Morphing a Sierra with a Silverado

[txarkitekt]

Damn dude...you've got a lot of work done! Nice write-up too...

Ok, as for the drivetrain on the GMC...consider it trashed. I would not reuse or try to fix anything. There should be enough flex in the driveline to where the rear end should still be good. I would take the motor, motor mounts, tranny, and driveshaft out of the GMC and replace it with the Chevy stuff. Of course you will need to get a new CCSB driveshaft for the GMC. I would save the motor and tranny from the GMC to use as your own parts stock.

From the looks of the frame, you are good--just swap over everything from the Chevy that you take off the GMC. It should be a pretty straight forward swap.

Good work--keep us updated!

[04DOOR]

Sry about this newb question. What is a CCSB driveshaft?

I need to post some more pics to try to catch up to where I am today. Maybe this weekend i'll get caught up here on the forums. Thanks for the encouragement.

[Beatdown Z]

CCSB stands for Crew Cab Short Bed

[04DOOR]

After swapping the motor mounts I later swapped in a new trans mount along with the crossmember. I swapped intake manifolds. Broken one for the good. I swapped the ps pulley and alt bracket. I used the same ps pump. Its nice that you can leave it hanging while you take the bracket out. I used the alt. from the other truck and swapped out the water pumps. Its awesome that the trucks use the o-ringed water pump seals instead of the gaskets.

I took the radiator support off the Sado and transferred it to the Sierra. I left everything attached and just removed two bolts for the support. I disconnected all the cooler lines and reconnected them on the Sierra. Looking really good at this point.

[04DOOR]

[04DOOR]

Next snag was the fan shroud. Since the Sado sat higher the fan shroud needed adjustment. The engine stays in the same place relative to the frame on both trucks. But the radiator support sits higher on the Sado. It is an identical support but since it is higher the fan shroud is different. So I had to cut clearance on the shroud. I will eventually need a Sierra fan shroud but this will get me by until then.

It was the same story when I put the fenders on. The fender well liners are longer for the Sado so when they went on the Sierra they needed to be trimmed. There is a molding line that made a good place to start cutting. After that it only needed clearance around the front of the a-arm.

[04DOOR]

After that was taken care of. I spent the entire weekend lining up both fenders and the hood. There was a total of about 25 attach fenders, take off, adjust bracket or add shim, then re-attach fender sequences. Hood didn't have as much adjustment but fit nicely.

The bumper went on fairly easy but of course I ran into another problem. The top plastic piece was larger to compensate for the height of the Sado. So of course it didnt fit on the shorter Sierra. I took of the plastic piece and it fit nicely. I wonder if there is a low profile piece that fits on the Sado bumper? I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to get around this problem yet. At least it is chrome underneath.