My '98 Sonoma - Low 'n' Slow

Sold my black 91 ext cab for $1300 as is, and bought this as-is off of my friend


She's a 98 Sonoma SLS, 2.2L 5spd with 213,000km on it. I'm in looove with it. Only rot is on the driver's cab corner, and easily repaired. My new work has a full blown body shop and we use someone else's spray booth. SO awesome. We all know caps are ugly, so the next day I sold it for $50


We all know that stock height is also ugly, so I did something about that too. Basically took the front suspension out of the red truck for now. 2" belltech drop spindles, 2" belltech drop coils, bilstein shocks, zq8 swaybar with new bushings and endlinks, and the 17x8 torq lite's because the other 255/60r15's would rub like crazy.


eww, rake! Did something about that too. 3" blocks for now. I got drop leafs but the bolts are seized into the bushing sleeves so i'm going to put poly bushings in. Also picked up a Goodmark rollpan for $50


Picked up a set of Corvette Rally's from another friend for $450 with 6 tires, 4 of them being decent winters. Stoked.


So she's sitting at around a 4/3 right now. I'm lookin to throw in the 3" leafs, then step down to a 2" block, giving me 2" lower in the rear than it sits now. That'll give me a 4/5, and probably be perfect. It scrapes like crazy. I already had to trim the hanger bearing crossmember and cut out the bumpstop brackets. I picked up bolt-in notches, but haven't gotten around to that yet.

Yeah, this is my winter beater. Hopefully we don't get much of a winter, or else I'll be making friends with some 4x4 guys...

Got a free rear belltech swaybar from a blazer (which mounts infront of the axle) from a co-worker, also getting the front belltech bar for $60 off another friends haha. The belltech bars will likely be used in my red truck, while the ZQ8 bars will be used in this truck. I'm gonna try and get a scrapyard gastank crossmember, and modify it to lift the tank above the frame similar to the Suicide Doors one.

Did you need any spacers for those ralleyes?

Did you need any spacers for those ralleyes?

absolutely not. They're 15x8 all around, with i believe 0 offset. Here's the guy I bought them off. Lower than me with no spacers.


They fit much better with spacers, but no issues without. I have a 1" or 1.25" spacer in the rear (unsure), and nothing up front right now. I wanna roll my box lip and go lower in the rear, but recent frame-ground encounters have me second thinking. I need to tuck my gas tank higher before the rear goes any lower.

Plan was to run the rally's all winter, be baller and look awesome. I went for my first night of winter drifting on Friday during our snowfall. We got about 3" overnight.  I need an alignment something fierce. Front tires were bald, first mistake. I was doing fine all night until I tried to slide this long corner. Absolutely no traction in the front, slid straight into a curb shown here.



Bent the bead on my front right rim, should come back with heat.


Been driving on the rim all weekend, was gonna bend it back Monday. Here are the bald fronts I mentioned... Also another look at bent rim.


I was stranded, so I made some calls and found a pair of wheels I could borrow. I was with a friend cruising already so we jumped in her truck and finished the trip to look at a frame for my buddy's 71 c10. Ended up buying this set of wheels for $50




tires are shot, but i'll likely end up cleaning them up and selling em for profit. The last thing I need is more wheels.

Not really any updates, I did doorpins in it and put two 12" JL Audio WX2's in it, I need to build a bigger box still.

Got my 17's on it from the red truck, i love it but if I want to be as low as I plan, it looks like i'm going back to the ralleyes with small tires.


also did this today, it's the shifter from a first gen with a hurst t-handle knob.


feels weird but cool at the same time, more leverage means more obvious that the shift bushings are toast.

decided it was time to take care of some issues, so I went and tried to finsh off the clutch... instead I did an awesome 2-wheel burnout for a bunch of feet. It goes all the way to the hydro pole


up and apart at a buddy's, no room in my shop


tore the exhaust/tranny out and got the flywheel machined


new hanger bearing


new rear u-joint


he picked up a 2wd 98 blazer so we're gonna get it on the road then 5.7 vortec 5spd swap with exploder 8.8, eventually


also got my vent visors on finally

forgot to mention I also spaced my hanger bearing and put in 4 degree pinion shims, no more driveline vibration or screaming. My diff is on it's way out though, lots of gear play

looks like a fun little truck.

nice black marks!

Every time you post pictures of my old wheels I start to miss them. 

I also had no idea you were actually going to fix this thing up. I'm glad you did.

jeff, trade me for a set of diamonds haha.

Decided I was sick of it looking half decent, and decided to go back to my roots... flat black with a rust hood. I'm also going to blast and re-paint my rims metalcast red to really make em pop.



test patch




should have er buttoned up tomorrow, been taking my time sort of.. haha

got most of the driver's side done too, but ran out of paint. Went and got more but by the time I got back there was frost on the truck. Gonna finish er off tomorrow hopefully, I work noon til 9 so we'll see.

3" drop leafs, 3" block, 4* shim, annnnd a complete what I thought was a 6.0L... turns out they put 4.8's in 2500's, wtf!?!?


anyway, more on that in my 91 thread. Here's the daily as of now (got leafs and bolt-in notch in)

which caused this
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The "proffesional muffler shop" that custom made the exhaust prior to me owning it (who welded the entire system with solid wire and no gas) also cross threaded the hell out of the 02 sensor. I got it out but there were no threads left. Luckily I was throwing a Bank 1 Sensor 2 low voltage code, which justified $64 replacement and a new bung.

anyway, I got 10' of 14ga 2" stainless pipe and gave er all I got. The shape isn't the best and I wish I did it a little differently but a great learning experience.




sloppy welds but only because of a shaky tired hand


will post pics of installed once I drop it all again and put a flange in

I guess I should explain why Jeff bought half of my truck..



Frame is toast because of this



It's about 8" in diameter and was sticking up from the ground about 4", which hit my control arm and frame, which bent the entire front section up and back.

Pictures don't do it justice


flaked paint is where it buckled


And this is why bolt-in notches scare me. Or rather, where they prove to have been doing their job. We unbolted them, pushed down on the frame, and folded it with little effort. Ended up snapping the rear off by hand.


As mentioned elsewhere, I sold the suspension out of my red truck, the box, vette wheels, and various small stuff to Jeff for his rust bucket. The rest of this truck will be parted out, and the red truck will be put into storage. I am moving to British Columbia at the end of September and need any cash I can get.

maybe you shoulda avoided it

anyways, glad the damage was limited to just the truck, reminds me of why Harley had to get a new frame too

3am, dark gravel road doing 40k, didn't see it until it was much too late. Oh well, no sense moping about it.

Like Ryo said, I had a similar experience that had me buying the new frame for the Blazer.  I was doing about 15mph in a parking lot, in the dark, and a cement block (from an old light post?) was sticking up.  It didn't bend the frame as far as I could tell, but definitely messed up the LCA mount.  No fixing that kind of damage.


Blazer 016 by TheHarley, on Flickr

ouch!  that sucks man.

Mines about 15x worse than that, but either way, shitty buzz! aha