Yo, my name is Mike and this is my 2003 Chevy Silverado 1500HD 4x4 “build thread”. This first post is all backstory shenanigans that don’t show much… scroll to post #2 if you dgaf my life story.
I got this truck back in 2017 as a “tow rig” and replacement for my daily driver. I can’t remember exactly, but it had somewhere around 160k miles and was completely stock minus some sicky gnar gnar lowering shackles in the back, a cherry bomb muffler, and some chrome grandpa steps.
That all lasted about a week until it got a black widow muffler, step delete, torsion crank, and some new wheels and tires.
It stayed like this for a couple years. Towed the old Tacoma to KOH, took it on multiple road trips with the family, and daily drove it. I eventually switched to 35s with some help from the trusty cutoff wheel, put Fox 2.0 IBPs on it, and put a baby sized cam in it in late 2018.
Around late 2020, I noticed a drop in oil pressure. No tick… but hot idle pressure was around 10-15psi. I assumed it was the oil pickup tube o-ring, so I ended up pulling the front cover off to do oil pump and switch it to a bigger cam since I was already there (bad lines good times, am I right!?)… Well, the o-ring looked fine, but I kept going and started to pull the cam out. It came out part way, but stopped and would not move past about 1/4 of the way out… tried a few things before aggression, and eventually got it to slide past this odd brick wall I was against, just to hear the cam bearing “ring” against the cam lobes behind it…
Back track a year and a half… I had purchased an LY6 (2007 6.0L engine) for my Tacoma… it was sitting in my garage at this time with a bunch of fresh parts and a decent sized cam. I also had a CircleD converter on the shelf for the eventual swap, and lots of other parts to make it jive…
So the obvious solution to fix my daily driver!? Let’s put the “Tacoma motor” in the Chevy! Had to order some electronic modules to make the Gen4 engine work in my Gen3 truck, but got it done and had my daily driver alive again! Unfortunately it looked exactly the same, so there’s no real pictures to go along with this…
Shortly after this, I rebuilt the old LQ4 from my Chevy and started the swap into my old Tacoma. This includes entirely rebuilding the Tacoma thanks to years of zero maintenance… so that was a long process and nothing happened with the Chevy.
Fast forward past the Tacoma shit to mid-2022. I found a place they would ship long tube headers to California, so I chose more bad lines (good times!) and ditched even more compliancy within California law in the name of performance! In actuality, it just made the truck loud and obnoxious, and made me feel terrible going to work before 6am every day…
Enter the CoBROlla, my 2003 Toyota Corolla shitbox daily that I love more than most things in life because it causes me zero grief. 250k miles, gutless, 5spd manual so my wife can’t drive it, leaks oil everywhere you park it… might be my favorite car I’ve ever owned.
So what do you do when you sell your off-road project you’ve had for almost 20 years AND you acquire a “new” daily driver…? Well, naturally you fuck up your old daily driver! BLGT!!
I got this truck back in 2017 as a “tow rig” and replacement for my daily driver. I can’t remember exactly, but it had somewhere around 160k miles and was completely stock minus some sicky gnar gnar lowering shackles in the back, a cherry bomb muffler, and some chrome grandpa steps.
That all lasted about a week until it got a black widow muffler, step delete, torsion crank, and some new wheels and tires.
It stayed like this for a couple years. Towed the old Tacoma to KOH, took it on multiple road trips with the family, and daily drove it. I eventually switched to 35s with some help from the trusty cutoff wheel, put Fox 2.0 IBPs on it, and put a baby sized cam in it in late 2018.
Around late 2020, I noticed a drop in oil pressure. No tick… but hot idle pressure was around 10-15psi. I assumed it was the oil pickup tube o-ring, so I ended up pulling the front cover off to do oil pump and switch it to a bigger cam since I was already there (bad lines good times, am I right!?)… Well, the o-ring looked fine, but I kept going and started to pull the cam out. It came out part way, but stopped and would not move past about 1/4 of the way out… tried a few things before aggression, and eventually got it to slide past this odd brick wall I was against, just to hear the cam bearing “ring” against the cam lobes behind it…
Back track a year and a half… I had purchased an LY6 (2007 6.0L engine) for my Tacoma… it was sitting in my garage at this time with a bunch of fresh parts and a decent sized cam. I also had a CircleD converter on the shelf for the eventual swap, and lots of other parts to make it jive…
So the obvious solution to fix my daily driver!? Let’s put the “Tacoma motor” in the Chevy! Had to order some electronic modules to make the Gen4 engine work in my Gen3 truck, but got it done and had my daily driver alive again! Unfortunately it looked exactly the same, so there’s no real pictures to go along with this…
Shortly after this, I rebuilt the old LQ4 from my Chevy and started the swap into my old Tacoma. This includes entirely rebuilding the Tacoma thanks to years of zero maintenance… so that was a long process and nothing happened with the Chevy.
Fast forward past the Tacoma shit to mid-2022. I found a place they would ship long tube headers to California, so I chose more bad lines (good times!) and ditched even more compliancy within California law in the name of performance! In actuality, it just made the truck loud and obnoxious, and made me feel terrible going to work before 6am every day…
Enter the CoBROlla, my 2003 Toyota Corolla shitbox daily that I love more than most things in life because it causes me zero grief. 250k miles, gutless, 5spd manual so my wife can’t drive it, leaks oil everywhere you park it… might be my favorite car I’ve ever owned.
So what do you do when you sell your off-road project you’ve had for almost 20 years AND you acquire a “new” daily driver…? Well, naturally you fuck up your old daily driver! BLGT!!
