Morphing a Sierra with a Silverado

[04DOOR]

New to this site and not sure if this is the correct forum. Mods please move if you feel it belongs somewhere else. Basically I'm taking two wrecked trucks and combining them into one good truck. This will be a thread about all the steps it took me to combine a Sierra with a Silverado.

It all started Wed August 13 when I bought a rolled 2004 Silverado. The plan was to take the 6.0l lq4/4l80E out of the truck put a procharger on it and swap it into my firebird. I bought the truck not knowing if it would run. The way it was hit I was sure that the engine would turn over.

[04DOOR]

I towed it home thursday and on friday I started working on it. The first problem was that when the truck was upside down it turned the intake manifold into an oil pan. Now that the truck was right side up I could get all the oil out.

First was to pull the spark plugs and see if the motor would turn over. I pulled all eight and turned the crank with a socket. Oil came spewing out of all eight holes. That was pretty bad but at least it turned freely. I then put a battery on it and cranked it with the plugs out. More oil came out. After a few cranks I put all the plugs back in and hooked up the wires.

I had to pull the air intake out to clean everything. The air filter was soaking with oil, the maf was covered, and the tube inbetween the throttle body and maf was still full. After cleaning all the oil out and spraying a maf sensor cleaner on the maf I put a new filter in and hooked everything back up.

I filled it with 3 gallons of gas and put the battery back on. Checked all the fluids and added when necessary. I turned the key a couple of times to prime the fuel rail and pump. Then I started the truck and it ran the first time.

Immediately it started smoking. And kept smoking and kept smoking. I ran it for about 20 mins and it still never stopped smoking! But it was running so i drove it off the street and into the driveway and called it a night.

[99sierra4x4]

nice, well figure there is about 6 or 7 quarts of oil soaked into everything on the upper half of the motor where oil isnt usually supposed to be soaked into, so when ur burning oil it will put with smoke. So did you figure out which truck you are going to use the frame and everything?

should be a cool project, keep us posted with lots of pics.

[04DOOR]

Yea the intake is nice and clean but the exhaust is another story. I didn't clean any of it out of the exhaust. I think the longer I run it the farther on down the exhaust it starts burning oil. Plus I don't know if the cat is ruined after being drowned in oil. I've probably run the engine for a total of 45 mins and it is still smokin!

[04DOOR]

So i was content with the 04 Silverado and the plan to pull the engine was still going good. I decided to mess around with the body work on the truck. I have never fixed anything that bad and I couldn't make it any worse right? So I tore out the interior and hooked up the porta power and started fixing things. I was starting to get somewhere and I got all the doors to close again and latch correctly.



Keep in mind that I wasn't planning on keepin or fixin the truck. I was just getting some practice with the porta power. Well I guess I pushed the porta power to the limits because when I went to push the roof back into place I blew a seal. It was fun while it lasted.

Next I started doing an inventory on what parts I could sell from the silverado. After everything was said and done I figured I could keep the engine/trans and get my money back from parting the truck out.

[04DOOR]

Roughly a week and a half later I was wandering on the net and saw something that caught my eye. It was an 04 Sierra with the lq4/4l80E. I took a look at the truck in person and was totally blown away. It was totally different from the Sado. It had all the luxury options and upgraded options. It really was in good condition too.



I had never owned a truck before the Sado and now I was thinkn of buying another one. But the Sierra was different from the Sado. It was a crew cab instead of extenda cab. The Sado was a work truck stripped down model and the Sierra was the cruising road trip and towing model.

[04DOOR]

At that moment I knew what I had to do. Morph the Sierra with the Sado.
Things really started looking good especially when I saw where it was hit.




With my little knowledge of trucks it seemed like a perfect match. Take the front end from the Sado and put it on the Sierra. What could go wrong right? They were both 6.0l/4l80E 2004 2wd trucks. So I did it. On August 27 I bought the Sierra. Just two weeks after buying the Sado. My biggest challenge would be to explain to my wife why I drained our savings account to buy two wrecked trucks. But the damage was done. I now owned two trucks. A 2004 Silverado and a 2004 Sierra.

[04DOOR]

First step was to determine how bad the damage was. Obviously the white truck was toast. The frame was probably ok but the cab was munched and the bed side was hit pretty good. It would never be the same.

Next I looked at the Sierra to see how badly it was damaged. At initial inspection it looked as if it hit something tall and didn't crunch the frame. It was hard to tell with everything smashed into a Sierra cube. So i began to tear the front end off.

[04DOOR]

You can see I started to find out some interesting things once I pried away the twisted metal. One major thing was the broken intake manifold. The radiator and condenser were wrapped around the fan. If you look closely you can see where the fan hub tore apart from threaded stud in the middle. The water pump shaft pushed through the rear cover of the pump about an inch.

It was bad. I didnt think the motor was touched at all. From under the car I looked and it didn't seem like it hit the crankshaft pulley but I couldn't see on top. Now I know it got creamed. Things were starting to get bad but not impossible.

The alternator was torn off the mounting bracket and the idler pulley was bent. The alternator looked ok but it didn't spin anymore. The crappy plastic tensioner was also trashed. But obviously that didn't matter because even the metal parts were mangled.

You can see in the second pic how close the bumper came to taking out the wheel and the control arm. There is a small scuff on the a-arm but that was from me trying to remove other busted pieces.

Not only was the radiator support pushed back but it was torn in half at the middle. I was starting to get worried about the frame now.

[04DOOR]

I had a friend come over to look at the truck for fun. He laughed at both of them and told me it would be months till I got them fixed. Yea whatever, we'll see I told him. But then he asked if the motor was supposed to be leaning back in the engine bay. I had noticed that earlier and took a look at the Sado. There was a slight tilt to the Sado's motor but not much. Looking again at Sierra I saw the angle that the motor sat back at was quite large compared to the white truck.



O damn! What did I get myself into. This was getting worse and worse. I still wasn't hopelessly lost but I was getting close to it. So most of the front accessories were trash, intake shot, radiator support and all related components were thrashed, engine tilted, and whatever else I hadn't discovered yet.

Was the frame hit? Was I wrong about how high the damage really was. I still thought it would be ok at this point. Just a little more to tear apart. Bend all the fragged metal out of the way so I could get to the bumper bolts and then I would know for sure.



Do you guys think the frame is damaged at this point by looking at the pics?