Quadzilla

2003 Chevy Quadrasteer Crew Cab Pickup

I was first introduced to GM’s Quadrasteer feature at the 2003 Texas State Fair. They had a driving course set up to demonstrate the system. I was convinced I had to have one after I was able to park in an “impossible” spot without any extra effort. (that back and forth shuffle I was used to in order to get in a tight spot)

After I went to the dealership and looked at the sticker price, I was depressed, because there was no way I was going to fork over an extra $6000 for back wheels that turned.

Fast forward a few years. I happened to come across a used crew cab in Ft. Worth on the Internet. The owner had put new wheels and tires, a neat custom exhaust, and a billet grill on it. It looked great. The price was almost half of what the sticker price was. It had most everything I was looking for, 4 doors, red color, bucket seats, Bose stereo with buttons on the steering wheel, and those fancy electric mirrors that fold up with the push of a button and move down when you go in reverse. It came standard with the 4L80 transmission and a Dana 60 limited slip rear axle. I found my baby!

As soon as it was on my driveway, I started the upgrades. I had to put step rails on it first, just to get get in and out of it. I added factory driving lights, tinted the windows, small tool box, a nice Yakima roof rack and basket, and most importantly, a supercharger.

A few pictures are here

The supercharger turned out to be much more than a simple bolt on. I wanted to do all the work myself which involved learning the ins and outs of tuning/modifying a modern computer-controlled EFI control system. After much reading on the forums, I decided I wanted to use HPTuners and the ProCharger.

The kit didn’t really fit my truck, as it turns out a 1500HD is different than a 1500. The size of the frame, location of the cooling hoses, additional power steering hoses, etc. I made it all work. I immediately had to buy new fuel injectors, as the stock units were too small to deliver enough fuel with all the extra air.

With the new injectors, I found that my fuel pumps were not delivering enough fuel to the injectors to maintain enough pressure, so I upgraded the in-tank pump with two high-capacity pumps. (one comes on only when needed, so the factory return line is sufficient) After I had all that extra fuel capacity, I figured a pulley upgrade would be such a simple way to get more power, I had to do it.

But, before I could go up on the boost, I had to first add a water/methanol injection system, to take care of the lack of octane problem with lots of boost + relatively high compression. (93 octane isn’t good enough) I also had to have a wideband AFR sensor and gauge to tune it properly.

After the pulley change, and tuning, I’ve now found my next bottle neck. The EFI computer can’t deal with the amount of airflow going through the engine now. Plus the MAF sensor is out of range. Next step is to disable my MAF system and use a 2-bar MAP EFI firmware. I figure I might as well get a little smaller pulley before I go to the trouble of tuning it all over again too, right?

to be continued, stay “tuned”…