Welcome to my build thread. I'm not doing anything too significant to my truck, but I figured it would be good to have this thread as a reference anyway, even if just to promote 275 width tires on stock TB's!
Last November, I rented a car here in Boston, drove to Lebanon PA and bought this 2008 Trailblazer. The V8 short wheelbase trucks are very hard to find, and in LT they are even harder. I wanted LT because i like the look of the grill significantly better. Now that is biting me in the ass with the huge premium that LT lenses cost. But anyway, It had something like 110K on it, an dI paid $9500 which I didn't think was too bad (This was November 2015). Probably right around $10K with the rental and tolls. It was in very nice shape, the interior looked basically new. It's black leather, pretty much loaded. The darker color interior makes it look much higher quality than you'd expect. The only thing it lacks inside is heated seats, which is a bummer cause it gets cooooold up here in Boston.
So even though it's SWB, I actually find it to be a very big truck. Larger than I'd prefer. My last truck was a ZR2 (2 door) S10 Blazer. The S10 wasn't a daily driver though, and the trailblazer is. Luckily gas is cheap because I'm getting about 18mpg average per tank. Although I did manage 23 mpg on the ride home from MD (stayed overnight from PA before coming home).
I've been driving it full time for many months now and overall it's nice. It has some issues, mostly the sloppy throttle/shifting and the super squishy bouncy ride. The throttle and shifting issues i'm told would be solved with a tune. I'm working on that but the only guy around that does them, is so hard to deal with, I'm pretty sure he doesn't want customers. The squishy ride gets better with every upgrade, I'm sure by the time I'm done, this thing will ride at least as good as an SS but with more ground clearance.
Here's what I've done so far:
Last November, I rented a car here in Boston, drove to Lebanon PA and bought this 2008 Trailblazer. The V8 short wheelbase trucks are very hard to find, and in LT they are even harder. I wanted LT because i like the look of the grill significantly better. Now that is biting me in the ass with the huge premium that LT lenses cost. But anyway, It had something like 110K on it, an dI paid $9500 which I didn't think was too bad (This was November 2015). Probably right around $10K with the rental and tolls. It was in very nice shape, the interior looked basically new. It's black leather, pretty much loaded. The darker color interior makes it look much higher quality than you'd expect. The only thing it lacks inside is heated seats, which is a bummer cause it gets cooooold up here in Boston.
So even though it's SWB, I actually find it to be a very big truck. Larger than I'd prefer. My last truck was a ZR2 (2 door) S10 Blazer. The S10 wasn't a daily driver though, and the trailblazer is. Luckily gas is cheap because I'm getting about 18mpg average per tank. Although I did manage 23 mpg on the ride home from MD (stayed overnight from PA before coming home).
I've been driving it full time for many months now and overall it's nice. It has some issues, mostly the sloppy throttle/shifting and the super squishy bouncy ride. The throttle and shifting issues i'm told would be solved with a tune. I'm working on that but the only guy around that does them, is so hard to deal with, I'm pretty sure he doesn't want customers. The squishy ride gets better with every upgrade, I'm sure by the time I'm done, this thing will ride at least as good as an SS but with more ground clearance.
Here's what I've done so far:
- Yokohama Geolandar 275/60R17 tires, look and handle great, fit without a single rub bone stock, no lift, no spacers.
- Bilstein HD shocks
- LED interior lighting, "warm white". Looks stock, but much brighter. And of course way less drain on the battery so no worries about leaving your lights on.
- Some LED exterior lighting. But not the big ones, the 8 3157's. I want to do those too at some point but they're so expensive for LEDs that are bright enough to use, and the CK/non-CK makes good ones even harder to find.
- Definitely replacing all four springs with stiffer springs
- Probably going to replace all my swaybar bushings and links front and back. This should be the final step to making this truck handle awesome
- Doing a resonator delete
- Putting a new bearing in my AC clutch pulley, so my truck doesn't sound like it has 8 bad power steering pumps whenever it's idling
- I need to do a tune! The throttle lag and shifting lag are brutal. If anyone knows a shop in/near Boston that specializes in street tunes, PM me the info.
- I'll probably get some 1.5" wheel spacers at some point soon. The truck will look a lot better with the wheel wells filled out and the wider stance, plus technically it should slightly improve handling.
- I'd like to replace my cloudy headlight lenses with fresh new ones, and install HID retrofit kits in them so I can have OEM looking HID 4500K headlights. Problem is the HID kits are $275 and LT lenses are $300 a set. Insanity.
- I'd love to replace the stock radio with a more modern Apple CarPlay compatible head unit
- I definitely want to get a transmission temperature gauge of some kind. Not sure what kind yet, there are lots of options but they're all kinda meh. It's a shame they didn't squeeze a factory analog trans temp gauge into the cluster of this truck. It has a 6700 lbs towing capacity and a 6 pin harness, clearly it's meant for towing.
- I'd like to install heated seats some day. I've read that it's not too hard to do yourself, although I'm kind of skeptical about that. But once the cold hits, I'm really going to miss being able to warm up in an instant. You don't always have the luxury of being able to wait for your vehicle to fully warm up inside, and it sucks driving around an ice cold truck.
- I want a steering rack out of a TBSS, they have a much faster turning ratio for the steering. This Trailblazer has such a slow rate of wheel turn to steering wheel turn. You have to turn the steering wheel a ton to go around corners. Switching up the steering rack should take care of that. But this won't ever happen.
- I want a G80. All three of my previous ZR2's had them, they were great for me. Almost never needed 4 wheel drive. These were an option on trailblazers but sadly, mine didn't come with one.
- There's a video on youtube of some guy who replaced his 4 speed automatic with a 6 speed stick in a V8 trailblazer! I would absolutely LOVE this. Before this TB, my last 4 daily drivers were 6 speed manual sports cars. The manual is what I miss more than the sports car (especially since the V8 TB is pretty damn fast anyway). But the flip side to this is that this truck is likely to end up as my second vehicle someday when I get another real sports car. And when that day comes, it will be good to have it be an automatic. Plus I tow a lot and towing is always better/easier with an auto. Especially pulling a boat out of the lake without getting your truck wet.
- I was originally going to try to get a set of 18" TB 5-star wheels, but I couldn't find a good deal on them. Then I found an AMAZING deal on the 17" tires ($85 each!!! on amazon) and decided I'd just stick with 17". I like the shape and offset of the 18"s, although I don't much care for the chromed look so it was sort of a tradeoff.
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