2023 Colorado ZR2 Mods | Complete Off-Road & Overland Build

What's going on guys? We are back with another video. My name is Armando and in today's video we're going to be doing an in-depth dive into what exact modifications are done to my Colorado ZR2. I wanted to make this video because I'm always getting questions on what is done to my Colorado ZR2 and the last time I made one of these videos was almost two years ago and a lot has changed on the Colorado. So if you're looking for some inspiration for your Colorado build and you don't have a ZR2, don't worry because some of these parts on here do work for other trims of the Colorados and maybe you can get some inspiration there. I'm also going to be touching on certain mods that I currently have on my truck that I wish I would have gone a different direction on instead of the current mods I have now which we'll touch those later in this video. So we're going to work our way as far as the modifications from the front of the truck to the rear of the truck. All the modifications will be linked down in the description below just in case you are interested in checking any of them out. I will also link down below next to those modifications. I do have a lot of discount codes for these mods on my truck so that way it saves you guys a little bit of money. So first and foremost of our modifications we have our front bumper here which this is the 589 fabrication front bumper and this one specifically for the ZR2. I do have a different version for the Z71 Trail Bosses that slightly different and the reason I got this was for more added front end protection. Actually the plastic piece for the bottom of this bumper actually cracked on an obstacle so it was about time and the biggest thing reason why I got this bumper was it is winch capable so there is behind here there is a Badlands 12,000 pound winch with a synthetic line and then you can see here we have the Yencom fairlead which is really great because as you can see it's just a synthetic rope that loops around it which is really nice. Biggest benefits of this is you don't lose as much approach angle with those big bulky fairleads that stick out typically lose some approach angle there and then the other benefit is for winching stuff you don't have an additional projectile at the end of your rope if it were to snap so which is really nice so that's why I have that specific one. Part of this bumper you also get a front skid here that protects your radiator and your front engine components as you can see here it's actually kind of beat up pretty good and then we have obviously mounted on the bumper we have our Oxbeam V Ultra series lights. So these lights I have a full review on the channel with its own dedicated video as far as light output absolutely love them they're great you can check it out after the video as well as a bunch of the modifications I do have separate videos as far as install and stuff like that might be helpful for you if you're looking for that specific item. Now these are the seven inch wipes in the middle and then the five inch ambers on the outside. Moving up I'm just going to throw this in here because I do get a lot of questions. I have painted my front flow tie as you can see it has the yellow insert and then it has a silver gray exterior. I painted that myself that's not a kit. There's a lot of stuff basically it's just glued on there you can kind of pry it off and then you get a heat gun and you can separate the two pieces paint them whatever color you want and then you can put them back together. I get a lot of questions about that so I just wanted to address that really quickly. Moving over to our headlights and we have the Anzo USA headlights for the Colorados. These are for all trims of the Colorado so this is not ZR2 specific. These are a huge upgrade as far as light output and looks so you can have them as the amber daytime running light like I have them here or you could also have them white. They're easily interchangeable with a simple switch on the back of the headlight. By the time this video is out they are finally out for pre-order so make sure to go check them out before they sell out of their first batch but really great upgrade for your Colorados. Moving on to the hood of the truck got a few couple things going on here so first and foremost we have this little ZR2 emblem that I added myself you can get them off of eBay simply just stick them on there on the cow I just like the little aesthetic touch that it adds to the truck but we got here are our low profile ditch light brackets as you can see it sits nice and flush with the hood almost and it has two ports on it so you can either set up two different light pods here facing different directions or you could have it like I did where you could have it running a light and the antenna so the lights here are the Oxbeam V Ultra Series three inch pod lights and then right next to it is the GMRS radio antenna from Big 5 Overland. Back on the floor here we're moving on to the wheel and tire setup that I'm running on my Colorado ZR2 and that is the Methods that are 17 by 8.5 with zero offset and on that the tire of choice that we have is the Kenda Cleaver RT's 35 by 10.5 R17 so if you heard that correctly these are considered a what people call pizza cutter tire they are much narrow 35 it is a true 35 unlike a lot of your 315s that are more like a 34.4 this is a true 35 so you get a little bit more ground clearance but it is a bit of a skinnier tire and the reason I went with that is mainly weight rotational weight so it's a lot less stress on the drivetrain itself you also get a little bit better fuel economy as far as less rotational mass it has push and better braking because again less rotational mass so that's the reason I went with this setup it works great we have climbed a lot of things with these pizza cutter tires I know it's not everybody's cup of tea but those are the reasons why. I almost forgot about these mods but they are so great I have to mention them I do have on the wheels the Apex quick release valve stems these things are so great for airing down you can air down your tire from 35 to 15 psi in about eight seconds it's so great for pulling up to the trail and airing down highly highly recommend these. Moving back to the wheel well here we have this little mud flap here and this is not any particular brand these are universal ebay mud flaps that I kind of just makeshift put on there I was just tired of the rocks being flung up and hitting my door so I put these on there because I originally had the rock blocks on there but the way they mount the inside here with the brackets when I would turn the wheel and it would be under articulation they would actually rub on those brackets so I ended up going and making my own and going this route for my mud flaps so again they're just universal ebay mud flaps that I just cut down the size and mounted myself. So moving on to our suspension and kind of front end setup here that we got going on underneath the truck so first and foremost we have the level up tie rod sleeves which highly recommend getting it's a good peace of mind to have especially with any IFS vehicles your tie rods typically eventually end up going when you're wheeling hard so good good piece of insurance to have to not snap tie rod on the trails. Moving right behind you can see I am still rocking the OEM Multimatic DSSV shocks I think they are a fantastic OEM shock it's a good balance between on-road handling and off-road capabilities are there better off-road focused shocks absolutely but do those off-road shocks handle as good as on-road probably not so this is a really good shock I've been rocking these for the last 41,000 miles and they have been absolutely solid and then as you can see we got a one inch level up spacer that sits underneath the spring perch causing the one inch lift this this setup I would have done differently this is one of those things that I would have done differently which is coming soon to the truck but I would have gone with a coilover conversion instead of just this spacer it was just more of a cheap upgrade but it's better to just do the whole coilover especially since you can customize your spring rate as like currently how I'm sitting now I'm running a lot heavier so having a stiffer spring would definitely help with this weight but I do have that coming and I do have some good news as far as there are some new prototype DSSV rebuilds from LevelUp that'll be on this truck here shortly so moving along we also have a not sure if you can see it there but we have a one inch LevelUp diff drop this guy right there and then we also have the LevelUp Quick Disconnect sway bar end link kit which is fantastic highly highly highly recommend getting yourself a self of these if you actually off-road it makes a huge difference when off-roading when you're disconnected and they're really easy to take off and put back on it doesn't really take that whole lot of time the last thing we got going on up here is I did upgrade to the AEV engine skid plate as you can see here so it is uh the aluminum one the stock aluminum one I had completely bashed and caved in so at the time there wasn't really much on the market and ended up just going with the AEV one moving a little bit further along still part of the front suspension technically I have the LevelUp sway bar blocks that drop the sway bars an inch and then bring it back and the whole reason for that is when you're raising the truck you also need to bring the sway bar back in alignment because when you're raising it you're also putting tension on the sway bar so this basically brings the sway bar back where it wants to be which is really nice and then might as well since we're down here I have also upgraded to the AEV transfer slash transmission skid plate as you can see there again the OEM aluminum one got bashed in and it needed to be replaced and then last but not least kind of on the front side of the truck we have the LevelUp EVAP skid plate again highly right this is one of those this one in particular is a crucial skid plate because the EVAP bracket is just plastic and mine was on the verge of falling off so highly recommend these you don't need these if you have the AEV fuel tank skid because the fuel tank skid technically goes from the back of the fuel tank all the way up and it covers the EVAP a part of it but if you I've never hit my fuel tank as you can see there and I wheel pretty hard it's perfectly fine but the EVAP skid does sit slightly below the frame so it is bound to get hit if you do off-road so highly recommend getting these and you can see there's already quite a few gashes after the fact after installing so it's it's doing its job underneath the hood as far as engine modification everything is a hundred percent stocked as you can see there the only thing we got going under the hood here is our Oxbeam 8-gang switch panel that's where all my lights are going and you'll see on the inside here momentarily where it's all controlled from but this is the control panel here and then we also relocated our control box for the winch right on top of the battery so that way it's easily accessible because where the winch was it could not stay on top of the winch so it was relocated up here and you can see I have my switch to turn it on and off for the winch and then the other cabling you see there is going to our secondary battery in the back of the camper moving into the inside of the truck not a whole lot has been done here but obviously there has been a few changes to make life a little bit better because after all this is where you're spending your time while you're driving on the trail or driving to and from so first and foremost we're going to start on the left side here we have the Oxbeam control switch panel here that I showed you where the control box was under the hood this is where we actually control everything on this switch panel which is mounted on a Badlands industry mount here it replaces your vent and just clips right in your vent is still functional as you can see here it still has the slits here so it still can push air through but then you can cleanly mount your switch panel here which is nice and low but easily accessible which is really nice so it doesn't block any visibility whatsoever so moving on over to the middle of the truck we have the ruby grid dash mount system it's a simple bolt-in kit and there's a ton of accessories that you can mount on here on their website I opted for the GoPro mount that way I can film obviously all the adventures either myself driving while I'm off-roading an obstacle or I could face it forward and record from kind of like a inside view cabin view and then I also have this mount here that's meant for different radios whatever it doesn't have to be a wired radio but it could be your little handheld radios you can just simply clip it in here but we have the Midland 275 15 watt GMRS radio that is wired directly to the battery so this just simply mounts there which is really easily accessible when on trail rides and you're in a group of people it's really nice to have good communication so moving on up we have our next mod which is the wolfbox 900 pro dash cam rear view mirror so it is a two-in-one it's a digital rear view mirror and a dash cam it records both the front there's a camera on the back here as you can see there that records forward and then you have a camera that records backwards as well but then you have a live view so that way you can see what's behind you because I have the topper on the back so I have no way to see the back what's behind me so I opted for this that way I kind of have a live view and as well it is recording a dash cam because there's a lot of crazy drivers out there don't know how to drive and it's good security so I can swap you can see there between it's recording the front and the rear but obviously I always have it on the rear view so that way I have a live view on vehicles behind me so moving further down we have our screen protector on here which makes it a nice more matte finish so it's a lot easier to see when the sun's hitting it just like that without it with the glossy screen it is really hard to see with a few fingerprints on there it's just it's it's a nightmare and it's kind of a pain to clean highly recommend one of these screen protectors makes it a lot easier and kind of piggybacking off of that we got this vinyl wrap on this little center console piece here because if you're unaware this piece is all gloss black piano gloss black which is a nightmare to keep clean and it scratches really easily I'm not sure why they decided to put that there on an off-road truck but got that wrap here so that fixes that moving a little further back I do have this just kind of one that I found off Amazon it's a little dirty I need to clean it but it's just basically an armrest it's a padded armrest cover and mainly got this for our dog cookie because she's always jumping on here with her nails didn't want to damage the leather and it's also a little nicer on the elbow having this little pad here they have a bunch of different ones but this was just a cheap Amazon one that I found because I knew it was going to get dirty and messed up we also have down here a little mount for the off-road protection not much more explaining to do but I'll link it down below if you're interested in this I was looking around for something because I am tall so I couldn't have something on the center console and I wanted something that was easily accessible and I found that mount which is really nice mounts it out of the way it's not in the way at all and it's very easily accessible so I'll link that down below the description if you're interested and then we have our Chevy floor mats rubber floor mats so I got these when you buy a new Colorado you also get the GM reward points I actually used the GM reward points and got these floor mats because it makes cleaning so much easier just to take these off dust them off hose them off and then throw them back in and back here we used to have a rear seat delete but as you can see things have changed and that's because we have our first child on the way as you can see the car seat is mounted maybe by the time this video is out he is born but I just want to take a quick second to say a big thank you to all you guys that sent us stuff for our baby registry we greatly greatly appreciate you guys and it was definitely a huge help but we used to have a rear seat delete highly recommend if you don't have any extra passengers a rear seat delete is really nice because it opens it up a lot more than just having the rear seats in but obviously our situation changed now that we covered all the interior mods we are back on the outside of the truck moving further along just want to take a quick second to talk about the sliders here so these are still the OEM factory ZR2 sliders and they have taken quite the beating I'm not sure if you can see this this indent right here but they have taken quite the beating and they are still very much holding up so I have not seen any need to replace them and there hasn't really been any sliders on the market that I truly truly love so I've just stuck with the OEM sliders moving further along obviously we can't not talk about one of the biggest things that you notice on the truck and that is the topper so this is the Harker outdoors XO topper and on it we have mounted on this side we have the DFG off-road this is a shower tent changing tent makes Nicole nice and happy so it's really convenient for her especially when we're in a group setting she can go use the restroom and she can change easily it's really nice to have then we have our traction boards mounted on the side here which if you've been following the channel we have used those a ton on different recoveries and they are a great tool to have we have our fire extinguisher mounted on this side and then flipping to the other side of the topper we have our propane tank for our propane fire pit and sometimes if we cook with our propane grill we got our fuel sometimes 99% of the time we have our diesel here mounted for our diesel heater but we also have a fuel tank and or water tank if we need extra water and then we have our ovry s overland vehicle systems 270 on it so the inside of the topper looks like this just wanted to give a little insight here because i did build all of this inside i do have a full video walk around if you guys want to are interested to see how this build out looks in depth you can check it out but i wanted to come in here to talk about one uh that's basically part of the truck because it never leaves the inside of the truck and that is our isaco fridge back here this thing goes on every adventure with us whether it's a two-week uh overlanding adventure or if it's a singular day off-roading trip this thing goes everywhere with us because it keeps all our food and waters and beverages nice and ice cold so if you've never considered a fridge i would highly recommend getting one instead of your traditional cooler with ice it is so nice to have i know they could be a little more expensive but if you think about the amount of times if you're going out and you have to buy ice every single time that adds up just convince yourself to buy one of these and not just anyone buy an isaco and i live and die by that because this is not our first isaco fridge this is our second isaco fridge and our first one is still running strong to this day uh chris and julie shout out to chris and julie they currently have it and it's still running strong and this one has survived a lot of things so highly recommend this specifically is the apl 55 if you're interested in a bigger cooler they have smaller ones and they have them all in different sizes but some of our favorite features of this cooler and why we chose this cooler is it is a dual zone cooler so there's this piece back here that you can take in or out and you can divide it based on fridge it's a dual zone so you can control fridge up here freezer out back or vice versa or if you want this to be an entire freezer or an entire fridge you can simply just pull this panel out all the way out and then have it all one giant area it's got nice little baskets in here so it makes sorting and organizing really easy and honestly it's just a really great tool to have uh again we've had this now for three years it's been bouncing back here on every single off-road video you guys have seen on the channel and it's still running strong today so if you're interested in checking out an isco go check them out in the link description i do remember the discount code is outlandish overland and it saves you 12 off all right moving to the underside of the truck here there's quite a few modifications going on under here so we're gonna start off strong with the exhaust so first and foremost we have the afe exhaust so i went with the afe exhaust uh the main reason was the oem exhaust sat way too low i think the oeing exhaust shoots out right about here so i had hit it on so many different obstacles and almost pancaked it on a few so i decided to upgrade to this because not is it high clearance but it also gives it an oem plus sound but not a raspy sound or a raspy four-cylinder sound like some of the other exhausts on the market which i'm not a fan of a pickup truck sounding like that so ended up going with this exhaust so moving on to the suspension because i know a lot of people ask me what suspension i am running on the rear for the and starting first and foremost we have an upgraded leaf pack here which is the deaver expedition pack and this is one of the mods that i wish i would have done differently as well i wish i would have done a little more research and would have gone with a custom leaf pack company for example like alcon springs where they take the weight of your truck and they make a specific leaf pack specifically for your weight which makes it a lot better where these are just kind of bolt on kind of put it together and not the greatest but it got me by and it's got me by this far so i'm not complaining about it but i would have done it differently and then we're gonna move on i have a one inch level up suspension drop shackle here we got the level up progressive bump stops surprisingly these make a huge difference when you're running hard and you're bottoming out your suspension the difference between the oem hard rubber block versus this is very significant it is very noticeable so good little upgrade there and then we have the eibach 1.5 inch lift block here moving further down here on the bottom of the shock here i have the level up shock skids and i would highly highly recommend getting rear shocks kids for your colorados because they get hit you think because they're close to the wheel they're not getting hit but if you can see mine there mine have gotten quite the abuse and it's much thinner metal that sits behind if you don't have these and you will most likely bend them and could possibly break them so this is a good piece of equipment right here to protect while off-roading and then the final piece of equipment that we have on the colorado is the av rear diff skid plate which i regret not getting sooner if you've seen the video you know exactly what i'm talking about i ended up taking a nasty trail and peeling my rear diff cover back and leaking fluid on the trail and i'd end up doing a trail because i did not have any protection of my diff so ended up getting that after would definitely recommend getting something like this sooner than later especially if you're doing those really hard trails moving on to the rear of the truck for the last few mods first up we have the baja s1 amber pod lights here that are set up for chase lights now if you're not familiar what chase lights are chase lights are super useful and almost i would say almost essential when you're in group rides in dusty environments because when the dust starts going and you're going at faster speeds you can't see the vehicle in front of you so with having good chase lights they are able to the lights cut through the dust and that way they're able to see just in case if you come to abrupt stop or there's a turn they're able to see the vehicle in front of you we then have the anzo usa tail lights here which are really great i think they look fantastic all smoked out and all the led features really awesome so moving on to our final item and the item i get a lot of questions on and that is my rear bumper setup so this rear bumper was custom built and custom made from a small company in price utah called automail industries and the reason i had them built it is i wasn't happy with any of the bumpers currently on the market as far as the needs that i needed so one of the benefits of this bumper it is a high clearance rear bumper so you can see there's no low hanging hitch there to get caught up on or anything so your departure angle is greatly increased another feature that i really wanted was having a dual swing out so that way i could carry a full size spare so it didn't have to be underneath again hurting departure angle and then i wanted to have whether i'm carrying spare water as you can see there i'm typically carrying spare water but for those more remote trips that's where i carry my spare fuel so as you can see the rear bumper opens up like this and it still incorporates all the oem features so you still have your rear parking sensors you still behind here you have your blind spot monitoring and then you still have all your trailer hookups but then you're probably asking yourself well you eliminated your trailer hitch how are you going to tow a trailer and that's where one of the things i wanted was the trailer hitch is located right behind the license plate so i'm going to dip right under here and you can see it is right here that's where your hitch pin goes so you're still able to tow with this bumper but it's obviously a lot more high clearance you also have two recovery points right here that are hooked directly onto the frame they are not welded onto the bumper there is a big metal piece that goes directly to the frame so this is super super super strong and the best part is this bumper doesn't even weigh as much as you think it weighs it weighs about 160 pounds which for what's on the market most of your dual swing outs for the zr2 which are i believe are there two other options they're on the upwards of 300 pounds they are wanting to sell these and ship them out but they are wanting another colorado to come into their shops that way they can make sure all their cad designs and everything it fits up smoothly and there are no issues with fitment so until they find somebody that is local to come in they're not planning to ship nationwide yet so if you're interested in this rear bumper hit them up message them check them out highly recommend it's an awesome bumper it's been through hell the first iteration we had an issue with the swing out but after that after the revised version i have wheeled the hell out of this thing and have had absolutely no issues and those are all the modifications i've done to my colorado zr2 let me know down in the comments below what is your favorite mod that i've done to my colorado hopefully this video has inspired some of you guys to go get some new truck parts if you like the video make sure to leave a like and subscribe for more awesome content like this and we'll see you guys in the next video