Each summer, Jamey takes the kids to Michigan to see her sister. Before she’d even left this year I was planning to surprise her with something special upon her returned. I knew that surprising her may be difficult since we’re in frequent contact via text message and twitter. Not wanting to outright lie to my wife I decided to use the tactic of vagueness in some of my communication. Also, our Asterisk phone system sends voicemail to both of us via email so I disabled that feature for the week.

Monday
As soon as I dropped off everyone at the airport, I arrived at my office and began searching for a black 2008 GMC Yukon Denali XL. Originally, I was looking for a lightly used one, but I soon realized that I could buy one brand new for almost the same price.

The local Scottsdale dealership, CardinaleWay GMC, apparently didn’t need any additional business since they replied to my request for their “Special Internet Pricing” with MSRP and didn’t respond to any more inquires for their “Special Internet Pricing”.

I easily found another local dealership, Glendale GMC. They’re located in a not-so-good area of town; often a good sign that they may like to make a deal. Using their website, I found a Denali in inventory. It was Black with a “Cocoa/Light Cashmere” interior. I contacted them via email and arranged to go look at it on Tuesday.

Tuesday
I arrived at Glendale GMC in the early afternoon (text message to Jamey: “at the store”). While driving there, I made a mental note of what I thought the trade-in value was for Jamey’s current car. I’d reviewed all the completed auctions on ebaymotors in order to see how much they’d been selling for at retail. I’d also checked the average trade-in value from Kelly Blue Book. Armed with what I thought was a reasonable number, I was ready to hold fast. If they offered me less than my predetermined amount, the plan was to fix the little things which were broken and sell it myself. I was also keenly aware that this car was previously in an accident and these days, with CarFax, that fact would hurt its value.

After looking at the vehicle that I’d asked to see, I discovered that I hated the Cocoa/light Cashmere (read: brown/tan) interior and asked if they had any others in stock. I settled on another which had an Ebony (charcoal) interior. The only difference was that it didn’t have the power-deployed running boards of the other.

My salesman, Ryan Green, offered to sell it to me for the invoice price. When a dealer sells a car, they receive an additional amount from the manufacturer called the “holdback”. Since car dealers need to make money too, I decided not try to negotiate into their holdback. Amazingly, the dealership also offered me $3,000 more for my trade-in than the minimum I was willing to accept. It was more than I thought I could’ve sold it for outright. Sold! My buying experience with Ryan couldn’t have been a more pleasant experience. The dealership is owned by Brown & Brown; the same company with which we previously had a great experience. A photo of the car is below:

Wednesday
To begin making the car special and unique (along with what every woman likes, making it more Darth Vaderish), I removed the rear badges from the tailgate (text message to Jamey: “working in the garage”). My plan was to remove all the badges, but as the garage was starting to warm up as the morning wore on, I quit after removing only the tailgate badges. Later in the day, I went to Discount Tire to pick out some new wheels and tires and make an appointment for Friday (text message to Jamey: “at Discount Tire making an appointment to get new tires.” My car needed new tires so she assumed that they were for my car).

Thursday
I swung by Airpark Tint and made an appointment to have all the windows tinted darker on Saturday. Later in the evening I went over to John and Josh’s house for pizza (which was delicious), to play Rock Band, and watch some episodes of Top Gear.

Friday
I dropped off the car at Discount Tire (text message to Jamey: “dropping off the car at Discount Tire for new tires”), and after they gave me a hard time about the suspicious-looking printing on our checks, they agreed to take my money. The wheels I picked out are made by a company named Akuza and are shown below:

After the wheels and tires were mounted, I drove home to put the stock wheels in the garage. While maneuvering in our driveway I noticed a strange noise. Upon closer inspection, the new tires were rubbing on the inside of the wheel wells and running boards during sharp turns and were pulling out a plastic fastener. I returned to Discount Tire where they disavowed any knowledge of this ever previously happening on a Tahoe/Yukon/Escalade. They attempted to sell me some ugly Falken tires that were in-stock instead of the cool Nittos that I’d picked out. I declined the Falkens and had them order me the slightly narrower Nittos (295 mm vs. 305 mm).

Saturday
I took the car to Airpark Tint (John also dropped his car off for tinting) and John, Josh, and I hung out at the office and ate lunch at a nearby hot dog joint (text message to Jamey: “waiting with John until his windows are done being tinted”).

Sunday
After watching the Hungarian Grand Prix on TV in the morning, I drove the car over to my parent’s house since their garage is climate-controlled (text message to Jamey: “checking on my parent’s house”. My parents were also out of town and I was checking on their house, too). I removed the remaining badges and painted the stock red GMC logo (which really isn’t removable) black.

The first thing to do when removing badges is to “saw” the badge off using dental floss.

After sawing off the badges, you’re left with the foam adhesive.

The best and safest way to remove this is through lots of tedious scraping with your finger nails. After that, the rest can be removed with an adhesive remover (I like to use Goo Gone). You can use a heat gun, but unless you’re very experienced in its use, you stand the chance of wrecking the paint.

After removing the badges, I spent the next hour prepping the grille badge to be painted. I wet-sanded the red part of the badge with 320 grit sandpaper and taped off the badge. Then I used an X-Acto knife to accurately expose the letters. After covering the surrounding area with a tarp to guard against overspray, I began priming (text message to Jamey: “watching TV at my parents house”. I was waiting for the primer to dry).

Several coats of primer later, I wet-sanded the badge again and began applying the paint.

Since I don’t do this kind of thing very often, I was nervous about the possibility of having poorly prepped the front. I figured that in a worse-case-scenario I’d just have the badge on the grille replaced with a new one.

Also, I added a black license plate frame with a smoked lens that I’d bought earlier from Autozone.

Finally, Sunday night
The was probably the most suspicious to Jamey because she tried to call me on my way over to take these photos of the car. Luckily, my mom had asked me to pick up their mail so I had to do that, too. (Verbally said to Jamey: “My mom left a message saying that she’d forgotten to have their mail held and wanted me to pick-it-up.”)

The finished vehicle: