Will's Bug Out Rig: Duramax Van

[The Dark Side of Will]

Weld-Tec makes a lot of expen$ive $tuff, but these at least look like cool & subtle touches for tire clearance: https://weldtecdesigns.com/product/chev ... i-fenders/

[The Dark Side of Will]

Stopped by the local Chevy dealer and got the PN for the 1500 AWD front crossmember. The stealership wanted $450 for it, lowest online price I've seen is $350ish. I'll have to make some calls to junk yards about that one.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Hadn't needed to tow anything, and had been avoiding bolting the hitch up because I wanted to get a true starting weight... not back calculate it later.
But I had to move the WKGC, so I bolted the hitch up. Hitch and hardware weighed 54#.



Unfortunately had some issues bolting it up...

[ericjon262]

think maybe something bumped into it at one point or another?

[The Dark Side of Will]

The other four bolts were fine, so I'm pretty sure the hitch was just made crooked.

ETA: Have found prices down to $308 & $311 for the crossmember. Still looking around locally, though.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Van ran like a mother F@#$%ing Duramax for 542.8 miles today.

[ericjon262]

Van ran like a mother F@#$%ing Duramax for 542.8 miles today.

The expletive implies something went wrong, did it?

[The Dark Side of Will]

Van ran like a mother F@#$%ing Duramax for 542.8 miles today.

The expletive implies something went wrong, did it?

Not at all... flawless the entire trip.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I filled up for the return trip a couple of blocks from Promar. I filled up again at my Dad's house yesterday... 18 mpg for that leg.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Just got a fuel economy tune yesterday and had the tuner turn off... you know... the thing.
Sometime in the Obama years, my Uncle's widow's daughter bought a GMT800 Duramax Silvahraedo to pull her horse trailer. She had my dad go over it. He had the brake lines replaced, as those rust on GMT800's, got her a new spare to replace the rusty one, fixed up the spare tire winch under the truck, installed a lift pump, etc. He made his first trip to this tuner to have... you know... the thing... turned off. It was a couple hundred bucks, normal work, no BFD.
Fast forward a few years to do the same to my van... price more than doubled, pay in cash, receipt doesn't mention that service.
Sign of the times.

Also, after covering hundreds of miles of salty highways over the weekend, I took this ugly-ass van with peeling paint to a high-end car wash just to get the "chassis bath" undercarriage wash. The high speed blowers that dried it at the end were blowing paint chips all over the inside of the car wash. Lol.

[ericjon262]

yeah, tuning street vehicles is very much becoming a black market process. what kinda numbers did it put down?

[The Dark Side of Will]

It was a shelf tune... no rollers spun. I won't even know initial fuel economy until next weekend.

[pmbrunelle]

yeah, tuning street vehicles is very much becoming a black market process.

OEMs can do it too!

VW_Golf_TDI_Clean_Diesel_WAS_2010_8983.JPG (175.15 KiB) Viewed 5349 times

[The Dark Side of Will]

Took the van to the Belvoir hobby shop to change the oil today.
It almost fits.
I didn't get a shot of how close it was to the overhead lights.









This is behind the oil pan, basically under the torque converter looking diagonally forward at the left engine mount, which is just above center



The same with a flash:



This is looking straight forward where the front driveshaft would have to go



The same with a flash:



This is forward of the axle centerline. The steering linkage is top right, the Duramax oil pan is out of frame to the left.



A slightly different angle



The same with a flash



Closer view of the left engine mount from the same angle
The bolt-in crossmember across the bottom of this image will have to go. It may be replaced by the stock AWD crossmember I showed above, which will be located further back.
The flat surface above the bolt-in crossmember, which has two studs for mounting the mount bracket will have to be cut away. That means that those two studs will no longer be there and that end of the flange for that bracket will be cut away as well. There are two more studs holding that bracket down, but I wouldn't want to run it with just two.
So that means I'm going to have to make a new version of the bracket that supports the engine mount. The rubber mount in the middle and the metal legs that attach to the block are all one unit, which is specific to the vans.
I guess I need to look at how the Duramax is mounted in pickup trucks.



This is just behind the bolt-in crossmember, looking directly left and up at the engine mount



This is directly below the lower control arm rear pivot. It shows that a LOT of the control arm pocket can be cut away to make clearance for the diff snout.
Of course that also means cutting away one or both of the remaining studs that attach the engine mount bracket to this stamping...
Oddly the remaining structure would end up looking a LOT like the control arm pocket on the AWD van frame...

[The Dark Side of Will]

From RockAuto:

This is the van left engine mount:



This is the truck left engine mount:



They look extremely similar, but the van unit is taller. This may make the truck mount easier to use, as it will raise the mount and give me:
-More clearance for the diff
-More space in which to package my replacement mount support bracket.

[ericjon262]

yeah, tuning street vehicles is very much becoming a black market process.

OEMs can do it too!

LOL! no kidding!

<break>

your pictures look promising, almost like 4x4 won't be that hard. I figured there would be way less space than that.

[The Dark Side of Will]

your pictures look promising, almost like 4x4 won't be that hard. I figured there would be way less space than that.

The pickup truck mount will help out a LOT... I think there's plenty of space to fit the pumpkin EXCEPT the shape of the drag link might cause the left inner tie rod end to hit the diff cover on a right turn. I need to snag a frame section to start cutting and see what works. Maybe there's a shallower/shorter pitman arm/idler arm combo I could swap in... maybe I can switch to a straight drag link instead of that weird thing. Kind of pre-mature to speculate until I get the diff approximately in place in a mock up frame.

//

I just had another idea for a license plate: GRU VAN
It's a play on my idea of the Crew Van and Gru from Despicable Me... since it's a diesel and I basically want it to be like Gru's car.

Err... Grumobile

https://despicableme.fandom.com/wiki/Grumobile

[ericjon262]

Do you already have a front differential?

[The Dark Side of Will]

I do. I snagged a 2011+ 9.25" 3.73 front a few months back. I haven't posted pics of it because I haven't done anything with it yet.

[ericjon262]

I do. I snagged a 2011+ 9.25" 3.73 front a few months back. I haven't posted pics of it because I haven't done anything with it yet.

FYI, although I'm sure you already know this, later model(07+IIRC) GM 8 lug parts are 8x180mm instead of 8x6.5" I'm not sure what hub/axle compatibility could overcome that though.