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LoJac963's H2 Build Thread

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Figure I'd bring my build thread over here for everyone to see!

I guess I'll make a build thread to document the changed so far.

This is how she sat at the dealership the night I went to test drive. Bought the 2 that night after a long debate at the dealership regarding the trade in of my 06 GTO.



First thing I couldn't stand were the gigantic chrome nerf bars. Did some research on options and fell in love with the U-steps. Finally found a set for a great price. They were pretty beat up so I had them chemically stripped and PC'ed. Insanely better than those huge chrome nerfs.






Next was the DRL's change to LED's. The SMD's are quite a bit brighter than the stock bulbs and look a hell of a lot better.



Something I've always done is change over the interior to LED. Much brighter, crisper light.









After that I put in a Lev-o-Gage just for fun.



Next on the list was a Volant air box. I couldn't stand how much of a PITA it was to take the stock lid off so I opted for a Volant.



Pic of the silicone coupers and t-bolt clamps I used. The Volant adapter included is worthless.

 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Next I decided to play with Plasti-Dip. Sprayed the chrome stock fuel door.







After doing the fuel door I figured I might as well do the rims also. Get rid of all that chrome in one go!














Next I put in the CF look dash pieces.















Up next......the roof rack
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Picked up a Gobi Stealth for $850 shipped brand new. Install was interesting getting the gigantic thing on top of the truck.









Here are the 2 rear lights installed



Now onto the bigger project. I didn't like the idea of only 1 light in each section on the front of the rack so I opted to make my own double light brackets.

Started with a 1" x 4' piece of aluminum stock



Cut that down into 12" sections



After quite a bit of cutting, filing, drilling and threading we went from this



To this



Here is one of the brackets painted and ready for the rack.



This is the final product with all the lights on the rack







Stay tuned, definitely more to come hopefully soon!
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Small update, finally ordered and received my Gobi ladder. Went with the driver side but now I'm thinking one on the passenger would look good too. I didn't drill the hole the instructions say to, just used the factory hole with the included bolts and the set screws on the bottom.





Also finished wiring up all the roof lights, one hell of a project.

One switch runs the center 4 lights, one switch runs the outside 4 lights and the far switch runs the 2 rear lights.

Switches

Pics of the wiring for everything:







The wiring runs through the side marker trim down through the outside window trim, through the cowel cover down next to the side vents and into the engine compartment.

Center 4 lights on:





Outside 4 lights on:





Here is all 8 lights on:






And finally the rear lights:




I need to take it out somewhere very dark and see how these things light the road up. They seem very bright but we will see.
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Here's another update but let me preface this by saying:

I am a firm opponent of HID's in reflector housings due to the massive amounts of glare. All my vehicles so far have had factory projectors but I cannot justify spending (at this moment) the $1,000 on STARR projectors and I have absolutely no desire to break apart my lights to attempt a retro fit. I have done it in the past but is more hassle than its worth IMO.

Anyway here are DDM Tuning (which I order all my HID's from) 55 watt 10,000K HID's with relay harness.

55 watt kits look one level lower on the Kelvin scale due to the higher wattage washing the color out so they are actually closer to the 6-8k color. Surprising to me the 7" round housings we have do a halfway decent job with the glare compared to other vehicles I've seen on the road.

Pics of the ballasts and wiring:



Heads finaly match my DRL's now:



ALL the front lights on:



I'll have those damn STARR's one day........lol
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Small update. I picked up a set of Delco Remy 4 note horns. 4 horns in total to make the train horn sound, apparently these used to be stock in the old caddies.

Here's the horns before install:



Here are all 4 installed, these are the two behind the front grill:



Driver side:



Passenger side:



Here is a short vid of what they sound like. I was already getting late by the time I had the wiring finished up so just tapped the horn a couple times:



I love the sound of them, they are definitely loud and beat the hell out of the baby stock horns!
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Ok gents here we go. LED's came in today....well now yesterday ugh. I've been working on this for probably about 7 hours so far.

Some issues here and there, definitely not as easy as I thought and may be in a little over my head with all this.

So here's some pics of whats done so far. The colors are much darker in person, dark blue and dark red.

Driver Door controls:



Passenger seat heater controls:



Steering wheel buttons:



Headlight, rear washer controls:



Now here is the circuit board from the radio. I didn't mind ripping it all apart because I needed to replace 2 buttons with white showing through that were there when I bought the truck:



Radio complete:



TC2 buttons:



Best pic I can get of the 4x4 selector buttons. This set uses a big clear plastic reflector to direct the light to all the buttons. As you can see they are barely lit so I have to figure something out with that....



Oh and now my two steering wheel controls on the top are doing crazy things to the radio-I'm waiting for some solder wick to arrive tomorrow because I know I some how got some solder on one of the button contacts so I'm hoping all that is.

So now that the steering wheel controls and radio are done I have come to the conclusion these LED's are TOO BRIGHT!!! If I turn the dimmer down a bit then slight dark spots show in addition to them still being bright. The reason I didn't buy the diffused LED's is because the mcd was about half of the clear water lens. Game plan now is to order some blue diffused and use them in the climate controls and see how they look compared to the radio.

So far its going good, not looking forward to redoing the radio if I decide to keep the diffused LED's...ugh.

I'll keep this thread updated!
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Another update:

So the wife came home from work and I figured I'd have her take a look at everything I've gotten done. She was less than enthused to say the least. She made 2 valid points, one being the blue is just too damn bright which I agreed and two the blue just didn't look classy for a truck like an H2 to which I EVENTUALLY agreed lol.

She suggested to do everything in white to which I thought well its all in white stock. BUT white LED is much much crisper and clean than the stock white. So I ended up taking out one of the steering wheel controls and threw 2 white LED's in there and here's the result:



Definitely a crisp clean white but also insanely bright. This is now the route I'm going, however the major change will be using diffused lenses on everything to tone down the mcd of each LED. White and not as bright I think is going to turn out very very nice and will match my next project that's in the mail ;-)


So more LED's on order, I guess I'll just leave the truck torn down this week, no point in putting it all back together just to rip into it again. I'll keep you all updated.
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Ok gents here we go, project 95% complete with the exception of the door window controls on all 4 doors. Those have reverse mount SMD LED's which I cannot find anywhere HOWEVER the passenger airbag LED was an SMD and I desoldered it and worked in a 3mm LED in its place and it works great so that is my plan with them. So another LED order going in for those.

The blue is gone, white is in!

Here is the center stack, the white is awesome. Completely crisp white, I used diffused LED's this time so no hot spots. For some reason the 4x4 controls and traction controls have a blue lens so they are a little blue:



Driver seat controls:



Headlight controls:



Airbag switch, used a non diffused which resulted in a little hot spot so I may replace with a diffused white when I place my next order:



Steering wheel controls:



Passenger seat heater I left red:



Roof buttons:


And this is completely badass!

Escalade gauge face with aftermarket white needles. I replaced all my cluster bulbs with white LED's but the gauge overlay is tinted blue which gave everything a nice subtle blue color. I really like how it turned out!



This project is not for the faint of heart. Quite a few of the button packs are not meant to be disassembled just replaced if you have issues with them. However with enough persistance everything does come apart...very carefully!

I am so glad the dull stock yellow/white is gone!

I'll update again once I get the window controls finished up.
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Latest update....

Ordered a Purple Cranium Spyder rear diff protector. Took about 2 weeks from time of order to them fabricating and powdercoating the thing and getting it to my door. Not too bad.

There are over 50 powdercoat options and different decal options. I decided to go with the Silver Hammertone powdercoat and the red decals. I really like the color combo, its enough to stand out and say HEY I'm here but not too overbearing.

Pic before install:



Installed:





More to come hopefully soon!
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Latest update. Don't mind the dirty truck it rained and hailed here in AZ like a SOB the last 3 days.

Predator Brush Guard finally arrived. What happened was I received a BG with no hardware, called Hummer Parts Club and Dave had Predator ship me the hardware.....then come to find out the BG they sent was for the H3 so no wonder I couldn't figure out how it mounted. Finally got the correct BG and threw it on the truck yesterday.

I love it, I was thinking about going with the Treehugger or Demonguard but I don't do any hardcore offroading so this is more than enough for me!

Pics:







The other upside is the sides of the BG don't wrap around as far so I won't have any issues when I pull the trigger on the E&G offroad fender flares.
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Small update, figured I'd jump on the snubby antenna train......

Also cut the stock boot to seal everything up and make it look better.



 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Another update.

GOBI axe/shovel attachment arrived on Friday. Only took about a week to get here!

Here's the pics, found a red axe and shovel. I also put small circle rubber adhesive protectors on all the contact points where the handles touch the mounts. They not only hold stronger but also keep the handles from turning. I also sprayed the metal on the axe and shovel with a satin clear coat to protect them from the elements.





More to come!
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Next update:

I fitted in 4" round LED lights into my DRL's. The light itself if 4" but a total of 5" including the bottom mounting boss. I'll go over the install here.

These are my stock DRL's. You can see the lens is completely burned away at the top, as was the oem 4114 burned at the base. I don't know why these things run so hot.

20130430_190202.jpg


If you've seen this thread I also added the ceramic substrate SMD LED towers which were pretty bright however these LED lights blow the towers out of the water:

Here's the lights, the right one has the mounting boss ground off:

20130430_155402.jpg


Better pic of the mounts ground off and painted:

20130430_174900.jpg


The back of the lights have 4 holes for mounting tabs as a second mounting option. What I did was cut some 2" long 10-32 thread studs. Screwed them into the lights and secured them with a washer and nylon lock nut:

20130430_183616.jpg


After that it's all downhill. Those studs will fit exactly into the factory holes. I put another nylon locking nut and washer before the end of the threads to prevent the light from falling back. Then one more washer and regular nut on the back of the bumper to hold everything tight.

This way the heatsink fins do not touch any of the plastic of the bumper, these lights do get pretty toasty. I'd imagine driving though the should stay cool with wind blowing over them.

Here's a pic of one installed:

20130430_185114.jpg


Another pic:

20130430_185140.jpg


My LED towers were very bright compared to the factory bulbs. Here's the comparison between my LED towers on the left and the new LED lights on the right:

20130430_185741.jpg


I still have to do the wiring, the pic above was just connected with jumpers. Shouldn't be difficult though, couple of pins, heatshrink and done.
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Here's the next update. Picked up a Plus1 foglight bar. Came used with some scratches so I repainted everything, added some higher wattage bulbs and mounted it. I love the look of more lights at the bottom!

This was the bar when it first arrived:
20130516_171249.jpg


Painted and installed:

20130531_142254.jpg


Another shot:

20130531_142301.jpg


All the lights on:

20130530_202902.jpg


Now if I could just find those cowel lights for a good price!!! lol
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
So I'm in the process of getting rid of the Plasti Dip and going with more permanent stuff.

This is what I used for the fuel door:

20130522_130731.jpg


I didn't think it would wrinkle quite as much as it did but its pretty cool looking:

20130604_160137.jpg


20130604_160142.jpg


Also will be painting my rims with engine enamel low gloss black. I pulled the wheels today, wire wheeled the hell out of the hub centers and sprayed them black. Touched up the plasti dip on the center of the wheels to see how everything would look and I really like it with the caps off.

Next will be to have the wheels rebalanced to get the weights off the outside, strip them and paint them with rattle cans so I don't have to worry about peeling plasti dip.

Here's a pic of one of the wheels:

20130604_191414.jpg


I'm also thinking about getting long splined lugs in black so they completely cover the studs and stick out a bit but I still have to look around a bit.
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Next update:

Plasti Dip is officially completely gone!!!

I took all the wheels and had them rebalanced to get the weights off the outside. Glad I did as they were completely out of balance, I can definitely feel a difference on the highways.

I pulled all the Plasti Dip off, scuffed all the chrome, primered and painted then with Dupli Color Low Gloss Black Engine Enamel. They turned out great.

I also added black extended lugs to cover the studs to finish everything off. Onto the pics!

20130625_122610.jpg


20130625_122623.jpg


More to come!
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Finally got my trailing arms installed last night. These are from 3C FAB and were drastically cheaper than Hotchis and Edelbrock so I thought I'd give them a shot. They have zerks to grease them and have Energy Suspension polyurethane bushings.

Here was the first issue:

Apparently in 2006 the bolts went 2mm larger so the bushing sleeves I had were too small. I contacted the seller who promptly called Energy Suspension and had 4 larger bushing sleeves sent to me. I pushed out the old sleeves and put the larger sleeves in and problem solved.

Here's a pic of the new arms:

20130828_133743.jpg



Now install instructions from one of the other forums tech section couldn't have been further from the truth. Passenger side goes in very quickly but the driver side had me covered in oil and dirt not to mention the amount of swearing that went on for over an hour.

Basically in order to get the front bolt out you have to completely drop the gas tank not just the skid plate for the tank-that added significant time onto the install. However once the gas tank is out of the way and a couple other brackets are removed I finally had the new arm installed.

Driver side pic:

20130909_111631.jpg


Passenger side pic:

20130909_111642.jpg



I went with the Super Silver II powdercoat. I wanted something to stand out a bit but not screaming loud like red for instance. They match my Purple Cranium diff protector pretty close.

I've read new arms will decrease the rattle and hopping of the rear tires when going over bumps so today I nailed a speed bump and I kid you not the rear tires went over the bump and that was the end of it. No rattling the interior or bouncing in the rear. Definitely worth the money!!
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Finally pulled the trigger on the E&G Offroad Flares. Little bit of a pain to install but finally got them on and they look hands down awesome. These rigs should have come with flares like these from the factory!

Pics...

20131002_075656.jpg


20131002_062605.jpg


20131002_104710.jpg


20131002_104735.jpg



I've got another project in the works I'm hoping to wrap up soon so more pics to come!
 

High Five H2

Well-Known Member
Messages
1,627
Location
West Texas
i like the black wheels with the extended lugs. looks really tough and goes with the blue paint. i'd do that too but my 3 is black and i don't think black wheels and black paint go well together.
 

LoJac963

Well-Known Member
Messages
491
Location
Surprise, AZ
Latest update although a small one....
Finally bought some Weathertech Digitalfit floor mats. I've always wanted a set so they're in after a good vacuuming.
20131014_145213.jpg

Driver Side:
20131014_150731.jpg

Passenger Side:
20131014_150554.jpg

Driver Side installed:
20131014_151418.jpg


They are very rigid and stay in place nicely. My current ongoing project with some switches has hit a snag but I'll post that up once I'm finished with it!
 

Medic_Morgan

Well-Known Member
Messages
392
Location
San Diego, CA
I have those same mats in my 3. Great fit, hold up well to wear/tear, catch EVERYTHING and they clean up really nice. Looking good!


Sent from my secret lair bwaaahhahahahah
 
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