I bought this pickup new in the spring of 1998. It has been a very good pickup for all its 120K miles. The only times it has been in the shop is for a rear end under warranty and the infamous plenum leak. The plenum is leaking again so the next time it will get the aluminum cradle. My intent is to drive it to the moon. (235,000+ miles)
It has a 318 V8, 5 speed, and 3.55 rear gears. I would like to go to a 3.73 and may if one comes along cheap enough and I am someplace where I can make the swap.
The pickup has the towing package of a larger radiator, heavier alternator, and some wiring changes. I installed a Hidden hitch and a Tenshodo brake controller several years ago.
The rear swap and a shell are the only remaining changes I want to make to it.

I have always used synthetic oil for the engine, Castrol 10W30. I decided to go with end to end synthetic and put Red Line MTL in the transmission and Castrol synthetic gear lube in the differential.

The pickup had an oil cooler installed. The cooler came from Summit racing and was a lot bigger than anticipated. Installation was simple with the removal of the oil filter and installation of a sandwich plate then reinstalling the oil filter. I changed the oil at the same time. Where to mount the cooler became a problem because of size. Across the AC radiator looked to be a good place and there was a metal mounting with convenient holes. What I did was pick up some aluminum angle, flat stock and some nylon spacers. The flat stock was cut in two pieces just longer than the width of the cooler and the angle was cut in two pieces just longer than the air conditioning radiator. The flat stock was bolted to the angle then the cooler was mounted to the bars with some stainless 10-32 screws. The assembly was then mounted to the AC radiator using the nylon stand offs and some stainless sheet metal screws. It works well at keeping engine oil temperatures under control.

I also installed a set of Air Lift air springs. These will be used to keep the pickup levell when loaded.

The alternator on this pickup is fused for 150 Amps. I installed a battery isolater between the alternator and the pickup battery. An 8 gauge wire was then run from the aux terminal of the isolater to the trailer connector at the back of the pickup. The isolater will let the alternator charge the pickup battery first then switch to charging the trailer or house battery. When the pickup is shut off, the house battery is isolated from the pickup battery. That way no matter how dead the house batteries are, the pickup battery is not discharged and the pickup will be able to start and recharge the house batteries. Using the pickup to recharge the house battery is not very efficient but works well when moving down the road.