 160,000 miles on it. My girlfriend at the time (now she's my wife) gave me her blessing and I bought the 08 Tahoe with a $250/month payment which was very doable.

Here is the first picture I took of it right after I left the dealership.

Here are some pictures I took near a local dam a couple days after I bought it.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

I didn't know this at the time but the Tahoe had a rear lowering kit installed. It rode pretty bad over bumps and seemed to bottom out pretty easily in the rear.

This is the kit it had installed when I first bought it.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

First order of business was to upgrade the suspension. Here is how the suspension looked when I first got it.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

I wasn't sure if there was any lowering springs in the front so I decided to go with Bilstein 5100 shocks and Moog HD springs, 81069 in the rear and 81244 in the front. I still know those part numbers off the top of my head lol.

The rear parts came in first so I did the rear first and then the front at a later time.

Here is how the lower kit compares to the new parts

Here is how the Tahoe sits after the rear was upgraded, compared to how it was when I first got it.
Before:

After:

Great results. This fixed my bottoming out problems and greatly increased the ride quality. After doing the rear I was hooked up upgrades.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

I don't have pictures from when I was doing the front for some reason, compressing the Moog 81244 springs to fit on the Bilstein 5100 was very hard so I opted to configure the 5100 to be at factory height so I wouldn't have to compress the spring any more in order to fit it on the 5100.

Here is the style of spring compressor I was using, I used 2 sets so 4 clamps per springs for safety lol.

Here is how the Tahoe sits after upgrading the front to Bilsteins and Moog springs, personally this is an amazing ride just as it is right here and If I had to redo a Tahoe build again I would stop here and not lift it like I ended up doing.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Here are some more pictures after doing the Bilstein and moog upgrade in the front and back.
I got some bird shit on my fender flare and it ate the paint away a little bit on the plastic.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

After the Moog and Bilstein upgrade I took the Tahoe to be aligned but the shop told me the balljoints were worn so they couldn't align it. Time to upgrade!
This time I did RC upper and Moog lower control arms, moog wheel bearings, pads and rotors Detroit axle drilled and slotted with ceramic pads, and 2.5 inch aluminum spacers in the front and rear, inner and outer tie rods, and locking alignment cams which I ended up regretting and removing before I bought my KO2s.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Here is a comparison of my Tahoe before and after the lift upgrade:
Before with just Bilsteins and Moog springs:

After 2.5 inch lift pucks:

More pictures after the lift upgrade and suspension refresh:

Suspension angles:

 

[Dustin Jackson]

The 2.5 inch lift really hurt the ride quality of the Tahoe and it made me sad because I was very happy with it before I lifted it. After months of research and diagnosis I identified a few areas I could upgrade the Tahoe to compensate for the damage to the ride quality the 2.5 inch lift caused.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

The first things I noticed is that my rear axles was way off center

Here you can see the rear tires sticks out of the fender just a little bit of the driver side

Here you can see the rear tires sticking out of the passenger side A LOT

The fix for this was an adjustable panhard bar from Spohn. I went with the ones with adjustable del sphere joints. Make sure to tighten the joints as much as you can because I chased clunking with this for months before I finally just tighten the joints down.

This helped with my OCD but didn't really help with the ride quality, read on.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Next I realized that my rear shocks are probably over extended because they are designed for factory ride height and aren't designed for lifted tahoes.

Enter Rough Countrys rear shock extension brackets, you can call them and they will sell you the brackets by themselves for like $60, very high quality parts and made a world of difference in the quality of my Tahoes ride after lifting it. I did have to monkey around in Ace hardware for nuts, bolts, and washers because those weren't included from RC.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

I also realized that my rear sway bar end links were not doing a good job and left my rear sway bar at a crooked angle which probably wasn't great for the ride quality. I found some 3 inch Jeep JK sway bar end links that fit perfectly.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

The panhard bar, shock extension brackets, and longer sway bar end links improved the ride quality by 100% and I am back to being very happy with the ride quality of the Tahoe.
Here are some pictures of the new panhard bar, shock extension brackets, and longer sway bar end links:

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Somewhere along the way I installed a GMT800 Z71 roof rack onto my Tahoe. I pulled it from the junk yard for $30 and prepped it with a green scratchy and hit it with satin black rustolium, its held up well for the last 4 years.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Here is a picture after we did some mudding

 

[Dustin Jackson]

I decided to get some AT tires and went with KO2s

Up until this point I had a bad alignment on the Tahoe due to the locking cams I tried to use when I did the 2.5 inch lift. No shop in town wanted to align them properly and that ate my old tires. I didn't want to get new tires until I could get it aligned right, so I had to go back to factory style alignment cams.

 

[Dustin Jackson]

For a while I ran a Range AFM disabler but then smog time came around and I started getting weird ticking and decided to go with a proper AFM tune delete because I have to smog it every couple of years and I don't want V4 mode to come on.

Swapped the Range AFM disabler out for a Black Bear Tune

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Here I am installing H3 hummer mounts to get rid of that thud when taking off

 

[Dustin Jackson]

Here is the Tahoe near mount shasta

 

[Dustin Jackson]

I had a lifter fail on my finally around 180,000 miles. It was an AFM lifter but it wasn't collapsed, it seemed to be turned in the tray hence why the rocker would still go up and down when turning the engine.