2007 Silverado Buildup

Today, we've got the keys to Chevy's all New Silverado and we're going to put it through its paces and tell you what we think about it. Then we'll show you how to personalize and pump up the power of this brand new truck without voiding the warranty. It's all today here on trucks.

Hey,

welcome to trucks. You know, it feels like we got the best job in the world here. We get to see what's new and happening in the aftermarket. We get to go to trade shows and factories

and build cool trucks and sometimes we even get the opportunity to test drive brand new vehicles that these manufacturers are putting out.

And we're gonna continue to give you guys a look at brand new trucks and we're not gonna play favorites. We're gonna test them all. Give them the once over and let you guys know what we really think. Good and bad.

And today we get to run around in Chevy's brand new Silverado and flog the crap out of it.

Yeah.

Now, since you're watching the show, odds are, you're just like I see you drive a truck. As a matter of fact, half of the new vehicles purchased this year are gonna be light duty trucks. So the

to get a really close look at what you could potentially throw down 30 grand or more for. Well, it matters. So we're gonna continue to test, give you our honest opinions and real world numbers on each of these new vehicles that we check out.

This is a pretty nicely equipped four wheel drive, Silverado with their two LT trim package with plenty of interior appointments. Now, we think it's a pretty good looking truck. We thought we'd get a few insider opinions from some of the people we work with.

I think it's pretty cool, man. I mean, I really do.

I'm glad to see that they got away from the, uh, the iron block and went aluminum. That's really neat. I gotta say my favorite things are number one, the extended cab window rolls down instead of pops out. It's a nice different touch

and I like how the extended cab door opens way around

and I dig that two tone interior.

Yeah, it's all, it's, it's all hydro form, dude.

That's cool. Have you noticed that there's two cup holders in the rear, three on the console and one in each front door

and

there are two glove boxes,

there's extra storage everywhere.

That's neat.

What are you looking at? The rack and Pinion?

I didn't know that they did that. When did, is this the first year for the first year four wheel drive. Yeah.

Now this Chevy is obviously a brand new truck, but the Silverado name first came on the scene back in 1975

Chevrolet's first truck hit the streets in 1918 and over the years, the changes in style and design that led to today's Silverado have come fast and furious

in 1975 the name Silverado was used for the first time as the top trim package for the C 10 pickup.

While the eighties saw additions like fuel injection and overdrive trannies. In 1999 the Silverado was introduced as its own line on the GMT 800 platform.

And that brings us to today with the introduction of the GMT 900 platform

with the 07 Silverado S new GMT 900 series platform. GM has once again, totally redesigned this truck from the wheels up starting with some updated engine choices like this top of the line 6 L with a projected 367 horsepower.

The 900 series platform has a hydro formed front frame section and is fully boxed all the way up back for added strength.

A new coil over ifs front suspension for two and four wheel drives has cast upper and lower control arms

and for the first time ever rack and pinion steering in their four wheel drive trucks,

the rear is a straight axle with leaf springs and a one inch wider track

and features the Eaton automatic locking dip

that senses a 100 RPM difference in the rotation of the rear wheels and automatically locks both axles giving incredible traction.

So now we need a way to test the performance claims of the new Silverado, make sure they're accurate and keep the factory honest. So we're gonna be using hypertext's new hyper pack as a testing device. This is gonna give us hard data and actual objective numbers, not just some information from the vehicle manufacturer's sales brochure and we'll use the hyper pack on every single new truck that we test as an honest way to give a real comparison for you guys.

The hyper pack plugs into the OBD two port and has its own windshield mount so you can put it in an accessible place out of your field of vision.

The touch screen is easy to navigate and the unit will monitor engine and drive train data in whatever format you want to see it.

Performance numbers using a drag strip simulation include 0 to 61 8 and a quarter mile times as well as rear wheel horsepower and other dyno features

out on the road. If a full size truck can feel sporty, this one does.

Its responsiveness will fool you into thinking it's half its actual size

steering feedback is immediate with the new racket pinning system and the new frame keeps it a level in the corners.

The new styling looks great from a distance and up close the fit and finish of the new body has stepped up a notch with tighter panel gaps, which also makes for a quieter ride.

Go on green.

Our acceleration test gave us an 8.2 2nd run to 60

we covered the quarter mile in 16.2 seconds at a little under 88

MPH.

You know, you're breaking.

Yeah.

All right. We're at 60

breaks, work breaks, work

eyes about popped out of my head.

They still make an ashtray.

You can't smoke anywhere else in America except this truck. It's still an

ashtray

around town. We got 16

MPG and out here on the highway we got 21 because of G MS active fuel management system

that shuts down four cylinders under light loads and fires them back up when you need all eight.

The throttle response is good

and you would never know that it's switching from four cylinders to. So

it's absolutely seamless.

Other than the little light on the dash and the instrument cluster, you can't tell it's changing over at all.

The only real drawback,

the Silverado low roof line over the windshield gave us a closed in feeling.

But overall, Chevy's done a great job for a completely stock truck. That is

when we come back, we'll be adding three popular upgrades to the Silverado and later it's rust removal. Magic. Stay tuned.

Hey, welcome back. Well, we got to say

that for a bone stock vehicle. This new Ose

Silverado, it does pretty good. And we just showed you that with a 6000 pound truck. This thing's got good acceleration, good handling. It's laid out nicely on the inside and the new styling on the outside, it looks great so we could just leave it alone. But this is trucks and that ain't gonna happen. Yeah. And the truth is most of you guys out there who buy a brand new truck won't leave it alone either.

In fact, within 90 days of rolling a new truck off the showroom floor,

most guys will start to add some things. The most popular aftermarket add ons are cold air intakes, cat back exhaust systems and wheels and tires. Now, I know you've seen this bolt on a ton of these kits and for good reason, a cat back exhaust and a cold air intake. Well, it's an easy and affordable way to bolt on horsepower to your truck and wheels and tires. Yeah, they look cool, but they could also really enhance the handling, but you gotta be careful when you're dealing with a brand new vehicle because sometimes aftermarket parts can affect your warranty. But these,

they're not aftermarket parts.

Yeah, I know GM has always had accessories, but now they've come up with a full line of accessories and parts including performance modifications that will not void your warranty. So by having your dealer install these items, you can personalize your vehicle avoid any war t issues. Roll all of the cost into your truck payment and save yourself from spending a ton of cash right after you bought a brand new vehicle.

And the first thing most guys will add is G M's cold air kit. It uses a dry filter that according to GM will keep oil from contaminating your engine sensors.

The biggest benefit of a cold air intake is due to the fact that it's drawing unrestricted air into the engine that's been separated from the heat in the engine bay. It's this cooler, increased volume of air that simply allows the engine to draw in as much air as possible and increase fuel delivery to match more air and fuel equals more power

GM system uses a dry filter. So there's virtually no maintenance other than periodic cleaning

and all the factory sensors match up perfectly giving the computer the proper feedback.

Now, you guys know that any engine is just a big powerful air pump and a cold air intake only helps out half of the equation. Now GM makes their own stainless steel cat back exhaust. It's really gonna go a long way to enhancing the efficiency of this big 6 L

Dey's cab back actually only fits the 5.3 L engines. So the system we're using on our 6 L for demonstration purposes only.

Now, this new system comes with a very efficient muffler with a flow through design that replaces the more restrictive stock muffler

and completely eliminates the stock resonator.

Now GM has been making stainless steel exhaust systems for years, but now they've stepped up to a higher grade 304 stainless for their performance systems.

Of course, they added the good looking tip at the end.

Sometimes with aftermarket parts, there are little things you have to fudge or tweak to make fit.

Well, not with this system.

It's designed by GM engineers. So all three components literally drop into place

and this higher quality stainless steel will last a life of the truck.

No problem.

Plus with the resonator gone, this thing is going to sound great.

Now, I know you guys have already figured out that some of these major auto manufacturers have finally caught up with some of the wheel and tire trends in the aftermarket.

And now they're coming out with their own versions of 18

twenties, even 20 twos.

Now the aftermarket has hundreds of options and very cool wheel and tire upgrades. But if you go too radical, you can affect a BS operation, speedometer calibration, all of which are electronically controlled nowadays and that opens up a whole new set of parameters to deal with. But these GM wheels are twenties, they look great. They've got the same rolling diameters, the stock seventeens we're replacing, so they won't screw up any of our factory settings

over the break. The guys are gonna start adding the kind of work accessories that will help you get any job done. Then we'll take our Silverado back out for a little more fun.

Two.

Hey, welcome back to trucks where today we managed to get our hands on a brand new 2007 Chevy Silverado. Lets you know what we think about it, how it performs and how it looks.

Now, we all pretty much agree. This is a good looking truck

and when we took it out on the road,

this stock light duty four wheel drive performed well.

But even with the newest of trucks, well, the new wears off after a couple of months and that's when guys start looking for aftermarket parts and performance upgrades. But as you know, that stuff can affect your factory warranty.

Well, GM has been paying attention and they now offer performance products that work within your new truck's warranty.

And so far today

we've added on their new cold air kit

cat

back exhaust system and even thrown on a set of their new 20 inch wheels and tires.

But before we take this truck back out on the road to see what the performance products can do, Chia messed up bad left us the keys to the warehouse. So we're gonna check out some of these other accessories that you can have put on at your dealership. Roll the cost of them back into the truck payment, personalize your rig before you even leave the parking lot

during the break. We added their new bed liner to our Silverado

and while molded liners are nothing new in the world of trucks,

there are some other things G MS coming out with that are pretty cool,

especially if you're putting together a work truck.

One of the coolest accessories that we found was their cargo management system that uses racks with a weight rating of 500 pounds per side.

There are portable toolboxes that can mount easily on the rack and they can be moved and locked almost anywhere in the bed and for bigger jobs, they also offer a full size toolbox

to keep cargo from shifting around. There's a bed divider and a bed extender for extra long loads.

Now, you don't have to remove your other accessories to use the new overhead rack. It can support up to 500 pounds for things such as ladders, lumber or construction materials. And when you're done working and you wanna go play the rack comes right back off in just a few minutes.

There are 2 m side steps,

billets, plates

and even heavy duty rubber mats to protect the interior from a messy job site.

All right,

let's go see if we woke this thing up a little bit. Get it man.

Now, that sounds good.

Back out on the road, our personalized Silverado was roaring

the new cat back exhaust and cold air system was sounding great

and

they were showing up in our test numbers as well. This time on our acceleration run. We picked up three tens, bringing up 15.9 seconds and scraping up a few more

MPH in the quarter.

And our new 20 inch wheels and tires looked good without hurting performance.

Yeah, I was half expecting the, the, uh, ride to stiffen up a little bit with the lower profile tires but

didn't seem to change much, didn't hurt anything, that's for sure. You get good solid steering feed back through the wheel

overall. We like Chevy's new Silverado even though we wish they talk to us about that roof line and maybe they should think about going to a six speed transmission, but either way, neither issues seem to affect this truck's drive.

Chevy's new 2007. Silverado starts around $18,700 and a well equipped model like ours will run you about 38 grand

in the end. One thing we really liked was rolling all the cost of everything we personalized in Silverado

into a low interest truck payment instead of a high interest credit card. And

you can take that to the bank

when we come back. It's chemical rust removal. That'll give your grinder the day off.

Hey, here's something for you guys that drive a little bit older truck. If you've got a 96 to 99 full size GM truck or SUV, and you've got a high mileage or worn out engine or you just want some more low end grunt from your truck. Here's the engine for you. This is G MS HT 383 E it's an emissions legal Stroker.

It'll give you 340 horsepower at 4500 RPM and a knuckle whitening 435 ft pounds of torque at 4000 RPM for 96 to 99 trucks. All you have to do is peel your stock intake and exhaust manifolds out of the way, get rid of the old 57 and drop in your new 383.

Now, your stock ECM is gonna adapt to the new engine. So you're not gonna have issues like trouble codes or any other gremlins to chase down

and this engine ships without an intake. But if you want to run it in a hot rod or an older pickup truck, get a vortex style manifold. Throw in your favorite carburetor. You're good to go either way for about 5600 bucks. You're gonna have G MS HT 383 E and whatever you want to put it in.

Now, here's something that's not gonna cost you a dime other than the cost of some simple household cleaner. If you've got a vintage vehicle that's suffering from the old tin worm rust. Well, you know, you gotta do something about it because as the saying goes, rust never sleeps.

Now, what a lot of guys will do is grab a grinder and grind off the rust as well as a healthy portion of the good metal. But one of the problems with that is that you could leave rust in the pits of the metal. And if you try and prime or paint over this, it's gonna cause you problems down the road.

Well, here's a way of removing all of the rest without removing any of the good metal. All you need is a tank that'll hold your part,

a 12 volt battery charger capable of at least two amps of constant current and sodium carbonate. Now, in the grocery stores, this is known as washing boost or washing soda. Now, in our tank, we've got a solution of one teaspoon of washing soda for every pint of water,

lay your part in the solution and hook up the negative lead of the charger to the part itself

and the positive lead to a steel rod that's set into the water.

Now, set your battery charger to a constant two amp service and let the work happen. You'll start to see bubbles form on the contacts and rusty surface. This is hydrogen forming and outgassing into the solution. So make sure you're in a well ventilated area when you do this and a no smoking.

Now, our control arm has been in the tank about 48 hours. Smaller parts aren't gonna take you as long,

but you can see where it's turned black. All of the rust is gone and none of the good metal has been disturbed or altered in any way, non destructive rust removal. Now, that is cool. Thanks for watching trucks. See you next week.