yes, thats right it has almost been two years since I have purchased this Bravada of mine.. and its gone through some stages... Im going to do some before and after since I have some time to kill.

The day after purchase:



A few days later during this time I did the radio, there was a pioneer deck in it that was "ok" but I am partial to my Kenwood deck I have, its been in 4 cars including the bravada.

I also started on the wheels, done by brush


Shortly thereafter I went on a spree of cleaning it up, AFTER I decided to make sure the AWD wasnt a fluke during the light end of the winter when I purchased the truck. I took it mudding, literally, and was cleaning mud from places I never thought of






More shared in the next post.....

 

So while I was cleaning the beast I decided, to furhter get into the goodies of making it look better.

debadged and destriped the whole truck


painted the grey grill, satin black along with the bottom lip which was grey.


tinted the tails


cleared the headlights


time passed and i went through various ideas, had a WAI (big filter on apex-i elbow) then just decided to gut the airbox and smooth out the channels, all the stereo wiring was done and in running a single 12 and then ambition struck AFTER I bought the 98 Bravada to get crackin on a true beast stereo setup...and steal the 98 bravada wheels AFTER i painted them haha

 

The flamed tint was a couple month phase, The original plan was to just go 20% in front and leave it, but the day after I did it I was popped for illegal tint, and was warned since I refused to roll up my windows the officer could not issue a ticket without visual proof, so I decided in order to keep the cops off my ****, id design the tint.... which turned out to be the same flames I have inked onto my left shoulder.....

It was awesome and NO ONE else had it, but I dig the pure blackness, so the tint was removed and 35% was added in its place (the rear windows are 5%)

Also along around in this time I jumped for my LED's and shortly after purchased my 6k HID kit from HIDExtra


after that The truck and I went into a lull point. with the 98 Bravada needing an apparent trans (3000.00) and such it left me no time nor money to fiddle with the 97, I just drove it and kept up on maintaining it...it was like this for months, now that spring time is here in 2010, its time to get back into the groove of things, YES I have kicked the idea of selling it, for now...the right money will make it for sale, but until that is met it stays in my ownership..

As some have seen I did pick up a set of T/A wheels




and YES i painted these too


As we can see here this project is not done or even close, its time to focus on the motor/trans, and these tires suck on the T/A wheels as far as gap, I will lower the truck but no more than 2 inches, maybe 3 at the maximum

so if all goes well i should be pickin up some 235-70-16's tomorrow to take the place of the 50's

 

I swapped my tinted tails before the sale of the 98 since plans have changed for them and they will be all red candied style.....

I have a 3.5" CAI that needs to be cut down to fit without beating shart against my brake reservoir...its either that or I trade it off for my 2nd intake setup which was a true/flow drop in.

Im not real happy with the quiet tone of my flopro muffler, so that will probably go too, replaced with a glasspack, or a flowmaster 40 er similar

the sound system has been overhauled and beefier wiring was added, the amp was reworked internally, and a 3rd 12 was put to work

the jack and jack panel has been removed and filled, the rear pressure vents have been filled, the back gate has been filled all in the name of NO RATTLE

 

Nice work buddy! Keeps it up

 

Awesome progress !!,truly an inspiration to me to maybe fix my 97 bravada up once i get it u know mechanically sound.I was curious what mine might look like debadged and i must say i like it...great look lookin progress,oh how did you stop the back gate rattle ???..i hate how mine rattles even with my smaller set up(2 12s and a 1400watt amp)

 

the T/A wheels definately look better.

kinda on the fence about the whole debadged look (not just on these S series, but in general), but your colour pulls it off nicely.

 

mmmm. murdered...

Now this makes me wanna debadge my Black Blazer lol.

 

x2

Awesome looking truck, very nice progress over the last few years!

 

the back gate rattle was eliminated mostly by taking the back plastic off and using pillow stuffing (polyfill) and then putting the plastic back on where it was a "snug" fit. I also did the same with the vents (took the eraser end of a pencil and jammed the polyfill into the vent)

i also noticed the rear wiper wiggled like mad so at each knuckle of the wiper blade itself i taped around a few times with black electrical tape, for the most part it eliminated all the rattle.. however the back window squeaks over bumps and whatnot, im still hunting a way to fix that (the nipple on the latch rubs against the metal which makes it squeak)

Thanks for all the positives, the T/A wheels have better wheel well fill now with the 235-70's and they will be on the truck sometime within the next day or so.

debadged was the way to go, since mine had the gold emblems some of them were not as gold as the rest which did not set well, the pinstripe was chipped in spots too so in effort to do a cheap cleaning act, a plastic razor blade, some household isopropyl alcohol and my wifes hair dryer helped ALOT.

The oldsmobile "jet" emblem on the nose is still there, I havent been brave enough to pull it off and coat what is silver to black... i can do it with ford emblems but i havent had the real urge to pull mine yet.... not only is it a good eye catcher, but i dont wanna mess it up..yet