I bought this Tahoe from a bank that my shop does business with fairly cheap. We check out their repos. Sometimes they need a quick fix to re-sell, sometimes they get scrapped and sometimes I buy them. I planned to re-sell this one but I like tinkering with it and I just kept it around. It's a good winter vehicle, plus it rides so nice and my daily driver is a 500hp Challenger (and I have three kids LOL).
It had 183K on the clock, and didn't look too great coming in. Nobody thought it would be a good buy. It was filthy and seemed neglected but I dug around it's ownership history a little and came to the conclusion that it probably lived a good life until near the end. Being driven on a gravel road, used as a rolling office, and letting maintenance items pile up made it all pretty sad but it had really good "bones" as they say. It appeared that the transmission had been replaced and the engine ran very very strong, with zero major leaks. Here is the list of things I did so far to bring her back from the dead:
- new battery
- re-seal oil cooler adapter gasket (small oil leak)
- right front axle
- right front wheel bearing
- lower ball joints
- front and rear rotors
- front and rear ceramic pads
- new kumho tires (ride soooo nice)
- alignment
- new spare tire/wheel (missing)
- spark plugs
- ignition wires
- serpentine belts
- replaced various bulbs
- professional exterior detail/polish
- ignition lock cylinder
- new key fobs
- new steering wheel (worn)
- new HVAC control (worn)
- power outlet cover
- interior deep clean!
After all that I drove it around for a few weeks, got confident in her and took it on a family trip to Florida. I wanted to keep the miles off our other cars and see if there was anything else to shake out. I had two issues; in the hotter weather the A/C was lagging a little and the cruise control stopped working. No big deal, I can fix those...would not have found that out without a road trip. I don't know what it is about this Tahoe but it rides so nice on the highway. Smooth and quiet. If you jumped in this truck and drove it around and guessed the mileage, you would be shocked when I told you it's not sub 100k.
If I keep it around I would like to do the following:
- dash replacement (cracks)
- TBSS 22" polished replicas
- 3/4 drop
- Z71 de-clad
- Roof rack delete
- Tahoe SS front bumper cover
- Tahoe SS side skirts
There is just something about bringing back this old horse that has been a lot of fun.