In the last 2 years, I've bought my wife a 650 horsepower twin turbo coyote Mustang All right. I'm all the way down. Holy Cow! Alex Holy cow, Stop it, that's yours and I secretly supercharged her baby hauling Cadillac Escalade and surprised her with it. Holy crap Oh my.

God Alex What to this truck? No, the other truck did not do this. Now some of you guys have commented that I actually bought the twin turbo Mustang for me and that I supercharged my wife's Escalade for me too because you definitely don't need 640 horsepower in a daily driver soccer practice, mobile. And to those people I say you're totally right I'm just a normal car guy and my job in the last couple of years has become buying cool cars and modifying them. Don't deny it.

you would do the exact same thing too. And now I have sold my twin turbo Mustang I mean my wife's twin turbo Mustang and I'm stealing her supercharged Escalade This is going to be my daily driver now and so wait till you guys see what I got her as a replacement. She definitely doesn't need this thing. Oh my.

God What's that? Okay, okay, stop all right now that the Escalade is officially my daily driver, you know I Got to do some modifications and we're going to fix something with this very problematic 8-speed automatic transmission. So if you have one of these, you're definitely going to want to stick around. And then we'll meet up with my wife a little bit later and watch her use Launch Control for the first time on her new ride. The truck needs a little bit of Maintenance as well, so we're going to take care of that and it all starts off with a little bit of the AMS oil engine flush I Like to use this every other oil change and this is going to clean out the inside of our engines and you guys know that these had a problem with the active Fuel Management lifters I have deactivated that system I recommend you do too.

You're going to lose like a mile or two of fuel economy, but the repair is ridiculously expensive. so I think it's worth it. But anyway, I think this will help out just cleaning out all those lifters making sure that they're working good forever. So now we just have to start her up.

let it warm up because we are going to be doing a transmission service as well and the Trans has to be up to Temp So we're knocking out two birds with with one stone. it's been about 15 minutes. The engine is nice and warm. This needs to be way louder.

I Want this Escalade to sound a little bit more hell cattish. So we're going to do some intake modifications and we're going to gain a ton of power as well cuz if you guys remember when I had this on OJ's Dyno We gained a lot of horsepower just by lifting the airbox up and it sounded really cool. 482 wheel horsepower? That is insane. This engine's nice and toasty.

Let's get to work Okay, it's been about 7,000 M or so since my last oil change and I just want to do a general inspection here. I did the front diff service when I bought it. The electronic power steering looks good, our rack boots look good, everything looks good in the front end. and I did replace a starter during the summer.

So if you guys have one of these GM trucks and your starter sounds like this, it's very possible that it's starting to go out and if you have about 100,000 miles, you should just swap it out now or it will leave you stranded like it did with my Escalade Uh, so your starter is supposed to sound like this. You can tell it's a much faster crank that's normal. Swap out your starter before it's too late. Let's start off with a good old oil change.

We'll see how good I am at aiming this and probably going to spill oil everywhere. Let's just be honest here people, right? right? Am I Good. Not really good at basketball and that has a lot to do with Aing. I'm already dripping all over the floor right now as we speak.

Oh my gosh, that was way off. just not that good at that. You know, look at how thin this is. this is 020 from the factory I Don't like that either.

We're going to fix that oil filter coming down. Oh that's nice. That's nice. Whoever did this oil change? tighten that properly.

Good job other guy that was me. that was me. ah I I Don't know why I do this I have plenty of really dirty, legit street car shirts. This was my nicest one.

I could easily just go change into another one and I'm just going to ruin this. We have a new Am oil filter going in and I'm going to prefill this guy as well. There we go. and then you just want to lubricate the seal also and we'll clean up the M surface on the Block like so and then screw it back in.

and honestly, with oil filters you can get all the way around. You can just tighten this by hand hand. just do like a little hand click, torque click and you're good. That's fine, not too tight, and then don't walk away from an oil change job until the drain plug is fully secure.

like if I got a phone call right now I Don't care who it is I mean unless it was like Stacey David Remember him from trucks and stuff I Love that guy. I've never met him but if he called me I'd probably stop in the middle of this. but if it's not Stacey David Don't answer your phone until this thing is tight. Don't do anything until that drain plug is tight.

You don't want to forget. Okay, bring ring ring ring ring ring. Stacey David You want to? You want to like, make a TV show together or something. Something else you have to do before you walk away is obviously fill it up with oil again unless you get a call from Stacey David or Ed China.

Big fan of Ed China as well and this is going to be controversial. but I am going to 5:30 so this calls for 020 and I'm going 530. It's going to be a little bit of a thicker oil. I've spoken to a few big LS shops and they do this as well and the Camaros and the Corvettes that have a very similar engine.

they run a 530. This is boosted as well, so a little bit more heat I want that added protection, but if you guys are nervous about that, just run the 020. I mean it's going to work fine as well and especially if you have a stock engine, you can just follow the maintenance book and call it a day. I'm going 5:30 though.

Drink up buddy. 100,000 mil you're getting 530. Oh, hang on. if you guys haven't already, place your guesses.

Down Below on what you think my wife's new SUV is it is an SUV it seat six and I'll give you one more Hint It has has a lot less cargo room in the back than the Escalade but a lot more in the front and my wife was worried about losing all the room in the back. but she was more worried about losing this guy right here. Her beloved Fantic V8 Mate Cordless handheld vacuum cleaner. This is a musthave! This is the Fantic V8 Mate and it is so powerful! Listen to that motor.

It also comes with a ton of awesome accessories and attachments. Check this out! It even has a boot boost feature for even more power! Watch this see you picks up anything! This thing is so good! Not only is this light and cordless, the battery lasts a really long time too. Look at how easy it is to dump out all the garbage you just sucked out of your car. My off-road Ml is the most disgusting vehicle I own.

Let me show you what this thing does to carpet. It's on real. It works just like a normal vacuum cleaner that you would plug into the wall. Mean, look at this just eats up rocks and everything.

You can do a mini detail on your car with this bad boy. This super flexible attachment gets in everywhere. Turbo boost power! You can get into hard to reach places like underneath your center console and seats. And guys, Fantic is having a killer Christmas sale right now.

It's limited time and limited quantity, but if you click on my Amazon link down below I'm going to leave a coupon code down there that's going to get you 30% off the V8 mate. This makes an excellent Christmas present for your wife, your mom, or for yourself. Honestly, I'm keeping one in my car. my wife has one in her car.

They are the best! I'll also leave you another Amazon link with a code for 33% off of the amazing X8 Portable Tire Inflator from Fantic. This thing does it all. It'll fill totally flat. car tires, truck tires, ATV tires, bicycles, and even sports equipment like balls.

I Keep one of these in all of my cars. It's awesome! One last one, Fantic! Got a ton of cool stuff. You guys will love this as well. This is their E1 Portable Electric Screwdriver.

This is so so cool. It's got a really bright LED light and look at what you get inside of here. this is all aluminum. It's beautifully made.

You have every bit you could ever need and this fits right in your glove box. I'll drop a link for this and a code that'll get you 30% off. Next up is a transfer case service. We're going to pop out the fill plug first.

Let's see if they overfill it. No, that's pretty good and now we can do the drain. And when I bought this truck 20,000 Mi ago I had looked at the Carfax and the Cadillac dealer had just replaced the entire transfer case. so it's only got about 20,000 miles on it.

oo Whoa! Okay, did launch this thing quite a few times. Wow, look at all of that stuff that this magnetic drain plug picked up. That's not what you want to see, but I'm going to go ahead and just pretend we didn't see this. We'll just chalk it up to a brand new transfer case and a little bit of Breakin glitter.

Was that a thing? I Don't know. The truck feels perfect though. so sometimes maintaining your vehicle is not fun because you see stuff like that and then it makes you worried. But anyway.

um, let's just forget all of that and let's pretend that the drain plug looked like this when I first pulled it out. Just lie to yourself, it'll be fine. Yeah, these transfer cases did have an issue. Not a major issue, but some of them did need to be replaced around 100,000 miles.

I Was really happy to see I had a new one. Gosh, the original wouldn't have survived a day after. I did the super supercharger and we launched it like 800 times and went to the track. So all right, good luck all.

We're going back together with Am Oil, so this thing is going to be a okay tune in for the next couple of years to see if I'm right about that. You guys see a thumbnail next month with catastrophic damage to my Escalade probably the transfer case core number two I think this takes like 1.6 There we go. Just like a differential when it starts draining out, you're good. We stop it right there.

All right. screw this in. Alex Torque wipe. Transfer case is serviced and will last now for the rest of time if time isn't that long.

All right. Well, you're supposed to take the exhaust out to get this pan down, but I'm going to see if we can do it without dropping the exhaust. Let's just try it and if it works, this could save everybody a lot of time doing your own eight-speed trans service. We have this tiny little fill plug right here I Don't know how much we're going to get out of this.

Yeah, we should get a decent amount, but that's actually how you fill it while the fluid is draining. I Just took out a bolt for this heat shield and then we just leave it propped up. Just like that, we have a bunch of 10 mm. Two more bolts now.

one until we get messy. Okay, yeah, we're going to get really messy. Goodbye Beautiful blue, legit three cars t-shirt that I have like five of most of which are destroyed. And yeah, we're supposed to take the exhaust down according to the instructions to clear the pan.

I I Just want to see if we really need to do that. Let me get this last bolt out of here. Oh okay. I Really need one of those drain pan extensions? That would be nice.

All right with all the bolts out though. I should be able to kind of aim this right into there. Good aim. We're dirty shirts.

I Got say this. FID looks pretty good. All right. I'm going to let it sit there because this stuff is.

it's going up to my armpit. All right, Can we? Oh, come on dude, Can we totally get this out without messing with the exhaust? Let's do a little bit more fluid. I Mean it is like 80% of the way this has got to be possible, right? It's just hanging up right there. I Mean this is ridiculous.

There's got to be a little shimmy sham we can do here. Oh yeah, come on, come on. work instructions. Are you kidding me? If you guys have a rusty exhaust or whatever, instead of breaking literally everything and pulling your hair out, don't do any anything at all.

just leave your exhaust alone. If it's not leaking, you do not need to take the exhaust down to remove the transpan like at all. Let's pop our transmission filter out now and that just requires a little bit of pulling. Here we go and you'll get a little more fluid out of that as well.

All right there we go. Cool. excellent with our fluid, pan and filter out. We're actually going to follow a GM TSB Technical Service bulletin on a shake or shutter I Don't have this, but this is a very popular TSB to correct issues that are we on a ton of these cars with the 8-speed transmission, so even the Corvette Z6 Um, but it applies to the trucks as well.

So we're going to follow this Tsp because of its instructions on how to properly fill the transmission and do a flush. And what's nice is you could do this at home. So basically we already dropped the pan and filter. Now we're going to put it all back together.

Uh, with the old stuff, the old gasket and everything. we're going to fill it up with 7 l and then put it through all of the gears and then do the whole thing over again, drop a pan and filter and then do a final fill. Basically, about 2 or 3 years ago GM came out with a new style fluid for these. Transmissions That supposedly fixes a lot of issues.

so there were a ton of drivability issues, lurching and slipping of gears and banging and all sorts of stuff. And supposedly this fluid helps out. Here's the inside of the trans pan. a couple magnets here, and nothing too alarming.

You're going to get a little bit of this stuff, That's no big deal, you just don't want big chunks. All right. I'm happy with this. We we'll clean it with the pan down.

we can see inside of the transmission. it looks really nice and clean. And that's probably because about 30,000 Mi ago the dealership replaced this entire valve body and like 30,000 Mi before that, they replaced the torque converter. There have been a lot of drivability issues with this GM 8-speed transmission, but I haven't had really any of these issues because of all that work that's been done.

This is more for maintenance for me and we're going to do some updates as well. So we're going to temporarily go back together with the old filter. just like that. Then we have our cleaned out transmission pan that we're going to sneak in here just like that.

Be careful, but you don't need to take the exhaust down. and especially if you're doing this flush where we now have to run the engine, you'd have to take the exhaust down twice. No way. So there are transmission fluid flush machines and a lot of dealers have them.

That's what I assumed the dealer instructions would say to do, but they're actually telling you to do it like the DIY at home way where you partially fill it, run it. it mixes all the fluid and then you drain it again and fill it. So that's that's kind of cool. That's the proper way.

With all the bolts in, we will gently tighten these very little torque. We're going to replace all these bolts in the end. just snug it up though. With the transpan all tightened up, we are going to screw in the specialty tool I Don't remember where I bought this, but I'll find it and leave you guys a link but you need it to fill the transmission so we're going to screw it in right there where that drain plug SL fill plug was like that and then you know I Love my AMS oil I Use the transmission fluid on everything but in this specific case GM Got together with Mobile One to try and fix these transmissions and they designed this fluid for this specific reason.

So I'm going to go with this this time. There's a really expensive tool to pump this back in, but you can buy one of these at Harbor Freight or the park store for like 10 bucks. Fits on like that. This goes in here and we are going to pump the fluid into the transmission right now and it actually sucks it up pretty quick.

That's the sound you want. All right. Quart one's down. I'll do this six more times.

Okay, actually ended up putting eight quarts in there, so a little bit more. That's okay. Now we're going to have to do a really quick Switcheroo with our drain plug. There we go lose a little bit of fluid.

No biggie. All right, drain plugs, tighten up. Let's start this guy up. We're starting this guy up and I've clicked this over to two wheel drive as well.

Then we're going to hold the traction control button for I. Think about 5 or 10 seconds and it'll eventually there we go. Stabil track off. Now we're good.

We'll go into reverse, hold that for a few seconds, let the fluid kind of get in there. All right, Neutral as well. Okay, and now we're going to go down to manual and on the column shifter. We can shift up so we'll let this take off now.

and I'm going to apply a little bit of brake pressure just for a little load. So we're in second gear now and we'll shift around. 1,800 is something like that. So every time it goes up, shift we're in fourth and we just want to get through all of the gears.

Fifth gear, keep going, keep going, keep going, 6, 7, and 8. All right, we're good. I'm going to go ahead and just put it into neutral, hold that for a little bit, give it a little bit more reverse, and Park turn it off. So now we're just going to do the exact same thing over again and this fluid is looking really nice now.

I'm having Deja Vu here people like Groundhogs Day I Thought I was doing a better job at not getting dirty this time around, but same same job. It's like a waterfall or transmission fluid. It's a gasket mostly that gets caught up back there. but here we go Go.

We already did this. We're going to pop our old filter out, which we're going to replace. Cool. Here we are again.

everything looks even cleaner and I just notice that we have a crack here and here. So when I was looking in that GM Service history and I saw they replace the valve body. I'm going to go ahead and assume that they cracked this when they brought it down or put it back up. Uh, no big deal, this is just a chain guard.

It doesn't really do a whole lot, so I'm just going to go ahead and leave that. but one thing I didn't see in the service history was the placement of this: this is the transmission bypass valve or thermostat. It's located right here. It looks to be original and so when the engine and the transmission are cold, this does not send fluid through these lines to the cooler in the front as it warms up.

then it'll start running the fluid up to the cooler to be cooled off. But the factory ones, they're like 195 degre is thermostats which is just too hot and GM realized this and issued a bulletin on replacing the thermal bypass valve for any of these issues. Pretty much every issue you could imagine with a transmission according to GM could be caused by this thermostat. The part was so problematic.

It also says that it should be replaced with a new one that has a lower operating temperature even if you can't duplicate the customer's concern. So it's going to have a 70 stamped in it like we have here. And here's the difference. The new one's going to open up at 158.

The old one was 194. That's huge. So if you guys have any of these models, you might consider just throwing one of these in there. You don't even have to drop the pan to do this job.

So if your fluid is clean or maybe you recently had it service, don't worry about it. You can just remove this guy. It's right here. It's super easy.

and I'm learning that mine is actually a little bit loose. Well, that's weird. So people have definitely been in this transmission. I Don't know if they took this off at the dealer and didn't replace it, but let's find out.

So this will remove these lines. We'll lose a little bit more fluid and don't lose this piece. and they our O-rings as well. We're going to replace.

Then it's just a 13. This actually isn't loose. I Think this might be normal how it rests on there. All right bolt is out there.

we go. There's our old one and yeah, it doesn't have the 70. This has a five, but if it doesn't have the 70 on there, you have the old part and you need to swap it out. And I could already tell I had the old part because this transmission would frequently run in the low 200s which is kind of hot and can definitely cause a lot of issues.

Yeah, that thing kind of just sits on this gasket and Wobbles a little bit. We're going to replace this gasket though are made in Canada with imported Parts SL a pieces import. Anyway, with new gasket is going in our lower temperature thermostat. This is like an old school performance mod or at least it reminds me of that.

Do you guys remember back in the day, like especially on carburated cars, people would put lower engine thermostats in and think that they're going to gain a bunch of horsepower? I Mean you kind of do, but it doesn't really apply to new stuff going off on a thermostat. Tangent there we have our Bolt that's going to hold this guy in our 13 mil ratcheting wrench coming in big time here. with this drive shaft in the way, this is perfect. All right.

And yeah, actually that thing was loose. This is supposed to be Rock Solid Okay, so whoever the technician was last time took it off, didn't replace it with the new part and then didn't even tighten it. That's not cool, but it didn't leak so that's nice. Let's get these lines back in like so and we have our plate holding it in and one center bolt.

This is a 10 mm. Tighten this guy up by hand. Very little torque. it's a tiny little bolt.

you're good. Now our new filter is going in like so cleaned out pan with a new gasket going in. Getting good. at this? All right And these are onetime use bolts.

so we have brand new transpan bolts going into. These are 8 mm. Also very very little torque. Let me get get them all in there and I'll show you how much.

I have the gun on the lowest setting possible and we're even stopping before that because this is 7 1/2 ftlb. That's the torque spec. There is a sequence to torqueing this pan. There it is.

if you want to screenshot it, the one is on the passenger side and we're just going to go around with our little quarter Drive guy at 7 and 1/2 and torque. So that's one. that's two baby clicks and we'll We'll follow the little map and and do it all with the Trans pan all torqued down. I'm just reinstalling the bolt for this heat shield right here and that is an Alex click click.

Some things you don't really have to torque like. that's fine. the trans pan though. You you want to torque it and follow the sequence.

You don't need leaks Guys, you don't need leaks. and we're also going to clean up this exhaust real nice. Real nice. Oh, you guys want to see a funny rag? This is from my youth.

This was from the fourth Annual Beer Olympics 2010 My younger days, my younger days. we're going to fill this the exact same way you guys already saw. So I'm going to do that And then we have to warm up the transmission. I'll show you a couple other little things there and then we're moving on to the intake to try and make this blower.

Go. Now. What we have to do is start it up and we need to warm up this transmission to about a 160. Uh, it shouldn't get much warmer than that now that we have the 154 is degree thermostat in there.

Um, but that's going to open the thermostat, get all the fluid through the cooler and everything. Uh, then we have to let it cool down and warm up again. But anyway. I'm just going to hold it and drive and mow through some gears for a bit and you can see we're at 73 now and about a half hour later we're at 162 so the thermostat has opened.

We can shut it down. We have to let it cool all the way down to about 100ish. Start it up, wait till 113, and then pop the drain plug out while it's running. It's quite the procedure.

you know. we got to be efficient while this thing is cooling off. I Removed like 84 clips that hold this gigantic piece of plastic and we'll remove this bar. turn this bad boy up a little more power.

There we go. and I Don't know guys, what these bars actually do. There's one in the other side. they're These Bars Here, they look like some kind of structural support bar, but like, what happens if you just take all these off, Does the whole truck crumble? I Don't I don't think so I Don't know, Are he really that important? We're going to remove this.

Factory Airbox. It is not long for this world any longer. It's not long any longer. I Don't I Don't know if that made sense.

We're removing the airbox. That's what I mean. That's a great spot for an AC line. Come on people.

and this hose engineers at GM Can you just make it easy? Use a screwdriver to get to this one? It's a Phillips or an 8 mil. You pick your poison. Apparently you need both. We'll unplug our mass airflow sensor and we're going to remove this clamp and we're going to reuse everything from here to the blower.

Which means we're going to be cutting there and I had put a Canon air filter in here. Still pretty clean and before we start cutting I'm going to REM remove this mass air flow sensor. It's just a couple of screws, some T15s and she pops out. Here we go people.

Wow that cut through like butter all right now. I Can sell this slightly used airbox I Know what? I got people? I Went around with a file to clean up this Edge and now we can reinstall our mass air flow sensor. This would be a great time to clean your mass airflow sensor. They sell a special spray for it I I Cleaned mine not too long ago and I ran out of the spray.

That's why I'm not doing it again, but uh, it's really cheap insurance that these things are reading properly. Now it's installed and we can install this little air filter adapter just slides on like so let's go put this back in. We're going to install this piece right back into its Factory Bellow Tighten up the hose clamp. Now we're going to install this pretty mesh air filter that has a mesh on this side as well and I measured this out so it should fit right in here and it'll go over our MAF adapter piece like.

So we're going to tighten this clamp down and just like that, we've done a low restriction air filter setup for like about $25 That's all this filter cost and I Know some will comment that I just created a hot air intake by getting rid of the Box I've covered this a few times and shown Dino videos where it just doesn't make any difference on forced induction. Vehicles If you have a good intercooler system in the real world, the temperature of the air that it's sucking in just doesn't play a big role. And a lot of times it's better to have a less restrictive air intake system. So for example, my Turbo Trans Am has a turbo and an air filter right on it in front of the radiator right next to the engine.

the hottest air possible and we put it on the dyno and ran a tube from the turbo to make a cold air intake. It was like over here somewhere made no difference at all. So I've done this a few other times. um and this one.

We knew the airbox was really restrictive because it gained 20 horsepower just by pulling it up. So we are going to gain power with a less restrictive air intake system and it only costs like 25 bucks. So anyway, uh, the transmission is still at like 145 degrees so I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow to finish checking the level. So that means I'm just going to go ahead and start this up so we can.

We can hear this oh this sounds so cool and once we get it on the road under load, it's going to sound even better. When we had it on, the Dino was making all sorts of little baby Hellcat kind of type of scream noises I Love it I Love it! This is my Escalade I get to do what I want All right. It's the next morning. Trans temp is at 99 so we are going to run it through Park reverse neutral drive and then back up.

Bam! So now while it's running, we're going to pull the drain plug and we just want it to dribble out a little. Then we know the level is set. If it starts coming out a lot, we'll have to let some of it drain. Let's see what we got.

Yep, so we'll just let it drain I Overfilled it on purpose. Very similar to a lot of Mercedes and other cars. As far as setting the transmission fluid, we don't want to overfill this so we'll keep going. You don't want the Trans to get over 113, it's got to be within like 100 to 113 while you check it.

There we go. The stream is getting thin and that's it. That's how you set the fluid level and do a complete compl service with filter on the GM 8speed with the new style fluid and hopefully this will fix all of your problems in the whole world. Don't forget to tighten your drain plug.

Next up for the Escalade is we are about to get low. We are going to put the sports back into sport utility vehicle. It's just it's too high. I've always wanted a lowered SUV especially kind of a fast one.

So what I have here is a complete lowering kit from my friends at Beltech. So it's drop spring in the rear and drop spindles in the front. I've never done that before so should be exciting. Let's get these wheels off.

Oh these are heavy woo And you know what? Let's start in the front with the replacement of the spindle. So here is our brand new one And this is going to lower the front 2 in and the Springs are going to lower the rear 4 in. That should actually level this thing out. First things first is removal of the brake caliper couple of H and then we can pry the caliper out of the way.

Get out of here caliper. We don't need you anymore. I Mean we're going to need you soon. I Love you And the pads are getting a little bit low but I'm researching to see if I can get big brembos on the Escalade That'll be for a future video.

so I don't want to replace those just yet. Couple of bolts for the caliper bracket. Okay, all right, don't worry I will avenge you my son. Thanks Dad a cake.

Then after the big gun saves you, the caliper bracket just comes right off. And now to remove the rotor, we have a T30 Oh yeah, she's not frozen on there at all. That's perfect. Next, we want to remove this ABS sensor and for these you want to be gentle, get firm, pull it out.

there we go and we'll push it along to the side. Then we'll remove the 10 mil for the ABS sensor bracket and we'll just get this guy out of the way for now. Now, we need to remove this axle nut and the super thick washer as well. Is it going to be frozen? Nope.

We're good. Next I'm going to remove the nut. going to the upper ball joint surprisingly isn't that tight. We give the spindle a couple good wax bigger.

Hammer Time There we go and we'll thread the nut off and I'll be able to pop this up. Let's see how's our upper ball joint. Oh she's nice. Super tight.

This is good. Next is our tie rod end. Wow, that came right out. I Didn't even need to hit it with a hammer.

Perfect. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. How's this guy? Ah, we're good.

and I believe these have been replaced because they have the Zer fitting here and a lot of factory suspension and steering components don't have these. The lower ball joint on the Escalade goes through the bottom of the spindle. So our nuts here. As soon as we let this go, this could drop.

So I reinstalled the upper control arm with a nut a few threads just to catch it and we can leave this threaded on as well just for added security. There we go. Now once, I remove this nut, we should be able to pull this all the way off. There, We are all right.

Excellent. Now we can remove these three bolts for the Hub H Ho. Did that really just come right out? I Love cars that aren't from Chicago or the Rust Belt This is beautiful. Now if you suspected any issues with the wheel bearing, this would be a great time to replace it.

but this sounds absolutely perfect. This is a good factory GM wheel bearing and hub so it's best to leave this alone, especially if you're thinking about replacing it with a cheap aftermarket from the parts store. I'd rather have this than that. but either way, this is excellent.

But you want to know what's not excellent the play in this ball joint. You can hear it Knocking around there. It's not horrible. but definitely going to replace this while we're in there to remove our loose ball joint.

we have this cup and this big ball joint C clamp. So the cup is going to go on the bottom like so and the clamp on top I'll screw this down as well. Then we have the impact connected to our tool like so and we're going to push the ball joint into our cup. There she goes.

All right. You're going to hear scary noises sometimes when you're pressing something out cuz it's been press fit in for so long. Here's our old ball joint. Yeah, little loose.

Here's our new ball joint and it comes with a special tool so you don't destroy the boot. this is a cup to press it in. So the ball joint's going to go in like this. our special installation tool is going to go in this, then it's just a matter of finding cups that work.

So I have a ball joint kit that has this bottom cup and I think this top cup will work and then we'll reinstall our clamping tool and you're going to want to hold this otherwise it'll fall. I've never experience that though, ever. and then we'll hit it with the gun again. All right.

It sounded like it was kind of bottoming out there and we're just going to have to switch this cup out. I have a slightly deeper one should work work. you then drop everything to the ground and you have a new ball joint. Even though this thing is pressed in like crazy, they give you a clip to install so we'll go ahead and do that.

And this is a greaseable joint now. So you have to thread in your little zerk fitting. It's an 8 mil. Now we're going to go ahead and put some grease in this joint with our grease gun and not too much.

You don't need to wait until all the grease is spewing out of here. You can kind of get a good feel for it. so that's enough. Let's clean this nasty thing up All right.

That looks much better and we'll grease this up too. We need a little There we go, All right. Outer Tie rod that's been replaced at some point is all greased up. We are good.

I've cleaned up the Hub so that is ready to be installed. The ring is clean cleaned up as well and this is our new spindle. this is our old spindle. this one is actually aluminum and this is steel so a little bit heavier on the steel one.

So if you're looking for weight reduction on your Escalade ESV this this might not be for you. But literally no one cares about weight on an Escalade ESV including myself. So if you guys are wondering how a drop spindle lowers your car, this is probably the easiest way to show you. So right now, both spindles are roughly at the same level, but you can see here that where the Hub sits is way off now.

so the drop spindle raises where the Hub sits. So this would go in like this and I'm almost done with the passenger side. but now you can see that when we Bolt the wheel up, the wheel will essentially sit up higher and the vehicle will be lower. I Know it's a little confusing, but with the drop spindles, we're able to truly lower the ride height of the vehicle without changing the steering and suspension geometry at all.

and we don't have to replace our coil spring. which means we're going to be able to maintain that Cadillac Escalade ride I've applied a little bit of antise here and as you saw in the car, I made the backing plates look pretty so all I did was a little bit of rust reformer. So they went from looking like this to well, the one I'm holding right now. So we're going to go ahead and place this here and make sure that you have this in the right orientation.

This is where the speed sensor goes and you can see here on the Hub where the sensor goes in so you want to match that up. Okay, now we can flip this assembly over to get our bolts in. Don't forget this ring before you install your three bolts that hold the Hub on and we'll start these all by hand and then we'll torque them with the Milwaukee gun. You can actually set the Tor back on these so we're at about 130 Now we're going to take this assembly and we'll get it on the axle first.

Ah, finger getting stuck and we'll bring this all the way down. We'll feed in our lower ball joint and our upper and they give you a nice Castle nut so we'll thread that on. There we go. Woo! Okay, then you can take a break.

This thing's heavy. right? when you have the hole lined up, you can go ahead and install your cotter pin. So many different ways to do this. There's this kind of person in the world that spreads out their cotter pin like.

So then there are people that install their cotter pin like this. They just take them both B them over Hammer them in What kind of Cotter pin guy? are you? number one or number two? I Like to do both on the same cars sometimes just to confuse people. It doesn't confuse anyone at all. No one cares.

Next, I'm going to tighten up the nut for the upper ball joint. Not a lot of room in here anymore. We're going to have to do a little bit of a modification soon. With the nut fully tightened, you can see the issue here.

It is hitting the axle boot. So according to the Beltech instructions, we need to cut off the bottom part of that stud. There we go. and here's what we have afterwards and even though it's still a tight, tight clearance, the axle and this nut Will Never Move independently of each other, so we shouldn't have any issues at all.

Well, let's get our tie rod back in and I do put a little bit of Loctite on all of this. Hardware We have our axle washer and our axle nut with a little Loctite With everything attached to our new drop spindle, we can go back together with our brakes. Now we can go back together with our old brake pads that still have a few months left in them. At least enough time for me to figure out what brakes I can put on these because I Do believe I've seen Factory Suburbans and tahos of this generation with big brembos I think they came like they're from GM little baby breake calipers going back on.

get on there. everything is is back together. It's time for our wheel. Oh this thing is heavy.

You know what? I uh I Couldn't imagine what Wheels I would ever put on an Escalade ESV Um, but I wonder what the new Cadillac Escalade V Wheels look like I I don't even know I'll pop it up here on the screen. You think that would look cool on here I don't know I mean I like these wheels too. You can already tell this thing is lowered. Look at the difference in the Gap that is Huge! This is going to look so good.

We're moving on to the rear and the first step is to remove these little sensor links. This is for the air ride in the back and this is the level sensor. All right and we'll take this side off too. All right.

And while we're here, let's remove this. Bump Stop We will be installing a new one. I'm want to alleviate some of the tension from these brake lines so we're going to take the brackets off. All right.

That should help. look at this gigantic plastic clamp that they use for the brake lines here. It's kind of funny, All right, we'll just leave it like that. So what we need to do here is lower the rear axle to remove the Springs So next up are the shocks and I am supporting the rear axle as well.

There we go. I'm going to try one side at a time so we'll start to lower this a little and just see where we're at with the spring. Yeah, it's getting loose. it's getting loose.

We will slowly lower this entire axle. It's still connected by quite a few things so no risk of this falling out or anything crazy. and I'll just periodically check and see how loose these Springs are. Oh, they're getting very loose.

Brake lines aren't in danger of anything either, so we good to go down a little bit moreo all right. Normally with coil springs you have to use a spring compressor, but when you have a solid axle a lot of times you can just lower the axle and just pull these out. It's kind of funny on my Turbo Trans Am If I just lift the car I don't have to undo anything I could just pull the Springs right up. Here's our new Beltech spring next to the factory spring and we are going to be transferring over all of the rubber isolators.

Let's pop those out and put them right here and this one here. and we're going to install these so you can read Beltech and made in the USA in the proper orientation. So this is the top new lowering springs going in. This is the most I've ever lowered anything 4 in.

but then again, these things ride super high from the factory so it's about right and we'll keep made in the USA facing this way. With the spring in, we have to install a shock extender that just slides over right here and they give you some new hardware. Also with that in we can move this all the way up and there's a bolt that goes in through the bottom and then another washer and lock nut. I'm going to torque this to 70 ftlb.

Good old 70 ftlb on this. Also there we go a little more now. I've got the new spring and shock Extender on the other side as well. So now I'm just lifting up the entire axle so it all lines up and we can just use the factory bolt for the shock.

So right now we need to modify this link. I've already done it to the other side. so this is the center portion from the factory and now we're going to be using this and so we just need to pull these ends off. I'm going pop this guy in the vice.

There we go and these are plastic. just be careful. Then we just transfer these ends onto the new one like so they just kind of thread in there and bottom out eventually and now we have a shorter link. now we can pop these back on.

There we go. all right. Next up we have our new bump stops. Spray a little bit of silicone on there.

I Already tried to get it in once before and it wouldn't work. There We go. Okay, so I'll make sure they fit all the way way in like that and they will never come out all right. That's it.

Now we're just going to pull out the little pull Jack Here get our wheels on and we'll see how low we went. Coming down for the first time with our new lowered suspension on the Escalade ESV Oh yeah, nice. This is cool guys. I've never had a lowered truck I like it.

I've put all of this back our super important strut brace intake. We're all good under the hood so let's close it. The Escalade's all done. Let's back it out.

I'm going to drive it around a little bit and we'll take a look at it outside after the suspension settles. It already feels different getting in though. I like it. that sounds good under load I Love the wine.

it sounds so good. Woo oh man. it shifts better too that 1 to two was brutal before. That is really really nice transmission staying nice and cool.

I am really loving the new stance of this gigantic white sled. You can definitely go a lot lower than these, but the 2-in in the front and the 4-in drop in the rear just levels the Escalade out and I like it a lot. And for those of you guys wondering if this affects the truck negatively in any way, it really doesn't because we used really high quality made in the US USA parts. We didn't slam it to the ground so it does have a lower center of gravity so it should handle a little bit better.

The only thing that'll change slightly, but not really because we have air suspension is the cargo load in the back and when you load it up on a trailer um, it is lower to the ground now but with the air suspension it'll level it back out. So honestly, we have the best of all worlds here. I've always wanted a GMC Typhoon one day I will own one but for now I kind of have a much larger newer version boosted all wheel drive GM SUV that's lowered. The Trans got up to about 150.

as soon as I hit the highway it cooled right back down. So this is about where it's going to live and it feels so much happier when it's a little cooler. Also with the truck lower it just it feels more planted. I think it handles a little bit better.

The ride quality is exactly the same as stock which is great I didn't want to affect that at all. So overall I am super happy with all of the Escalade mods. Um, it is getting kind of late now so tomorrow I'm going to see if my wife even realizes that I did anything to the Escalade and I'll show you guys her new really really fast SUV All right guys, it's the next morning and a beautiful day here in Chicago in December Somehow it's like spring but final guesses: her new ride is right behind my lower Escalade And did you guess it? Did you guess it? Did you guess it? You guessed it, didn't you? You guessed it. I Got her the new re freshed model X Of course I got it used in at an auction.

Um, but it's in pretty good shape overall. and you know for typical Alex reasons I didn't just get her the long range which would be way way way more practical naturally. I got the Plaid so my wife wanted a smaller SUV that she could fit in the garage I haven't cleared that garage spot out yet, but I did promise her a garage spot the Escalade just doesn't fit. um and I figured a model X would be great.

it's a smaller SUV to get around town and then since we're keeping the Escalade when we need to go on longer trips where we don't want to stop and charge, we still have the Escalade. So these are my my reasons that I've used to justify buying a a plaid. So outside of my Turbo Trans Am this is basically the fastest car that I have. It runs like a 98 at like 150 mph.

The model S runs a 92. They are ridiculous and my wife has not even gone past like an a throttle yet. She's been driving around in sport mode. She's had this for about 2 or 3 weeks and so far so good.

But we are going to put this into drag strip mode and I've been charging the battery and let me show you what I did in here. Uh, open open Tesla Okay, she's got. she's got the key. I got my phone so before I walked the kids to school I put it in plaid mode and then clicked drag strip mode and then it took like 32 minutes to warm up the battery.

but Peak Performance is now ready so she's coming out in a minute. I'm going to drive first and show her a little bit of Plaid mode because it is scary. It scared me the first time and this thing never stops pulling Even if you punch it at like 70 mph on the highway, you get to 71 or the legal speed limit immediately. It's a wild ride, but check it out! We have these cool automatic doors and when you walk up with your key they open for you.

We do have the Yoke steering wheel and we're still kind of figuring out if we want to keep this or go to the standard. I I Do think it looks cool and it's futuristic, but it is definitely not as easy to use as a traditional steering wheel. Anyone that says that they like this better for driving, especially in the city, is lying. They just they just want the cool look.

Uh so I don't know I don't know, we might keep it, we might not. but of course I Had to get the blue color just like my P100d was and these come factory chrome deleted. So this is all from Tesla and it does have the upgraded 22in Performance Wheels I Bought it with 22,000 Mi It's a 2022 and it's in pretty great condition. little Nicks here and there.

The wheels are a little scuffed but it doesn't smell. The interior is really, really nice and I had never been in a model X before, but it's got of course these really cool doors from the previous non- refreshed version. so a lot of that is the same. but there are a lot of little differences.

like you get this screen here and you can watch Netflix and Hulu and Disney plus and all that stuff. And we did get the model that has the captain's chair. So this is a six-seater black interior of course. uh and it does have a lot of room.

we have little kids, they fit back here perfectly fine and there's just a ton of just walking around space in here. it's it's very, very nice. I Was talking about the lack of trunk space compared to the Escalade a little earlier and yeah, it's definitely smaller back here, but it goes down pretty deep. I Removed the false floor so we can carry a lot of stuff here and it's got the frunk as well, which we never really use, but there is a lot of room up here as well.

And guys I absolutely love the doors. They do open up in really tight spaces so a lot of people were nervous when these first came out. Um, but they are super usable. we've parked this in City parking garages and everything.

You can get in and out really easy and it's it's like a DeLorean and you guys know how much I love my DeLorean except this one has 1,20 horsepower. My wife's daily driver has over 1,000 horsepower and runs a 9-second quart quart. Mile and uh yes, I will be taking this every so often myself because it is the Plaid You guys know the deal I Buy my wife stuff that I secretly really want. but this.

this fits the bill though for her really well. It is actually pretty practical. it doesn't use any gas, she doesn't have to go to the gas station unlike this that requires lots of gas. So anyway I can go on and on about reasons why I bought this and why it makes sense.

But I mean guys, let's just be honest here: I Just wanted a super super fast SUV for my wife that I can drive every once in a while at the end of the day that that's what I wanted Mrs Legit street cars. everybody about ready to go for her first real ride in the Tesla I mean she's been driving it daily with the kids for like 3 weeks. but we're going to try out plaid mode and drag strip mode. Okay, you're driving first though I know I I'll show you do that off the I'll show you I'll show you you I don't know if you'll even want to do it after you feel what the Tesla has to offer even just from the last one.

You know what I mean like I Know that? Yeah, that throwback. Yep. I can't imagine if this one's even faster. It's even faster.

way faster. But before we go, hang on. do you notice anything different with your former daily driver which is now my daily driver. Does it look the same or different? It's a cosmetic.

You lowered it I did lower it. Yeah. oh my gosh, it's like immediate right. it's a car.

I like the truck high like. That's what I liked about the truck that it was high. You know you felt like you could see everything. you were over every one.

I mean it's not slammed I mean it's still, you know? But yeah, you're right. it is more like a car stance. but I you know I've always wanted a typhoon and they're lowered and they're sporty SUVs And this is like my I was going to say baby typhoon but it's a big you have a typhoon before no in my dreams almost every night I do look at the height on this. it automatically raises with the air suspension when we get to our house and so this is like about the highest as this will get and you can go low or I can go low and you can stay high.

Yeah well I actually did that to the car. Oh you did it where it automatically raises when you come home. but I wanted it to be like that all the time cuz I' like the height so you want to look at it's still higher. look I look at the mirror and the I know I get it, this is still higher but that's what I liked about I want it higher.

What you're telling me is that you would like a lifted truck. That's what I heard. Lift it All right, All right, you know. next daily Driver with reason Alex lift just really high.

Big 38 in tires probably need. Okay, all right I'm going to do a roller before we try out Drag strip mode. Okay, okay because this is I mean it's very violent. Okay, are you ready I think so.

Holy cow Holy cow it's pretty cool right? Yes, that was very cool and it never stops pulling like the other older. Teslas after 60 you know they get slower but this just holy cow Yeah yeah, that is insane I know I know that doesn't even feel real. Oh my gosh, it's like a roller coaster I Know it doesn't even feel like a car. except you don't have to wait in line at all so we can just keep going and going and going.

So uh, you want to go again? All right, let's do this. But this time we're going to try out the uh, the old drag strip mode. and then you get to drive the drag strip mode. Yeah, that's the launch.

Okay, so it's going to be slightly more violent than what we just did. Oh my. Why Why you need that? You need that for a daily driver with kids. All right.

So drag mode is pretty easy. We're going to put the my head back. Yeah, that's a good idea. We push the brake all the way down the accelerator, all the way down and now it gets into this cheetah stance and it says preparing, see that Look at this.

it's like this crazy like we're going out light. yeah outer space look like we're going towards the sun. Okay, ready? Oh Alex I Get yes, that's disgusting. Do you get that like stomach feeling? Yes.

Oh my gosh, you Okay, yes that takes a little bit of time to recover in between. I Can't even believe that You know you're used to like the engine revving up and like then like the last. like pull right you're more in tune with your senses. This just doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, you're really in a rocket ship. Yeah, this is your daily driver. I Well I am never using this all right. I mean I'll use it.

Do you know that this is like the fastest car in the fleet? Essentially like if we went to the drag strip against the TransAm like on a slick like on a drag radial tire. I think the TransAm would take this but just barely but on the street in like 99% of all real world situations. this is the fastest car and you don't even have have to like get the wheels set up and that and the water right. They put the water, they start, no you drive around, you don't do anything, it just Hooks and goes no matter what.

like weather conditions. it's super controllable. It's easy. It's like cheating.

It's like cheating, but why doesn't Why you would think the tires would still need to like hook? I Mean they just do. They just do. and they have uh what's called torque vectoring so the car knows where to send the power to so it'll send it individually. you know to different wheels and stuff like that.

it's very it's it's a Tesla it's wow. Foot all the way down, okay, gas all the way down. Oh okay now it's getting ready to launch. Does its little blasting off into the sunset thing? This takes a while like at the drag strip I Don't know what you do? Okay so now you're going to keep your accelerator all the way down and then just let off the brake and we'll be good I can do that now.

Yeah okay, ready. yep oh my. God What that Okay okay, Stop. oh my.

God okay what was that? That's the car. It's just insane. Oh my gosh in the passenger seat guys, it just a little scary there. Um okay I like you're good I mean I was good.

You're good. This is the thing when you're driving you feel in control 100% like I there's no fishtailing I it is like on the ground. Yeah, nothing's moving. you're just going straight like a rocket.

but I didn't see the screen do that when you did it. Oh yeah, the screen does this whole display thing where you're like blasting off into space or oh I think I was just looking straight. so I thought I had a new level kind of like when you took me to the drag strip and I got like a faster time than you. so I was like you might have done did I like switch better than Alex that the screen is doing something differently.

look I'm not going to say you, you probably were faster than me on that. She's really good by the way. like at the drag strip, her reaction time is spoton. She does better 0 to 60s.

just everything is better. Go! Um but yeah, this car is just it's just planted. It just goes yeah. I I Felt like I was in control I just kind of freaked out when I saw the screen do something different I screen nuts.

remember the old Tesla had the little stars that would like you were blasting off into space I don't exactly know what this is supposed to be but it looks cool. It looks really cool I just thought we were like reaching New Heights or something. I think we were I think we were about to like literally take off in the air. so oh, that's funny.

there's your new car. Wow! I can't imagine when I'd ever need that, but how fun! Well I mean I I'm here to drive it whenever you don't want to and obviously we're hanging out to the Escalade for long trips. That's the Practical thing to do is to hold on to the supercharged Escalade I Just I Love that truck so much. It's so so usable and we will seriously use it on long trips.

It's got a lot of room in the back Also, it's got like 100,000 miles on it and I bought it at like the peak of the bubbl so it's worth nothing compared to what I bought it for. So like it's so nice. it's like why not just keep it and just keep going with it you know, 100,000 Mi it's just barely broken in congratulations thanks and a little bit of congratulations to me too. congratulations You think this was worth getting rid of? the Mustang and sort of the Escalade yeah I would say so.

Yeah, the Mustang you never I never never I hardly drove it if you got a Corvette okay I mean I know you have one but you know the ones I like yeah, slightly newer on or or like the really old one with the white trim I was like oh that one's an old one. we could get that one right I feel bad for the C4 Corvette it It's like in this weird middle ground and like it's the least desirable. it is the least I will I'll take any yeah C whatever except that one I don't know why I Just yeah, you're not the only one. trust me.

A lot of people think the same thing I like the C4 but I get it. But uh. anyway, you guys heard this Corvette you know could be could be in the in the works here. that's always been my newer Corvette I want I do want a C7 ZO6 that's that's like my Pinnacle Corvette at this point in time or or a C6 ZR1 I I don't know but yeah.

okay so we'll just sell a few other cars just to get the the Corvette then okay okay I'm okay with that. All right guys. We made it back. That will do it for this video.

I Hope you guys really enjoyed my wife's new Tesla Model X Plaid that is slightly slightly mine as well and the modifications to my new daily driver The Supercharged Escalade And she does not like the low at all. Trucks are meant to be high. You're going to get a lot of people that agree with you, that is for sure. Yeah, let them know that his wife is right.

Once again, she's always right. But I've always wanted to lower and level out one of these gigantic sled GM trucks and I did it and I think it's cool and it'll It might get like one mile per gallon. better fuel economy. So an Eco mod and there's the excuse you got.

You got to have them. You got to have them ready to go guys! Yeah, so with that I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, give it a big thumbs up, share the video with your friends, subscribe if you haven't already, and most importantly, have an excellent day! I'll see all of you in the next video. In the last 2 years, I've bought my wife a twin turbo in the last two years.

I've bought my wife a 650 horsepower. Okay, in the last 2 years, I've bought my wife a 650 horsepower twin turby. That twin turby. So not only not not only is this light, not only is this light and uh, cordless, Yeah, so we are of course filling.

I Have so many more tries at this! I can mess up all the lines I want on the first like seven bottles. So if your transmission fluid is clean or maybe you recently had it so if your fluid is clean or maybe you recently had it serviced you can just change and I've clicked. stop beeping bad things are happening I know now we're going to go ahead and yeah Hellcat want to be little type? yeah and then back together. Ah okay, what kind of cotterpin person are you cotter pin guy? number one or number two I like to do what kind of cter pin guy are you cter pin W and I did the other side as well.

So now we're just lifting up the entire solid axle. Love St Oh.