Texas Speed Enters the Rockies with New Silverado Project
Formerly a home for Texas-sized wasps, 2000 Silverado 1500 arrives at Texas Speed to become their Rocky Mountain Race Week debut project.
Rocky Mountain Race Week is one part rally, one part drag racing party. Not to mention all of the Chevy trucks and cars participating in the week-long extravaganza. And of course, quite a few of the participants are rocking some Texas Speed & Performance goodies under the hood. After all, if you’re gonna go hard, better have the best parts available to get the best times off the line.
And yet, Texas Speed themselves haven’t participated in the annual trek of speed. Until now. The shop recently purchased a clean 2000 Silverado 1500 with some mods and a Vortec. It looks like a shop truck now, but by party time, it’ll be a demon. Let’s see what they’ve got, shall we?
“We’ve been wanting to do Rocky Mountain Race Week now for a couple years,” said our unnamed host. “We decided we’ve just been so busy lately, we weren’t going to do it. But last minute, we’re like, ‘You know what? Let’s do it!’ We found an NBS to go with our OBS. Here’s where the project begins.”
The only mods on this otherwise bone-stock Silverado include a set of wheels, and a lowered suspension. It’s also a super-clean rig, one that apparently spent more time in the garage than at work. Of course, it was also a “garage” for wasps, as the air intake and filter can attest. Thankfully, the buzzing will be replaced by the roar of a badass Vortec V8 soon enough.
“We were just debating where we wanted to start on this thing,” he said. “I think we’re gonna start up here with the heads, cam package, get all that stuff settled out. Then lift it on up, go ahead and get the converter taken care of. And then throw the TSP long tubes on there.”
The plan is to do the entire TSP package all at once, then put it on the dyno to find out how much power it’ll put down on the line. Alas, we don’t get to see how much this Silverado made before the process began, though the 2000 5.3-liter delivered 285 horses in its day; we think it might be close to that now.
“Day Two on the Rocky Mountain Race Week project. Looks like Potak’s already at work over here. Gonna drain the coolant. We may have found another animal house inside the truck. Getting her cleaned up. Let’s get back to work.”
With the heads finally off, the Vortec looks okay aside from some rust build-up and a rotted gasket. All in all, we can’t wait to see what comes of this Silverado as Texas Speed gets ready to tap the Rockies themselves.
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