Rocket Man's 02 Denali Build Thread AKA "THE BEAST"

[Rocket Man]

Well it's been asked why I don't have a build thread and my answer was that I didn't intend to do all that much to my '02 Denali when I bought it so I didn't start a thread when I started doing mods to my truck. I didn't think it would be such an ongoing project, so I just didn't think it would go over well, to do it retroactively. But....thanks to @Fosscore and others, I have been persuaded to do just that. So here goes. I will try to add a bit to this thread every couple of days or so. I have pictures of everything, I believe; it just might take a bit of organizing. Some of these will be out of sequence so when you look at the pictures and see something already done that I haven't discussed, just know that I'm doing my best to get this in order. I have done 2 other build threads, both on Harley's. One was a 2009 V-Rod Night Rod, the other a 2014 Street Glide, so I'm familiar with the process. I'll start with a few of the only before picturess I have. I didn't get carried away taking these when I first bought the truck, since it only looked that way for a few days. Take a look at those original wheels and that fender gap! Next I'll post a couple of how it looks now, along with a shot of my Denali and my Street Glide together, both with 26's. Enjoy!

 

[Rocket Man]

And now, as it looks today. And my Street Glide, which I built in my Living Room a couple of winters ago. (That picture was taken a while back, before some of my latest mods to the Denali.)
Edit: there has been more done since this picture was taken, including a Whipple supercharger, a cowl hood, completely colormatched Esky roof rack, and rear wiper shave. Read on!

 

[Tonyrodz]

Those are some good looking rides ! Love the wheels on the truck . Damn good work !

 

[fiatdale]

Love your truck man. Makes me miss my 03 pewter Denali like crazy!

 

[Rocket Man]

The very first thing I did was get some new wheels. I knew I was going to lower it and so I tried to visualize it lowered when I was deciding on rims. I ended up going with some pretty old-school but always classic Dub ballers in " double black", 26", with some Venezia 305/30/26 tires. The Dubs look gold when the sun shines on them, so they went well with the Pewter paint. Here's what it looked like before I had it lowered. I had to visualize since it still didn't look right. I immediately ordered a Belltech 2/4 kit, with 2" front drop spindles and rear springs. As you can see, it needed it. At this time, I didn't even know about this forum.

 

[fiatdale]

Throw some wilwoods behind those and you'll give half of us hardons. The other half, well they're gay.

 

[Rocket Man]

I had the lowering done by the same shop that sold and mounted my tires. I needed this as my DD and it was February so I wasn't riding any of my Harleys to work, or else I would have done this myself. As it turns out, I'm glad I didn't. The spindles ended up being a pain in the ass.......for the shop. It was at this time I learned I had something called Autoride. The shop said the lowering kit came with some link things to correct the ride height, (ride height sensors I learned later) but it seemed my compressor wasn't turning on, and it looked to them like the fuses for it were missing. So I took the truck home and thought it rode and looked fine, but I was definitely going to look into this Autoride stuff. And that's how I found this forum, googling Autoride problems. Here it is right after lowering it. Autoride is disabled. Or it WAS. Until I replaced those fuses, and the dreaded "Service Ride Control" message popped up in the DIC and then it wouldn't go away. Even after I pulled those fuses. Better fix it.

View attachment 65414

 

[Rocket Man]

As I was looking into the Autoride issues, I decided to get some new LED tail lights and 3rd brake light. I bought some Spyder lights and had those in my hands quickly. After looking at the shocks and researching my options with the Autoride, I decided to replace all 4 shocks and the compressor with Arnott's kit with rear Bilstein rear shocks (new not remanufactured) and their also new front shocks. I don't see the Bilstein option on their website anymore which is too bad, I like their stuff. Here's the tail lights. The 3rd brake light hasn't been delivered yet and the old one doesn't work.

 

[Rocket Man]

Throw some wilwoods behind those and you'll give half of us hardons. The other half, well they're gay.

Yeah, I considered those, but just finished installing the GMT900 upgrade instead. Oh well, semi-hard will have to do...

 

[Rocket Man]

And since there were new wheels outside, I needed a new wheel on the inside so I ordered an Autowoods Denali leather/woodgrain steering wheel. It matched the interior almost perfectly.

 

[Rocket Man]

And since I had the steering wheel off, I noticed the lights for the steering wheel controls didn't work, so back to this forum I went. A bit of reading later and I learned how to replace the bulbs. I was an electronic tech back in the day, so soldering wasn't a problem.

 

[Rocket Man]

Around this time I started looking at the front end and started changing things here and there. I wanted a bumper grill that matched the main grill. Anybody who has tried to find one knows what I went through, after Denali Down Under stopped making these. I found one, one of Eugene's last ones. It was black powdercoated so I had it PC'd in a chrome look. Later on this will go to black again after I go to the Dark Side. Much later. I also found something else that's about impossible these days- an Escalade cowl piece that doesn't have the cutout for an antenna. It was NOS and a dealer in the Midwest charged me 3 times retail for it. I think the mod fever was hitting about this time.

 

[Rocket Man]

My Arnott suspension arrived and I installed it. And the compressor wouldn't start up. After some troubleshooting I found the ground lug corroded and that fixed it. It fired up and...jacked the rear up about an inch higher than it was after I just paid to lower it. Damn. The links for the ride height sensors were too long, so I read here about making my own. You just unscrew the plastic ends and cut allthread or bolt thread to the appropriate length. I experimented with different length of rods until it sat at the lowest height I could get it. Only problem is when I jacked it up a few days later and the suspension was hanging, the rods pulled out because they were too short. So I added just enough that wouldn't happen, and ended up about 3/8" higher than I wanted but now it worked. I could tow my trailer with my 26's and they wouldn't rub. Well, the back was fixed anyway. I had only begun cutting the front fender liners at this time. And rolling the inside of the fenders (after a big bump and the tires pulling the inside lips of my fenders out).

 

[Rocket Man]

And then the dreaded " Srevice Ride Control" message came back. But everything was working fine. So back to the forum. I decided to take it to a shop to read the codes in the Suspension Control Module since an OBDII doesn't read those. It pointed to the front shocks, which had Arnott's "spoofers" for the electronic damping. I contacted Arnott, who sent me another set under warranty. That fixed it for awhile. The light was off, system was working and I was happy. More on that later. Happiness with the Autoride is fleeting at times. Here's the spoofer which is a resistor that plugs into the factory connector and mounts to the top of the front shock.

 

[Rocket Man]

And back to the forum I went, where in the tech section, I found out I could make my fog lights stay on all the time whenever I turned my headlights on. Sweet. Then my HID kit came, and I installed them in my newly acquired projectors. And with the auto headlamp function came the death of my ballasts. I had noticed that with the auto headlamps enabled, the HID's would be trying to fire up at the same time the starter was drawing the voltage down and I kept blowing ballasts. So there in the tech section, I found out how to disable that. I no longer have ballast problems. Then I found out how to keep the low beams on when I hit the high beams so the HID's would not turn off and then take time to light back up when I went back to low beams. Then while I was at it, I found out how to run the DRL's full time when the headlights are on. Or off. Sweet. Oh, and I found out about HIR bulbs for the high beams. So now I had what was known as the 4 hi mod, 6 hi mod, and what I call the 8 hi mod with DRL's included, with auto headlight disable. Then I started replacing everything with LED and colormatching them. Here's a couple pictures of the fueblock with the diodes and jumpers for the DRL and foglight mods. And a couple shots of the lights all on.

 

[05Single]

Very nice. About time you shared this info lol

 

[Rocket Man]

I look back now and realize how much I've done. And keep doing. It never ends does it?

 

[Rocket Man]

I decided to install a DD head unit in the dash but the '02 has a 1 1/2 DIN as stock, so I found out I could buy an '03-up dash bezel and radio cage and convert it. Off to Ebay and soon I had what I needed. I had to remove a metal brace behind the stereo but everything went well. I used PAC interfaces for the factory wiring connections and steering wheel controls, with all wiring soldered and heat-shrinked. That took care of the head unit.
I also installed a back-up camera at this time.

 

[Rocket Man]

Then I had a hole where the factory CD changer was. I couldn't find anything that just mounted there so I took the brackets off the old CD changer and fabbed them to a single-DIN pocket. It slides right in, in place of the factory changer. And it looks factory.

 

[Rocket Man]

Next I needed more bass. I was running everything off the factory Lux amp, which is the best GM had at the time and is actually not bad. The Denali had the Bose Acoustimass enclosure in the rear driver side quarter panel. I looked into upgrading the sub itself but due to Bose's proprietary system, that was impossible. here's the stock enclosure, with the Bose 4 x 7sub. It has a port where the bass comes out of with a 7th order bypass (I believe) enclosure. The actual sub is mounted in the interior.