Kelley's Tahoe

So, when we had our baby girl, Ainsley, it was time to upgrade my wifes ride. Previously, she had a 1996 Jetta, that she'd had since 1998. Needless to say, she had shared some wonderful times with that car and was sad to see it go. But with safety first, and me feeling to need to have my wife rollin' a whip with a bit more style, we bought a 2002 Tahoe.

Now, this is a ride I have wanted for a while. And what better opportunity to purchase one, now that we had a little bundle of joy to tote around. So I tracked one down on Craigslist, wrote a check, and that afternoon my wife was driving home in her new truck. The thing was totally stock, 95,000 miles, leather interior. Really nice. And about twice as big as her Jetta.

This is how it looked the day we brought it home. But one thing you will realize about me is that I can't live with stock anything. Not my truck, not my bike, not my hotrod, not my body. So we had to get some rims on this thing quick. Bought the truck on Tuesday, and by Friday afternoon I had sourced some rims and tires on Craigslist. By Friday evening, she was looking better.






24" Boss Chrome rims and tires on CL for $1100. Looked pretty good for a while, but wife was feeling it was a bit too "ganster" for her tastes. "Not hardcore enough", as she said. So as I was looking for some proper wheels I did a bunch of upgrades to it.

Started with new Cold Air Intake and Dual Exhaust. Projector headlights, LED front turn signals, LED rear turn signals, Escalade rear vents, sport shocks, beefier sway bars front and back, upgraded brake pads all around, took all the stock badges off and added 1 of my own. Also had the engine tuned by Blackbear Performance. New shift points, less torque managment, removed speed govenor, adjusted speedo for wheel/tires, air/fuel mixture tweaked, optomized for 93 octane, switched the TOW/HAUL button to PERFORMANCE mode, which was a couple notches above all the daily driver mods. Don't know about actual HP improvements, but she sure does feel more snappy and fast.
We were getting tired of the skinny tires on 24's, so I picked up some 22's with more sidewall. Black, of course. Color matched the spokes and also painted the front grill and chrome side trim, black. Ride was looking WAY better. Wife was feeling more 'hardcore'. Everyone was happy.