project Rentedmule

No doubt.  Not much material I can remove with the alternator on top, though.

I'm going to swap to the 2011+ style power steering pulley at the same time. I figure I should take every opportunity I can to shed weight to offset the turbo poundage.

Anyone know off hand which aluminum water pump I need? RPM sells a $250 Edelbrock but I was hoping for something a bit more affordable.

Did the rear ZQ8 bumpstops last night - thanks for the suggestion hi_im_sean

Did a bunch of rust repair, painting, cleaning, pulled another leaf, and removed class 3 hitch for 52 lbs weight savings, an inch drop, and much better ride quality and ground clearance:



Installed 2wd blazer spindles with KORE3 brackets, braided lines, and C5 brakes/13" rotors and carbotech auto-x compound pads:



Went through the proper bed-in procedure and tested them out after that... sweet baby Jesus they're strong!!! I can't believe how bad my old setup was and how bad the ones on my Firebird are now that I've tried these.

I attempted to modify a set of metric spindle savers to work with the blazer spindles but in the end the tie-rods wouldn't go through them enough to bolt them up. Here's the attempt anyway:



Taped on for fitment:


I also figured I may finally need a rear swaybar now with softer leafs so I buzzed the rust off of my old ZQ8 bar and sprayed it with whatever I had lying around:


I have a 3 day race coming up at the end of the month so this is prep work for that.

Definitely looks lower in the rear.  Are those spindle savers supposed to increase the steering arm stiffness or? Interesting concept and implementation.  Glad to see some more progress on your truck. I meant to grab some pictures of where the Isuzu is last night to share, but was caught up tearing apart the seats.

The spindle savers are supposed to protect the steering arm from bending/breaking. There's at least one picture of a wrecked blazer on S10F that rolled after a steering arm failure so I figured I'd give them a shot.

Nice progress! The brakes look good, I have the C5 setup as well. Have you thought about going to lighter wheels to save weight?

I'll probably stick to the f-body and vette wheels to save money - I'm cheap. The 17" C5 ZO6 wheels I had were only 19 lbs but I cracked one on a pot hole and they were expensive to replace. I have the 17" collector's edition T/A's in the pic, 17" SLP Firehawks for my race tires, and 17" C6 vette wheels on my firebird that I could swap on if need be. I don't think my 16" firebird wheels will fit with the brakes now.

Man I love this build. Your goals and attention to detail are just perfect. Can't wait to see the turbo build in action.
East coast right? I remember you said at one time, nova scotia? 
ps: clean fucking barn eh? nice work man, my dads shop is 160 years newer than it and he keeps it like a pig sty.

Thanks! Originally from NS, bought the truck when I lived in Newfoundland, spent 4 years in Alberta, and now back in New Brunswick.

I ditched the rear bumper and installed a rollpan hitch and rollpan - total weight savings about 22 lbs. Still waiting for license plate lights and flip down bracket.



Also swapped in a non-AC heater box. Thanks for the advice Harley. I ended up doing it without pulling the outer fender but I did need to drop the inner. The only snag was that one of the studs was stripped (the very back one, of course) so I had to use a flush cut saw to cut the box to get it out. I also needed to fold down the lip of the fender to get the new box in - it just doesn't quite fit otherwise!

Old pic of the before


New box in, obviously still have some reassembly to do


It saved roughly 10 lbs over the AC box.

Those studs can be a pain. They're just screwed into the plastic of the inner blower box, so they loosen up easily. That's why they put that 4mm head on the end of the stud, but that's often not enough leverage. I've never had to cut one off, but they've always been an extra challenge.

32lbs is good work and the blower box is in the right place!

Thanks! I should have put a wrench on the stud before I started at it, I did a lot of turning before I realized it was stripped.

Do you guys think it's worth it to try to cut some weight from the front bumper support? I took off the ends and braces last year, the main section of the support weighs about 17 lbs. Ideally it would be great to get something like the tubular supports they make for F-bodies that eliminate the heavy frame horns.

if you drive it on the street, i wouldn't recommend it.
on my rx7 i removed the entire front and rear impact structures to save weight.
every time i drove it on the street i was always a little scared of what would happen in a crash.
I'm glad I left the door bars in the doors otherwise the guy that bought it from me may have died when he wrapped it around a pole.

Ok, I think I was leaning toward that as well. The potential weight savings didn't seem significant enough to warrant the time/risk.

I didn't realize the RX7 got trashed after you sold it - sad!

Ditched overflow tank and started on mounting PCM and MSD. Also swapped to factory AC bypass pulley. You need an 83.5" belt with that setup and underdrive pulleys in case anyone is wondering.

Wow that non-ac box does free up a bit of room. Looks good. I've also seen people trim the top part of the AC bracket, which might save a pound or two (literally).

I have an extra AC bracket that I started to trim - it was a labor intensive process so I haven't finished it yet!

Running no overflow?

No, sorry, just going to replace the bulky stock tank with a 3x10" stainless overflow.