4BT Cummins Turbo Diesel in an 05 Silverado (with pictures!)

**MrGoodtime** · 10-08-2010, 02:28 PM

We were at walmart yesterday at like 1 in the morning and I happened to stumble upon this,

Congrats

**heavrolet9894** · 10-10-2010, 09:44 PM

I'll have to go pick this up tomorrow.

**93ChevyTBI** · 10-11-2010, 07:39 PM

I picked it up today around 6:00 and read half of it at the soccer field while my son was practicing....awesome edition too. Friggin 30mpg Duramax Tahoe.....MAN I WANT ONE!!!!!!!!!!

Man, they were bragging on Nate so much I'm sure sure his head has swelled up many times over by now....."jack of all-trades" to summarize. And like they mentioned, yeah I hate those kind of guys. Damn...why I can't I be like that? It's pure jealousy. That's how I feel about the guy who tuned my truck...he's just like Nate....can do anything.

Nate...one question....they mentioned seeing "a forum thread"....why couldn't you have made sure they mentioned FSC????!!!! Come on!!! That would have been the perfect opportunity!!! All jokes aside...FSC is proud to have you as a member. They really showcased your talents and I bet this won't be the last project we see you working on.

They also mentioned the BabyMax on page 18 and how GM is still listening to enthusiasts about starting production on it. We can only hope.

Nate....just ballpark figure...What would it cost to put a duramax in a Tahoe?? $6k-$8k? If I could get a 200k+ Tahoe for cheap, I'd think long and hard about doing this.

Again...Congratulations.

**VortecZ** · 10-12-2010, 05:01 AM

I don't know if I'm the jack of all trades but I have been fortunate enough to be at the right place at the right time to learn a lot about trucks from friends and family. I'm very thankful for that.

Duramax Tahoe.....A couple years ago, I had a guy wanting me to build him a Duramax Avalanche. It never happened but we got pretty serious about working up prices and details. Obviously a Tahoe and Avalanche are close enough to the same. A ball park figure is hard to come up with without more details. The biggest trick is finding the right vehicles to pair up. By that I mean finding a wrecked Duramax truck that is trashed with the exception of a good drivetrain so you can get it as cheap as possible. I suppose you could buy any Duramax truck and sell off any parts you don’t use in the conversion. Then you also need to find the Tahoe you want that is preferably the same model year as the truck. Back then, you could find a wrecked Duramax truck with 100k on it for a little more than $6k. Now, wrecked diesel prices are up for some reason so I would expect $8k would be a good buy. Then all you got to do is slam it all together! With a Avalanche or Suburban, you could start with a ¾ ton Suburban frame but with a Tahoe, I would just do a front frame clip combining the truck frame and Tahoe frame. That would be a challenge but not too bad. There would be a ton of little things that are time consuming like wiring, fuel line changes, brake line changes, and so on. All the big stuff and the little stuff would quickly add up to a few week project once both vehicles were in the shop. I could see spending around $5-6k on labor and misc. parts if you paid to have it done instead of doing it yourself. There was an article in Diesel Power a while back about a shop building Duramax Suburbans and getting something like $80k for them I don’t know who is paying that much but I’d sure build one for that!

**93ChevyTBI** · 10-12-2010, 07:26 AM

Oh crap!! I was hoping $8k would cover everything (duramax,ally, and labor). Looks like the build alone would cost $12k plus the cost of the Tahoe itself. Around $20k....that's a bit much for me....didn't know it would be that high.

If you have the time, you should definitely be doing those $80k conversions.

**VortecZ** · 10-12-2010, 10:08 AM

Yeah, the deal I was working with the Avalanche was around $15k using his Avalanche to start with. He had several other things adding to it like some custom paint, lift kit, and a few more things.

**Cartman372** · 10-20-2010, 04:19 PM

So I was walking through Walmart and I decided to look through the magazine section and I saw something familiar out of the corner of my eye. So I looked over and look what I found

Just bought it today

**rickypopham** · 10-20-2010, 06:56 PM

Congrats, I remember reading this on here in the build thread and then while at Walmart I saw it on the cover and had to buy it.

**jccloud9** · 07-11-2011, 05:21 PM

Does anyone happen to have an extra copy of Diesel World (Dec 2010) featuring this truck in it? Or maybe one that they are through with that I could purchase from you. I've actually been thinking about doing the exact same thing to my 2000 GMC Sierra 1500. I just happened to do a search expecting to find zero results but I couldn't have been more wrong. If you do have one but don't want to get rid of it maybe you can just scan that particular article for me? I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me out with this. Thanks in advance!

**VortecZ** · 07-21-2011, 12:06 PM

Originally Posted by jccloud9

Does anyone happen to have an extra copy of Diesel World (Dec 2010) featuring this truck in it? Or maybe one that they are through with that I could purchase from you. I've actually been thinking about doing the exact same thing to my 2000 GMC Sierra 1500. I just happened to do a search expecting to find zero results but I couldn't have been more wrong. If you do have one but don't want to get rid of it maybe you can just scan that particular article for me? I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me out with this. Thanks in advance!

Send me your email and I can send you a scanned in copy of the article. The article doesn't really talk about a lot of specific stuff you need to do for this swap. There is a lot more information just from reading this thread.

**jccloud9** · 07-27-2011, 04:16 PM

VortecZ,

PM sent

**oshpunit987** · 08-03-2011, 08:46 PM

Originally Posted by 1LOWDIESEL

hey man you have any pics of how you did the hydroboost lines and such?

1LOW, if your main concern is about the extra return line on the power steering pump used with the hydroboost, I just made a "Y" pipe out of a piece of 3/8's steel fuel line. I made a hole in the middle of a 3 inch piece and brazed another piece into the hole. Then I ran a drill bit in the tube to clean out any braze that was on the inside. Attach your return lines from the hydroboost and the power steering to the "Y" and attach it to the pump and it's done.