Oh, that looks so good. So I just picked up my new 2024 GMC Sierra 2500 Duramax. Over the last two days, we got a ton of work done on this thing. Now all she needs is a set of wheels and tires. Fear not—I have my wheels but not my tires. Tires come later.
The wheels we’re putting on the old girl are a set of 22×14 American Force Nemesis. These are the most beautiful wheels in the world, and I’m so excited to finally put my dream wheel on my dream truck. This thing should look pretty freaking nice by the end of the day.
My friends, today is drop day. The latest Boston apparel drop just went live right this second. We have two new tees dropping, one new hoodie, some nice Evo windshield banners, and the long-awaited shift knobs. I’ve been working on these shift knobs for the longest time—they are finally freaking here and they are dropping right now. As always, every order over $150 here in the domestic United States qualifies for free shipping. These goodies are very, very limited in quantity, so if you see anything you like, hit the website—first link down below. As always, I really, really appreciate your guys’ support of the brand.
Let’s get back to the shop and get these wheels slapped on the truck. Now, I went back and forth a lot—do I want to do 20x10s, 22x12s, 22x14s, or even like a 24×14? Ultimately, I decided to go with a 22×14—that is the exact size I run on my current Duramax, which looks like this, and I think it looks amazing.
Now, I really wanted to stay with 35s like I have on my current Duramax, but being that this thing is only leveled 3 inches up front, 1 inch in the rear, and my current Duramax being a 6-inch, I was worried 35s would rub way too much, or we would have to do a ton of cutting. So I ended up ordering a set of 33×13.5x22s. Now, the good thing with wheels and tires is they’re easy to change. Granted, American Forces are expensive, but if we get these on the truck and we don’t like it, it is only 8 bolts per wheel to get them swapped out.
Now, I am assuming we’re going to have to do a little bit of cutting. We may have to space out the front bumper; the rear, no problem at all. But the front, being that they’re so wide, there are going to be some modifications that we do have to do. My new tires for the Duramax just arrived. Let’s get that thing in the shop, on the lift, and I’m going to be pulling out all the TPMS sensors out of the factory wheels.
Now, when you buy a brand new truck nowadays from GM, they include four extra TPMS sensors. Initially, I thought that was just them being nice and they knew that everyone was just going to put aftermarket wheels on their trucks, but that is not the case. Those four spare TPMS that they include are actually for a trailer. Say if we wanted to put TPMS sensors in that trailer, it’ll show on the dash. Figured I’d share that info with you guys ’cause I was about to put those spare TPMS sensors in these wheels and tires right here, but we are not.
Now, as you guys know, just yesterday we lifted this thing and it does need an alignment. So whatever alignment rack you’re going on isn’t wide enough for your new wheels and tires—do it on the stockies. Thankfully, mine is.
Alright, so here’s the plan: I’m going to pull a wheel off, head over to the tire machine, debat the tire, pull the TPMS sensor off, get that wheel out of the way, grab an aftermarket wheel and tire, put the TPMS sensor in, balance it, put it on the truck, and move on to the next.
One last thing I want is my brand new Duramax to have a TPMS light on the dash.
So here’s the sensor that we need. Now check this out—thankfully, I have a bunch of the Subaru valve stems here for the Subaru TPMS, and it appears that they are the same. Bam! Alright, so I got our TPMS sensor in. Now these are, as you guys can see, a reverse mount, meaning you mount the tire with the wheel on the tire machine flipped over. Now the nice thing is American Force ships these things out with this foam on the face, so just to ensure we don’t mess the faces up, I’m going to leave the foam on, of course using our plastic clamps here. So we’re going to get the tire mounted, flip it over, get it aired up, and we’ll be good to go.
Now, these tires are not directional, but each sidewall looks different, so you can kind of pick and choose how you want your sidewall to look. There’s a more simple side and a more aggressive side.
Oh yeah, this is going to be fun. There we go. From this stud, it should be very, very easy to get the rest of the tire on.
Simple as that. Easy, easy. Alright, now the fun part. As you can see, we got a gap. Mounting truck tires on truck wheels is always difficult. We’re going to be using this tire blaster here and injecting air into the tire at the same time, and hopefully with enough tries, enough patience, we’ll get this thing to seat good. Yep, made it. Nope. Really? Okay, hit it. Yep!
Buddy, tires are mounted, everything is balanced out. Now, before we slap these bad boys on the truck, I’m going to go ahead and apply some ceramic coat. A wheel like this, with this many spokes, is going to be a little bit more on the difficult side to clean, and ceramic coating it is going to make it so much easier to get these things cleaned up when we’re washing the truck. I’ll be coating these guys in Avalon King’s Armor Shield 9, and we also need some IPA to get the wheels cleaned up.
It is way easier to get these things coated while they’re still brand new—not a bunch of gunk to get off of them. Get them all cleaned up, wipe down with IPA, make sure you get inside these spokes properly, and I will be coating the backside as well.
Let’s go saturate our applicator pad about like so. It’s easy to get the lip of the wheel with this block; to get inside the spoke, you probably need to pull it off the block and just kind of wrap it around your finger. So I got this wheel fully coated. It sat for about three minutes. Now I’m going to grab a fresh brand new microfiber towel and wipe off all the excess coating. We can’t let any water get on the wheel for about two days, and it will be fully cured up.
Alright, both front and back sides of this wheel are fully ceramic coated. Let’s go ahead and get these things on the truck. Dang, this thing is going to look insane! Alright, you all ready to see this thing on the ground for the first time? First thing I’m noticing right off the bat, which I’m a big fan of, is it appears that this thing is not nearly as wide as my 2015. The wheels don’t stick out nearly as far. Even though these are 22×14 just like we have on the 2015, these are a 90, and 2015s are a 76. So if we put these on the 2015, they’d stick out—what is that, 15 more millimeters? But either the body is wider or the suspension is just set up differently ’cause these things stick out way less than the 2015, which I’m a massive, massive fan of.
Oh boy. Oh man, that looks—that is exactly what I envisioned. Now, of course, it is going to drop down a little bit when we drive it. It’ll probably drop at least, I would say, at least an inch, inch and a half. Let’s get this thing outside and see how it truly looks.
Man, this is my truck. Is this really my truck? Now I know, I’m just going to say it right now because I got to get it out of the way—I know the 22x14s on 33s isn’t really going to be some of your guys’ style. A lot of your guys’ style is stock. A lot of your guys’ style is 37s on 17-inch wheels. This is me. This is my style. I’m not an off-road guy. My enjoyment in vehicles comes from stuff like this. I don’t enjoy taking trucks off-road—it just ain’t me. So this right here, you freaking can’t get better. This looks so good. It is hot boy. I love it. Very, very hot boy, and I’m here for it. Let’s get her outside.
Now, I’m seeing a little bit of a problem. Is old girl going to fit, or do we got to put the stock wheels back on the rear? First drive on the new wheels is Jared, so he can curb them on the lift as he pulls out. There’s space. That’s the passenger side has more, so as long as that side doesn’t hit, you’re good. Just watch that corner and you’ll be fine. You’re good, you’re good.
Damn, son, that looks so good. Oh, you’re rubbing. You good?
There, yeah, I need to do some trimming. I haven’t done any trimming. Nice, that looks really good. I dig it. Yeah, that’s sick. Now, we are going to have to
do a little bit of cutting, a little bit of trimming, so this thing does not rub at full block. Now, what I’m going to do to start is I’m going to pull these rears off. I’ll probably modify them later, or I know there is an aftermarket company that sells a little cap, so you can just pull that off, put the cap on. Looks nice and clean, actually looks quite OEM, but I’m just going to pull that off for now so we can deal with the front. The front’s going to rub quite a bit more than the rear, so let’s get that handled first.
Before I get carried away with trimming and cutting, I’m going to go ahead and add in these bumper spacers. I think it’s like a half-inch spacer. It’s going to pull that whole front bumper forward just a little bit. I had to do this on the old Duramax, the 2015—it helped out a ton, and it still looks very, very nice. You can’t really tell it’s spaced out whatsoever, but it does help out quite a bit. Up first, we need to get this grill off of here. So there’s a bunch of clips right up here. This piece will come off, clips for the grill, pop the grill off, and we should have better access to get these spacers installed.
We do need to get this piece off right here. To get that piece off, we have to partially remove the fender flare and the inner fender liner. Now, once we have that flare pulled back just a little bit, if you peek right there, there’s a 7 mm bolt. Pull that bolt; there’ll be two clips over there, one clip over there, and that piece will come off. Kind of a pain, not going to lie.
Now, if I’m not mistaken, it feels like you’re just breaking everything. Jeep finally got the grill off—that alone took me like an hour to get figured out. Now, what we got? Pull the whole bumper off? Okay, well, that was very, very simple. Bolt there, bolt there, two bolts there on each side—eight bolts total, a plug in there, a plug in there, and the bumper’s off. Bumper was easy to pull. Grill and bumper—easy.
So we are going to be spacing this out. This is the bracket that the bumper actually bolts to, so pull these four bolts off on each side, add the spacers, and reassemble. So I got both side spacers installed, and I pulled the bumper brackets up as high as possible. Hopefully, that works with everything. We won’t know until I get the bumper on and get the grill on, make sure everything’s aligned properly, but the spacers are on. It’s a 3/4-inch spacer, not a half-inch. Let’s get it back together and see how much trimming that we need to do.
With the front bumper spacers on, this is how it looks—still looks very, very nice. Instead of this lining up with that, it now lines up with that line right there. Quite literally cannot even tell that it’s spaced out. Everything else looks completely factory. It is still going to rub just a little bit—not enough to have to take out this plug here, which is for the block heater. So I’m going to trim right before it on the very bottom, about 2 inches. We’re not trimming the bumper at all; it’s just this little plastic piece down here that is, thankfully, replaceable. Once again, if we do mess it up.
Alright, there—that’s full lock. It might rub when we hit a bump, but we can always trim it more later if need be. I’m going to leave it like that—it looks very nice and clean. It feels very, very funny, I must admit, cutting apart my truck—freaking $85,000 truck with the Sawzall—but it’s got to be done.
Alright guys, we’re all done trimming and modifying for the day. I am going to go ahead and just order those little rear caps—it’s about 200 bucks, but it looks so factory. And then the front looks good as well—try to make it look as clean as possible. Once again, if it does rub, we can trim it just a little bit more, and like I said, man, that piece pops off. I would guess it’s probably 20 bucks, 30 bucks from the dealer if I don’t like how it turns out.
Now, the most second-most important part—the first most important part is that I like it; the second most is that Bobby likes it. Let’s head back to the house and see what Bobby’s got to say.
I fell over a box. Okay, we’re almost outside. I don’t like not seeing. Can you tell me when the steps are?
The step is coming up. You’re at the step.
Is there another one? Right. How do you not know our front?
I can’t see. Come on, Bobby. I got you. You can feel with your toes.
Okay. Is there another step? I’ll tell you when. Come on. You got another two feet to go.
I closed my eyes. Okay, step down. Step down. Okay, now walk. Keep walking. Okay, you’re in the clear. Come on.
Now you can remove the mask and see if you like my new truck.
Oh, that looks so good! You got that old girl, and you got—what? That thing is tiny. It’s way better like that—better small. Yeah, we’re not 10 anymore.
I really like the wheels. Yeah, they’re a little spendy, but it looks so good. Thank you.
Yeah, it’s yours. Congrats. It’s your new daily.
Yeah, I like it. Drives so nice. Does it still drive like stock?
Really? It ain’t like the old one where it’s all weird after you change it—aftermarket everything? Yeah, it’s got class in it.
Class, huh? Yep.
Yeah, I’m glad you like it. Yeah, this looks really, really good. You like how the wheels don’t stick out as far as that one?
Yeah, I like the aspect. Yeah, the whole thing just turned out great. But honey, don’t blindfold me ever again.
Can I blindfold you when I buy you a new car?
Sure. You want the old truck?
That thing is beautiful. No, don’t get it twisted. Look, honey, I need something smaller than that.
It looks really good. Which one?
Both. Yeah, the old one’s better.
No.Here’s how the old girl looks from the front. Sheesh. Keep in mind, we still need an alignment after doing all the suspension work. But yeah, the truck’s all finished up. I will retint it—I’m going to go a little bit darker, especially on the front windows. But other than that, this thing is going to be the ultimate daily driver SL tow rig. That thing treated me well for four years straight. Let’s see if we can get five years out of this one.
