17 Sierra 1500. 2 years in the making.

[Red Stick]

So, as the title eludes to, I’ve had this truck for a little over two years. It was purchased new in Mississippi when we were still living in Louisiana.



Here she is right after getting home for the dealership. 2017 GMC Sierra 1500 crew cab, Z71 4x4 6.2, with 8 speed transmission and 3.23 gears.



Handled the mud at deer camp great despite the wheel/ tire combo.

Loved the look of the truck especially with those 22s, although I knew they weren’t good for anything. I hadn’t searched for a truck with such big wheels, it’s just the way it ended up.

From the get go I knew I wanted to level the front and get rid of that factory rake while making a little room for bigger more aggressive tires in the future.



This is after the 2.25” ready lift level was installed. Subtle but much better.

Next up had to be a cap and bedrug. With two kids and two large-ish dogs the dogs have to go in the bed, along with any cargo.




A.R.E. Z series and full bedrug installed. It is nice and comfy back there at this point. Really like the topper but in hindsight, with a 200 lb rtt sitting in my garage now, I wish I would’ve thought about going with the CX HD topper with internal frame. A roof top tent wasn’t anywhere in the plan when the shell went on almost 2 years ago.

Pretty good and functional road and highway truck at this point, but does leave a lot to be desired for off road capability.

More to come soon!

 

[Joey83]

Looks like a great truck! :)

 

[Red Stick]

Continuing... at about that point we loaded the truck up and made the 2500 mile move to Idaho. My dogs really liked that fan in the shell when we were driving through New Mexico and Arizona in late June.

After getting settled we made a few day trips through the national forest. As I knew they would, the 22” wheels rode horribly on washboard forest roads and I was constantly worried about blowing a tire or worse bending or cracking a wheel.



As our fist winter approached, I researched winter tires thoroughly. I ended up buying a set of used gmc 18” wheels at a great price and put brand new blizzaks in stock size on them.



I’ve got two winters on those wheels and tires and It did great in snow and on ice. Especially with the auto 4 wheel drive engaged.

We kicked around the idea of a small camper for quite sometime but early last fall we decided to give a rtt a try, the goal being to have the rig ready for this spring/ summer.

First things first, I needed to get rid of those 22” wheels. Last fall Method Race Wheels had a close out sale with lots of their wheels 50% off.



Picked these up in 18x9 -12 offset. It’s a little more negative offset than I wanted, method does make 0 offset which would’ve been perfect but those weren’t on sale, so it was between this and a +18.

The wheels were stacked up in the garage where they would spend the winter. The 22”s were sold recouping almost enough to cover the Falken Wildpeaks that would go on the Methods.

In the meantime much research was done on different roof top tents. With two adults and two kids I needed something with at least a king size sleeping area. I looked closely at the iKamper and really liked the hard shell when closed but you definitely pay a premium over quality soft top tents of the same size and if you want an annex that’s another $700.

After looking at Tepui and Cvt, I stumbled across a sale on Cvt’s website, that was to good to pass up, now a Mt Rainer extended Summit is sitting in my garage. It’s not on the truck yet but it appears to be built like a tank and nearly as heavy as one. Oh and a matching 55” awning that I plan to run off the back of the truck covering the tailgate area.

With wheels and tent acquired, the roof rack research started...

 

[Mekcanix]

oh this is really nice.

 

[mnicosia23]

Awesome truck man, I look forward to watching how this build progresses.