Prepping Your Truck for the Ultimate Road Trip: Essential Upgrades and Tips

Ultimate Upgrades for a Cross Country Roadtrip

As we prepare for our yearly trip out to the world-renowned SEMA Show in Las Vegas, a few items have popped up that need to be addressed this year that we don’t normally have to consider.

Generally, our plans include a simple flight, hotel, and rental car package to handle all our needs. However, this year, we are not only driving the 2,276 miles from our house in Ocala, Florida, to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas where we stay each year, but we are also going to add a layer of complications by towing Project Rocky all the way to our booth in the Hot Rod Alley section of the Las Vegas Convention Center. This will be a long trip with lots of challenges, so we need to be sure our driver/tow rig is up for the task.

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One of the most obvious items we need to work on is the incredible amount of added weight that our 2018 Chevy Silverado will be required to carry. Even though this truck is a Z71 Off-Road Package, we will get quite a bit of sag in the rear of the truck from the load. Luckily for us, Air Lift Company has created a really simple fix for this concern, which only requires a few hours of wrenching.

Additional items we need to cover include new tires, which in our opinion, bigger is better. We’ll also need to properly secure our load, add some additional storage space, and update our truck’s internal computer to be aware of these upgrades. The goal is to have at least one of our vehicles completed well before the departure date. If you’ve been through the SEMA crunch, you know the booth vehicle is usually the one with to-do items still on the checklist as you drive in to the big show. So let us break down the top 10 things we did to our truck to prepare it for the Las Vegas push.

**01.** Our 2018 Chevy Silverado Z71 4×4 is a truck Chevrolet should be proud of designing, but a few upgrades can make it even better!

**02.** The items on our to-do list include new upgraded tires, a 2-inch front leveling kit, rear frame coating, helper airbags in the rear, a tune-up to the computer, under seat storage, proper tow straps, seat covers, and an adjustable tow hitch.

**03.** We picked up this truck locally in Florida, although based on these rusty factory shocks, it’s obvious the previous owner was from somewhere up north.

**04.** A quick swap of the shocks with some auto parts store factory replacements took care of the rear in no time.

**05.** Next is the rear helper bags. Air Lift Company provides everything you need to simply both in some bags and fix your sag.

**06.** With the upper and lower brackets bolted in place, we set the bag into the brackets and tightened the nuts.

**07.** We literally didn’t need to unbolt anything from the factory suspension to get these in place.

**08.** Next, we simply pushed in the airlines and ran them to the back of the truck.

**09.** For ease of use, we jacked up the rear of the truck and installed the air filler port under the tow hitch bracket.

**10.** With the helper bags installed, we wanted to clean and recoat the frame so the surface rust doesn’t continue to spread.

If you’ve been through the SEMA crunch, you know the booth vehicle is usually the one with to-do items still on the checklist as you drive in to the big show.