Post by: no0b123 on September 16, 2007, 03:17:00 PM
I did buy an After market Sony CD/MP3/Satellite player for it because it only had a radio in it:
http://i8.photobucke...45/IMG_0037.jpg
Everything is stock, minus the CD player and window tint I had done to it. What do you think about it? And also, how can I increase horsepower for this truck? I plan on first getting a custom tune for it.
Post by: no0b123 on September 16, 2007, 04:22:00 PM
QUOTE(garver @ Sep 16 2007, 06:51 PM) 
Does it have to 5.3L V8?
No
4.3L V6 with about 200HP.
Post by: no0b123 on September 16, 2007, 06:30:00 PM
Post by: twistedsymphony on September 16, 2007, 07:50:00 PM
personally I'd be worried about fixing that bumper before putting on performance equipment.
if you are going for power adders I'd recommend an exhaust before an intake, and if you do go with a cold air make sure you have an air bypass vale installed as well... the last thing you want is to have that thing suck up a puddle and drown your engine... especially if you plan on driving it in wet or snowy conditions with the cold air intake on... though it depends where they mount the filter.
Post by: no0b123 on September 16, 2007, 07:51:00 PM
http://cgi.ebay.com/...sspagenameZWDVW
If I bought it, how much would it cost for a mechanic to install it? Should I buy it off of eBay, or at the mechanic shop? I hear K&N is the best. What do you think?
Post by: no0b123 on September 17, 2007, 05:09:00 PM
QUOTE(twistedsymphony @ Sep 16 2007, 10:26 PM)
that thing must be fairly anemic with only 200hp...
personally I'd be worried about fixing that bumper before putting on performance equipment.
if you are going for power adders I'd recommend an exhaust before an intake, and if you do go with a cold air make sure you have an air bypass vale installed as well... the last thing you want is to have that thing suck up a puddle and drown your engine... especially if you plan on driving it in wet or snowy conditions with the cold air intake on... though it depends where they mount the filter.
For the exhaust, would you recommend the whole kit to be done (pipes and everything) or a new muffler, and good tips welded on?
And also, I have a new K&N filter installed which made a HUGE improvement for my truck in throttle response, would you still recommend I spend more and upgrade to a cold air intake, or stick with the air box and the K&N filter?
I was considering modifying the air box, and adding a throttle body spacer too. Would these benefit me at all?
-Thanks
Post by: twistedsymphony on September 18, 2007, 07:59:00 AM
QUOTE(no0b123 @ Sep 17 2007, 07:45 PM)
For the exhaust, would you recommend the whole kit to be done (pipes and everything) or a new muffler, and good tips welded on?
And also, I have a new K&N filter installed which made a HUGE improvement for my truck in throttle response, would you still recommend I spend more and upgrade to a cold air intake, or stick with the air box and the K&N filter?
I was considering modifying the air box, and adding a throttle body spacer too. Would these benefit me at all?
-Thanks
Every car is different and every car responds differently to different mods.
The absolute best thing to do is hit up a Chevy truck forum and find out what other people have done to trucks just like yours and which modifications they had good success with and which modifications they had poor success with.
The reason being that These days a lot of manufacturers actually use really good equipment in terms of things like intake and exhaust. If they designed their intake well... then replacing it probably wont do you much good, but if they designed their exhaust poorly (or rather "cheaply") then it would be more beneficial to replace that.
Either way improving your vehicles ability to breath through spacers, intakes, and exhaust is a good place to start with power-adders.
Intakes are usually hit or miss. I know on my Subaru results were pathetic with after market intakes making almost no difference at all and in some cases actually being worse than the original factory intake
The exhaust on the other hand made enormous differences. Similarly spacers will work well to improve performance on some engines, while actually reducing performance on other engines... There is rule that works for all cars, every car is different and responds differently.
Some general tips
For an Intake
-The colder the air the more dense the air is, and the more air it can fit in the cylinders which = more power
-Shorter/smoother/larger diameter pipes = easier breathing and more air etc...
For an Exhaust
-Shorter/Smoother pipes = easier breathing allowing the exhaust to escape faster. This means pipes with less bends, and less extreme bends, and pipes with smooth internal surfaces "mandrel bent" is an important term as it means that the bends were made with a mandrel (a piece inserted into the pipe while bending) sot that the bends make a smooth curve as opposed to a curve with the metal on the inside edge getting all crimped and wavy.
-The more you replace the more you'll gain... Out of the engine the exhaust fumes go into headders which collects from the individual cylinders and flows down into a single pipe. From there it goes into a catalytic converter for emissions, and then into a straight pipe and finally into a muffler before exiting. Sometimes there will be a resonator on the middle pipe or a second muffler or a second catalytic converter... all are used to reduce noise and harmful gases.
The fewer things you have on your exhaust the better your performance will be... For instance if you removed your exhaust completely you'd probably have the best performance possible but you'd also have an unbearably loud vehicle spewing nasty smoke out of the engine bay
So what you're trying to do is make the exhaust as non-existent as possibleReplacing the muffler will help a little bit, replacing everything from the catalytic converter and back (called a cat-back exhaust) will help a whole lot more... replacing the entire exhaust including headers and the catalytic converter could make a world of difference. Of course it's expensive too.
Personally I would say don't even bother unless you can afford to do the cat-back, a decent cat-back runs about $500, you can get a hi-flow cat for about $100-$200 if you decide to do that too... (or if you hate the environment you can get a "test pipe" to replace the cat with just plain pipe for about $50... but you'll likely not pass your next emissions test). Headders can run from $500-$1000 and in general don't need to be replaced unless you're hard core serious about your performance.
Bigger diameter is not always better on the exhaust of a non-turbo vehicle. depending on the header design there is an optimal diameter that will actually cause momentum in the exhaust flow. Basically it need to be small enough to restrict the flow just enough so that the individual exhaust pulses compress into a single smooth flow, but not so much so that it actually blocks the flow.
Again start looking around and seeing what people recommend. Pickup a few magazines and look for exhaust or intake "shootouts" where they test a whole slew of systems and give you price and horsepower numbers.
90% of building up your car is research...
once you've got the intake and cat-back settled how you like it then you can start looking at computer stuff.
Post by: no0b123 on September 18, 2007, 05:38:00 PM
Is cat-back short for something, or what? And (specifically) what is it?
Post by: twistedsymphony on September 19, 2007, 07:12:00 AM
Since "cats" are fragile and can wear out they're ususally built with flanges on either side of them to easily unbolt and replace it with a new one. This also makes it easy to replace other exhaust components.
You are legally obligated to have a catalytic converter on your car, it's a federal law in the USA that your car either has to have the original emissions equipment from the manufacturer or a replacement that is federally approved.
Since there is a lot of red tape in replacing or removing the cat many people opt to replace 100% of the exhaust up to to the cat. hence a "cat-back" replaces 100% of the exhaust system from the catalytic converter all the way back to and including the exhaust tips.
Generally just replacing the muffler and exhaust tips is called an "axle-back" since it replaces everything from the rear axle and back.
On turbo vehicles they often make "turbo-back" systems which... you guessed it, replaces everything from the turbo charger back.
I'm sure you're seeing a theme here... Whenever you replace exhaust components for performance reasons you basically pick a point and replace everything from that point on...
I'm sure if you went to a performance shop and said "I want a cat-back exhaust" they'll know what you're talking about... though there is a HUGE difference in sound and performance from one exhaust to another, so you'll really want to do your research and walk into said shop with a brand and model in mind.
I'm not an American truck kind of guy so I'm not too familiar with the different brands of aftermarket exhausts... though I could chew your ear off about the Japanese aftermarket
I do know a lot of guys with Chevy trucks running Borla, Magnaflow or Flowmaster brand exhausts... most of them do it for sound but they do offer quite a bit of performance to your car too. If you're cheap you can find a local shop that does custom exhaust work (they're easier to find then you think) and just tell them you want a custom pipe that flows well and sounds good and they'll probably fix you up a custom system for about $300... it will be hit or miss on the performance gains though since they usually just eyeball it and call it a day (for what it's worth this is what I have on my Toyota pickup, but that's only because the stocker had a hole and I needed it fixed)
Most of my american truck buddies order from:
www.jegs.com
www.summitracing.com
so you might check out those sites to see whats you there for your truck.
Also exhausts are stupid easy to install... especially on a truck since you don't even need to jack it up to do it.
for a cat back there are 2 bolts and then the rest is just rubber exhaust hangers that you pull off with your hands... that's it! it will take an hour tops if it's your first time.
The only part that can be tricky is if it's an older car the bolts and flange surface might be rusty making it hard to remove and difficult to seal to the new exhaust section. In those cases just pickup a can of "PB Blaster" to spray the bolts with and then once they're off sand the old flange surface smooth so it makes good contact and seals with the new exhaust section.
Considering your truck is only an 06 I doubt you'll have many problems in that regard though.
Post by: no0b123 on September 19, 2007, 05:47:00 PM
So it looks like my truck wont be receiving any upgrades soon, and I am broke without a job, and my own truck is damaged. Life is great.
Post by: twistedsymphony on September 20, 2007, 07:59:00 AM
Post by: 47_M450N_47 on September 20, 2007, 10:33:00 AM
Post by: twistedsymphony on September 20, 2007, 12:28:00 PM
$3500 worth of damage to her car... the truck drove off without a scratch
I get around this stuff by driving pieces of crap... my old Toyota is only worth about 4K if it gets wrecked I just strip off all the good parts and buy another one.
I'm convinced... new cars are for suckers
Post by: no0b123 on September 20, 2007, 05:20:00 PM
I cannot find a throttle body spacer for my V6 4.3L truck. Can anyone give me a link to where to buy one? I found this one site, I think it would work with my 06' Silverado:
http://www.autoparts...tle_body_spacer
Post by: twistedsymphony on September 21, 2007, 07:33:00 AM
200-615 is their part number for their throttlebody spacer for your truck.
Their official online resellers: http://airaid.com/dealers_online.asp
or you could shop locally: http://airaid.com/dlrlocator.asp
Then I went to streetandperformanceelectronics.com
43016 is their part number for their throttle body spacer for your truck
http://www.streetand...pinst/43016.pdf
... That was easy
Post by: no0b123 on September 21, 2007, 10:30:00 PM
Post by: 47_M450N_47 on September 22, 2007, 07:06:00 PM
QUOTE
I'm convinced... new cars are for suckers
Definitely, I gave 7k for my little '99 Ranger when I got it 4 years ago. KBB said it was worth 11k, but we got a deal from a wholeseller. Anyway, I've put 40k miles on it since I've had it, putting it up to 130k. It's still worth about 4k I guess, the body has some dings on it and a few scratches, but it's still fairly mechanically sound, although a couple of months ago it caught on fire and nobody can figure out why... But yeah, if something happens to it, I can just sell off the good parts and get something else.
Post by: no0b123 on September 23, 2007, 02:41:00 PM
Post by: no0b123 on September 23, 2007, 04:54:00 PM
SKU:
#2005121
#2005141
Both should work for my Truck, but the cheaper one looks like it comes with more stuff, and is of higher quality. But under item description, it says it's for 1/2 Ton Pick-up while the other one says Silverado 1500 series...
Post by: twistedsymphony on September 24, 2007, 08:26:00 PM
according to everything I'm seeing the 4.3 V6 wasn't offered in 06.
you sure it's not an 05?
check the 10th digit of your VIN here: it should be a "5" for 2005 or "6" for 2006
http://en.wikipedia....l_year_encoding
Post by: no0b123 on September 24, 2007, 09:42:00 PM
Is my engine bad? I don't expect to haul anything huge, maybe like a medium sized U-haul trailer at the most. But I do want Horsepower, and the speed. Nothing like a Ferrari, but just a quick start, and a higher top-end speed. I think I can only reach like 95 MPH, thats the fastest I have ever gone in it
Post by: twistedsymphony on September 25, 2007, 04:25:00 AM
QUOTE(no0b123 @ Sep 25 2007, 12:18 AM)
I just checked the VIN and I can confirm, it's a 2006....
are you sure you don't have the 4.8?
from what I can tell the 4.8 V6 was the lowest motor offered in 2006.
EDIT: nevermind I guess it was offered as a special order item...
in any case I wouldn't order from that site unless you knew exactly which space you need... if I had to guess one of those kits is a generic kit that wont really work well on your truck... you might be better off finding a local dealer to buy from so if it doesn't work you can easily take it back.
Post by: Rustmonkey on September 25, 2007, 06:46:00 PM
As far as the comments about buying new, I agree. I've got a 92 1/2 ton that does me just fine right now. Its in great shape and, personally, I prefer the body style to the newer ones. Its got a boat anchor 305 in it right now, but I'm in the process of dropping a 350 in with the Edelbrock TBI package - Desktop Dyno put it at about 310 horsies with 340 ft/lbs of torque - gonna be a screamer compared to my <200 hp 305 - but hell, the 305s got nearly 200 grand on it
Anyways, sorry for the tangent - the v6s are capable of some power, but you're going to have to spend some money - CAI and throttle bodies will do some good, but a full exhaust system is a great way to really FEEL that you've invested in something worthwhile.
Post by: no0b123 on September 25, 2007, 10:20:00 PM
I feel like something is robbing my trucks gas mileage. When I reach top speed of 95mph, I can actually watch the fuel meter drop down by a millimeter every second! I know trucks are bad on gas (15 mpg for me) but DANG! Anything to improve this, I fully understand how to burn gas quick, but how can I improve fuel efficiency with my lead-foot driving?
Post by: grim_d on September 26, 2007, 01:50:00 AM
QUOTE(no0b123 @ Sep 26 2007, 05:56 AM)
Anything to improve this, I fully understand how to burn gas quick, but how can I improve fuel efficiency with my lead-foot driving?
you can't, the only way to acheive good mileage is to not drive like a bat out of hell.
i dunno what your complainging about, petrol over here is 90p a litre, and thats cheap!
though it is rocket fuel compared to the water you guys have
Post by: twistedsymphony on September 26, 2007, 08:44:00 AM
QUOTE(no0b123 @ Sep 26 2007, 12:56 AM)
How did you get over 300HP? I want like 350-400HP. Whats the easiest way of achieving this?
First: Throw out what you think you know about horsepower... HP is generally a marketing piece, what you should really interested in is Torque... and at what RPM...
Second: if you want to put up 300-400 HP (or comperable torque numbers) you either need to
A: put a bigger motor in there
or
B: throw a turbo or super charger on there
+whatever other modification need to be performed to accommodate those things.
either way you'd be looking at about a $5K+ investment and a lot of work... make it $10K+ if you're not doing any of the work yourself.
either way more power almost always = lower gas mileage... you can't have your cake and eat it too...
Something like an exhaust has the potential to give you a small HP boost and a small MPG boost, but you wont be adding triple digit power to your vehicle with simple crap like exhausts and intakes.
QUOTE(no0b123 @ Sep 26 2007, 12:56 AM)
I feel like something is robbing my trucks gas mileage. When I reach top speed of 95mph, I can actually watch the fuel meter drop down by a millimeter every second! I know trucks are bad on gas (15 mpg for me) but DANG! Anything to improve this, I fully understand how to burn gas quick, but how can I improve fuel efficiency with my lead-foot driving?
What's robbing your truck of gas mileage is the fact that you're driving a truck...
it weights 4600lbs... thats almost 2 and a half TONS by comparison most cars weigh about 3000lbs
secondly since it's built for hauling crap it's got heavy duty transmission, drive shafts, diffs, axels and large tires... a general rule of thumb is every 10lb of rotating mass that the engine has the adverse effects of being as if you added another 100lbs to the weight of the vehicle. you figure an econemy car is front wheel drive, so it has no drive shafts, the diff is built into the transmission, the gears are smaller and lighter because they don't have to pull nearly as much weight, and the axles are maybe 1" in diameter... you truck by comparison has gears that are twice as heavy, a transfer case going into two large heavy drive shafts, going into two large heavy differentials going into 4 large and heavy axles and pushing large and heavy wheels and tires. The drive train alone probably adds another theoretical 1000lbs to your weight AT LEAST.
To make up for all this weight it's geared lower so that the motor can still pull it, and that means your revs are higher and you're sucking down more gas.
aerodynamically you're driving a brick and all that wind resistance is slowing you down and sucking down more gass... ever wonder why those hybrid cars are so damn ugly? it's because they're designed to reduce wind resistance as opposed to looking good. adding a spoiler to a car can swing gas mileage as much as 3mpg... imagine what changing the whole body shape can do.
If you've got an auto transmission they're usually a little worse on gas than a stick shift too as they're usually heavier and they don't make a solid connection so there is always some amount of power loss.
If you're worried about fuel economy you should have thought of that before you bought the truck...
Some tips:
1. ensure you've got the right tire pressure all the way around, if you live in an area with a frequently changing climate it might be best to invest getting your tires filled with nitrogen as the pressure wont change with the temperature (I run it here in NH because it's 70s to 90s in the summer and -10s to 30s in the winter.
2. make sure your engine is clean and running well, make sure the air filter is clean (if you run a K&N you should "recharge" it every 6 months) make sure the oil is clean, and the spark plugs are clean.
3. make sure your suspension is in good working order. Misalignment can cost you mileage, as can unbalanced wheels, as can dragging brakes, as can worn tires... keeping your vehicle maintained means it will get the best mileage possible.
4. run better fuel... not all fuel is created equal often times the cheaper fuel is cheaper for a reason... personally I've found that Shell Gas gives me an average of +3.5mpg over other brands, fill up at different stations and compare mileage... despite the fact that the Shell gass was 5cents more expensive then the Hess station next door I actually got more money's worth out of the Shell because of the better mileage. YMMV... literally.
5. invest in a toneau cover for your bed, no only will it look nice and keep the bed clean but that giant wind sail attached the back of your truck wont suck down your mileage.
In generally though you're driving a hippo... you wont be turning it into a svelt greyhound anytime soon... if that's what you wanted then you should have done more research before buying your vehicle.
Post by: no0b123 on September 26, 2007, 06:25:00 PM
Post by: twistedsymphony on September 26, 2007, 09:13:00 PM
QUOTE(no0b123 @ Sep 26 2007, 09:01 PM)
Alright. Do you think a Flowmaster exhaust system would still sound good on a V6 4.3L engine?
no clue... did you find any reviews or independent horsepower tests like I suggested 15 or so posts ago?
Post by: no0b123 on September 27, 2007, 10:01:00 AM
QUOTE(twistedsymphony @ Sep 26 2007, 11:49 PM)
no clue... did you find any reviews or independent horsepower tests like I suggested 15 or so posts ago?
Yeah, absolute bare minimum HP gain (unless a V8) but still would sound good. Looks like this will be one of the last upgrades I do. Today I payed the guy I rear ended. My bank account is now at $150 dollars. Still trying to get a job here, no one's hiring
Looks like no more upgrades. Thanks for answering my questions though, you can close this thread if you wish.