New Tricks For An Old Dog - Lift and Suspension Mods 2.0

[Guest Post by: Chris Burandt]

And so it’s begun!   The boys at ATS are elbows-deep into turning my once stock riding, grandpa-looking, super clean dually into a compound (twin) turbo breathing, Cognito-lifted pull-any-trailer-way-too-fast, beast of a truck!  With 170,000 miles on the ol’ girl we decided to do the head gasket, add some head studs and check the injectors.  Come to find out the head gasket showed some signs of leakage and there was one injector out of spec.
 
I’m really glad ATS leaned me towards going through the motor.  It would have been a bummer to put all the goodies on and then have to tear it back apart later down the road.  With a new head gasket and injector this bad boy 6.6L will be good for another 170,000! 

Phase 2, the lift.  When the tech got the Sawzall out I thought he was just joking around with me.  Then the safety glasses came on…real funny guys.  Then I had to jump out of the way so I didn’t lose an arm!  I could tell this wasn’t Chris’ first rodeo with Chevy suspension installs.  After weeks of research on the internet it was clear the only way to go up with the dualler was a lift from Cognito Motorsports.  Cognito’s patented products, insanely good fit and finish, and the ability to retain stock drive angles made this purchase a no brainer.  For all the towing this truck will be doing with 5^th wheel and goose neck trailers I decided to go with the 4-6 inch lift.  I was able to get my low rider off the ground, but nothing too crazy to affect the great towing characteristics of the truck.  I can’t wait to see what this thing looks like when it hits the ground!

This is truly one heavy duty lift.  I’ve had lifts installed on several other vehicles in the past but nothing as overbuilt with OEM like fitment as this Cognito kit.  I haven’t even seen the truck on the ground yet and I’m pumped!

Like a kid on Christmas I couldn’t get the Fox RacingShox box open quick enough.  I run Fox Shox on all my snowmobiles so again running these bad boys on my truck was an easy choice.  I went with remote reservoir shocks front and rear.  Pictures don’t do these things justice.  Between the burly looking Cognito kit and the trophy truck like Fox shox this really is going to feel like a brand new truck.  As you can tell by the aggressive tread pattern I like to run on my 215s I can’t wait to throw some new meats on.  Is there anything better than new tires? OK, enough torture, can we please quit taking pictures and put this thing on the ground!  I wanna see it! 

New Tricks For An Old Dog - Making Your Truck New Again 1.0

ATS Diesel has teamed-up with X Games Snowmobile Champ Chris Burandt for a retooling of his GM Duramax Truck. With the current price of new diesels and low trade-in value offered by dealers, Chris decided to go a different route rather than buy new; Teach an old dog some new tricks.
[Guest post by Chris Burandt]:

The day is almost here!  On Oct 17 my truck goes under the knife under the careful hands of the crew over at ATS Diesel Performance.  It's time to take the 'ole dualler up a couple notches.  Make that a bunch of notches!  Compound turbos, Twin CP3's, head studs, EFI Live tuned by ATS, Cognito 4" lift, Fox Shocks, Fusion bumpers front and rear, Rigid Lighting, N-Fab steps and a wrap from Fineline graphics.  That should do the trick!

This crazy project all started when a buddy of mine brought over his new Duramax and we went for a test drive.  After riding in the very quiet, super smooth and pretty decent powered stock truck I got the new truck itch.  (That new car smell gets me every time!)  So down to the dealer I went with my super clean 04 Duramax which just cracked 170,000 miles.  Just got er' broke in the way I like.

Now I know I haven't bought a new truck in a while but holy crap have things got expensive.  This is where things started to get a little eye opening for me.  The truck I was looking at replacing my sweet ride with ended up being over $61,000!  Yeah that first number is a 6!  So I took a pretty big gulp and said, "Ok, so how much will you give me for my truck?"  Now I'm thinking even though it's got some miles on it, I'm super anal about my truck and it get's washed more than my 2 year old son does.  So that should be worth something right?  When the salesman told me he could give me $12,000

I thought to myself, "Is he just trying to buy the tranny, turbo and sweet exhaust brake off of my truck for $12,000?"  Nope, $12,000 for the whole shoot-n-match.  So let me get this straight, this guy wants my perfectly good truck and $49,000 for this shiny new thing sitting in front of me that has half the power of my rig and has none of the fun stuff that we all do to all of our vehicles.  Say what!?!  Let's just say that didn't make much sense to me.  So I jumped back in ole white and headed down the road.

This got me thinking, why not take a fraction of the money I was going to have to pony up to buy a new stock truck and just make my perfectly good dirtymax new to me!  Thus, all of the goodies above.  Stay tuned as through out the build I'll be posting some pictures and updates of how the transformation is going.  Can you say TWINS Basil!!!!  (If you haven't seen Austin Powers that last line won't make much sense to you.  But if you have, you've got a smile on your face just like me!)

Stay tuned!
-Chris Burandt