Project: Modify everything, even the aftermarket parts to fit...

First and foremost WELCOME!

I'm thrilled to finally have a project thread going, and I'll likely have a second coming along shortly for the cutlass.

This is my second S10 every owned, I had the previous for about 30 hours, it was a 2001 Extended cab, stepside, black 4.3 Auto and I loved it for all 30 hours.

This one is a 1988 S10 Blazer 2DR 2WD 4.3 Auto. Initial Purchase price was $1000 which included a fresh alternator, AC compressor and battery, aftermarket stock sized wheels in chrome and a generally solid truck. There is no rust and the interior is quite good for a 22 year old truck.

However, the truck had bald tires, shot shocks and this funny kill switch under the dash that wouldn't stay in one position. After owning it for a week I've found an oil drip that is driving me insane because I can't find it, must be the back of the valve covers, and the valve seals leak so it blows blue smoke at startup.

So far the only parts installed have been new tires at discount, the cheapest I could fund Kuhmo KR21's, new front shocks with cheapy $17 monroes and new moog HD endlinks. I bought frame side swaybar bushings as well, only to find out this blazer only has a 1 1/8 front swaybar, not the 33mm swaybar, so those are going back tomorrow to exchange for the properly sized ones, and I have new rear shocks and a new O2 sensor waiting to go in.

The new shocks are actually quite nice, especially for $17. Then again, it doesn take much to be better than completely shot bilsteins. I'm rather bummed about the swaybar, but it is what it is, I'll just have to get around to it sooner than I liked.

Plans for the truck:

The truck is going to be built in stages. Stage 1 is the current stage, and it's the reliability stage. I'm replacing every bushing on the truck, doing all the fluids, coolant flush, full brake flush, I've all ready flushed the fuel system with excellent results, the lines were cleaner than I was expecting, very little came out. The steering components were very evidently replaced withing the last year with moog problem solvers, so they're going to stay just the way they are for now, with new fresh grease. I'm still debating the control arm bushings and upper cross shaft.

Stage 2 is going to be the first round of weight savings. The rear bench, the rear pannels, armrests, all the carpet, it's all got to go. Pannels will be replaced with aluminum sheet then everything will be bedlinered. Relatively thin coat on the sides, decent coat on the floor and that's it. Spare tire is currently just bouncing around in the back, I'll sort out some kind of flat floor mount for it that can be cleanly removed, or moved for normal vertical installation. Hopefully I'll be able to do the glass replacement at the same time. Windshield is staying stock for now, the door windows, rear windows and rear hatch will all be swapped out for plexiglass. I'll weigh everything going on and coming off the truck, don't worry. Battery will be relocated rearward, and whatever else i can manage to get a GREAT deal on that will save weight, I'll do.

Stage 3 is going to be suspension. Stock LCAs, adjustable UCAs, QA1 single adjustable shocks on all four corners, 5.5x11" springs 750 or 800lbs, splined swaybars front and rear. 1.25" drilled front with 8" arms, 1.125" drilled rear with 9-11" arms, Chrysler style reinforced front leaf springs with sliders and 2" drop blocks in the rear, 2" drop 98+ blazer spindles with blazer 2piston brakes in the front and stock blazer disk brakes in the rear. I'm hoping to dive into this phase this fall, for two reasons, I want to have all the parts ready to go before I dig into it which means saving up and buying everything and secondly, my girlfriend needs a new car, she's driving my 73 cutlass right now and that's a money pit I can't afford. Swaybar location has yet to be decided, but I have time. I would also like to do wheels and tires as part of this phase, but we'll see, they may be their own phase.

Stage 4, to begin slowly right after stage 3 is going to be engine. I'm comitted to an aluminum block and heads, I'd like to go LS w/ propane. Time will tell on the actual size of the engine. I'd love to do a destroked LS2. I'm going to be pulling together the parts and building it myself, mainly just to allow me to get exactly what I want without an exterme budget.

Stage 5 will be custom chassis. This is where it gets fun and starts going wild. Frame is still under design(revision 5.1B currently) but will be a full frame, 3-link with watts rear, likely c5/6 front suspension, ~3" body drop, tubbed rear for up to 315 tires, front will be designed to fit up to 295s, 60" track front, 58-59" rear. Will likely be desinged to use stock, sumped, blazer tank since I have one.

Stage 6 will be meeting the body and new frame, including major body mods. I'm going to cut out the roof of the truck and replace it with sheet aluminum, the floor behind the front seats will be raised and aluminum, a custom aluminum tube core support will be built to mount fiberglass front fenders and hood on, the rear fenders will be flared 1" per side, design still pending. It's likely at this time I'll also do the cage, initial plans are for a 8-point cage designed for driver and passenger, with as broad an application as I can manage. Hopefully fiberglass doors will be available by then, if not, I'll gut the stockers and save what weight I can.

Project Deadline: Death? Maybe slightly there after?

Small update, the truck tried to kill me tonight. Driving down the highway at 70 I got a sudden and hard shake in the front end. BOTH front wheels were loose. I weigh 215lbs so I generally don't bother checking torque on lug nuts, I just crank them down tight and I've never had a problem, well apparently that's not going to fly with this truck.

One thing to note, even when the wheels are locked down as tight as I physically can, short of jumping on it, the center cap is still jiggly and a bit loose.

I had that happen to me too. Turned out I didn't fully seat all the longer ARP wheel studs when I initially installed them. 
FYI: The center caps on my old aftermarket American Racing wheels would spin around w/ the wheels fully torqued down. Lil bit of foam/rubber gasket sandwiched between the cap & mounting flange cleared it right up.
I'd make sure (if your using beveled lugnuts) that the holes aren't too big for the nutz. Sometimes the beveled part sinks too deep into the hole and hits the mounting flange before fully securing the wheel. Elongated holes can also cause this.

wheres the damn pictures!!!!!

JK. glad to see you have a plan. im glad to see someone going truly radical with a blazer. good luck, and maybe ill eran some new stuff from you.

and remember, learn from others mistakes. its cheaper.

I haven't had a change to get it up on jacks to see what's going on with the wheels, but I've been checking lugs every time I walk out to the truck and had 1 loose lug earlier today, but nothing since.

I can get pics up over the next couple of days, of the truck and the new house, we should be putting the finishing touches on the house this week and starting to move in this weekend! FINALLY.

Also, the engine siezed on my old ladies car, a 98 escort, so she was running in the 73 cutlass for a few days, but it's developed a fuel leak, so it's getting parked and we bought her a 09 Cobalt last night, certified used, was a rental in hawaii, 44K miles, some scratches on the trunklid, $11K out the door, including tax, title license, doc fee, the cert, everything. GMAC really screwed us on the interest rate, but we can only do so much, she has to be able to get to work reliably.

Insurance for that thing is going to eat into our budget, but hopefully I'll be getting a job at the same place as her soon, which will mean the Blazer can be down for work for as long as I want, and we should be able to carpool to work.

Not a real update, but I've decided on seats for my blazer, at least until I can afford some really really nice race seats. I'm gonna get a pair of buckets out of a Cobalt just like my old ladies. I'll get some pics up, but the bolstering is amazing for such a cheap car and inexpensive seats. Junkyards are asking about $100-125 a seat for them, and they're comfy as hell.

Not a real update, but I've decided on seats for my blazer, at least until I can afford some really really nice race seats. I'm gonna get a pair of buckets out of a Cobalt just like my old ladies. I'll get some pics up, but the bolstering is amazing for such a cheap car and inexpensive seats. Junkyards are asking about $100-125 a seat for them, and they're comfy as hell.

hmm...might have to keep an eye out for some for my truck.

Well, we're FINALLY getting to move into my new house. Unfortunately it's in a big rush now because my parents house, which is where we were living, got officially foreclosed on and auctioned off, the new owner has given us till the 9th to get everything out. We've got about half of our stuff moved in the last three days and have a lot of the hardest stuff left to go, including the entire machine shop and tools. It should be less than a month now till I have a shop set up and can start working on solid delrin bushings for the front suspeion. Total cost for my leaf sprung truck looks like it's going to be about $100 in materials, and that will bush the entire suspension, including swaybars. Well, that plus a long weekend of working on the lath, shaper and drill press.

I'm going to start saving and pulling the final list together of suspension componenets, and start asking for birthday and christmas presents, lol.

Congrats on finally moving. I know you've been going thru this for for a looonnnggg time. Sorry to hear about the folks' home.

Looking forward to watching your build. I know you've put alot of thought into it & have lotsa good, useful knowledge to share. Hopefully you'll be able to take the time to document as much as can in this project thread with lotsa pics & tech  . I wish I did a better job of documenting my adventures when I was updating in my project thread. It's fun to look back and say "wow, that's how it used to look".. or "I sure changed my mind a lot!" or in my case "WTF was I thinking?" haha

Good luck w/ everything.

Thanks, the move itself has been hell, as literally as nature can muster. Today was 112, in the shade, and up to about 50% humidity. The heat is kicking my ass, and we had to stop for more than an hour today to turn in one uhaul, and go pick up the same size truck from another uhaul.

Everything but the Cutlass and Vette have been moved! We're going to pick those up today after I get off work.

Final Bill of parts is pretty set. It's been tightly designed so that I can upgrade in stages. Final suspension before going away from stock style parts on the custom chassis will be:

5.5x11" 700Lb/in springs front(possibly a .5" poly spacer till I get the all alu. engine in)
Afco Reinforced front segment Chrysler leafs 166Lb/in
1.5-2" Drop blocks
Double Adjustable front shocks(Penske if I can, QA1 if I can't)
Single Adjustable rear shocks
98+ Blazer 2" drop spindles
Tall Upper and Lower Balljoints from PP
4WD 8.5" Rear end w/ blazer disk brakes and posi
1.25" .188 wall Splined front bar with 8-9" arms
1" .250 wall splined rear bar with 9-11" arms mounted to the frame

I'm going with softer springs and stiffer bars than initially planned because this is going to have to be my DD for a while.

I'm still debating engine plans. I would like to get the 327LSx in as soon as possible, but I know that my budget says that is going to have to wait, hopefully not so long that I have to do any major work to my 4.3 in the mean time. If I do get stuck doing a re-build of the 4.3, it's going to be 11:1 compression with vortec heads running propane with a cam regrind to 272/276 .500/.500 110LSA. The only goal will be 300ft/lbs and power to 5500.

Specs on the LSx will be:
LS2 block
4.8L truck Crank
GMPP L76/L92 heads(unless a good deal comes around)
Edelbrock 230/237 @ .050 110LSA .540/.540 lift cam

Rather annoying set-back, I have absolutely no room in my garage. My parents couches are too big to fit into the house, so they have to sit in the garage for the time being. Getting the garage organized has become a secondary priority to getting the house organized, mostly because my parents have so much shit that the house was completley clogged with boxes. Garage organization should start this weekend, hopefully meaning I'll have room to work in it within the next two weeks, around which time I should be able to order a block of delrin to start machining my bushings out of. Pics are still pending because I just haven't felt like it, lol.

Well I went and picked up a coke machine for my dad in the blazer yesterday. 1964 all steel original glass bottle machine, weighed about 400lbs, and the rear end of the truck only dropped 3/4" with it in. With the ride height as high as it is, I'm wondering if the truck got Z85 leafs at some point.

On a better note, I found a local yard, actually out here in podunk where I live, that has a ton of S10 parts, so I'm going to see about getting a rear swaybar and a zq8 front bar soon. I got the proper sized bushings for the 1 1/8" front bar I have now because it just rolls way too much around corners, I want it to be less hazardous till I get the Zq8 front bar, and the rear bar is a bigger priority at the moment.

On another note, I 've made some tentative plans for batter relocation and to fill in where the rear seat is coming out until I move to a 3-link in the distant future. I'm going to build a box that mounts in place of the folded down seat and is flush with the floor that will house my relocated battery(hopefully) and some storage. I'm still working on a design that will hold up to cargo and be as light as possible. It'll just get bed coated like the rest of the rear and hopefully blend quite well. I'm thinking I'm going to need an optima so I can lay it on it's side to fit in the height I'll have, we'll see.

Chassis side swaybar bushings made a HUGE difference in stability and roll! I all ready did end links, but had to wait for checker to get the right size bushings in stock for the 1 1/8" bar, and wow, did it help. Probably a biggere difference than functional shocks in the front.

On a side note, I have stock replacement bushings in now, but kept the bushings and brackets for the 1.25" bar that's to come, and the moog replacement brackets provide for a smaller bushing, and are made of thicker material than the stock ones, both of which should add up to better support for the bar and better roll resistance, so when you repalce your bushings, get the bushing and bracket combo next time, it's only a couple of bucks and their zinc plated.

I found my vacuum leak! WOOT. I would never have found it if I didn't decide to flush the cooling system after finding a bunch of sludge in the overflow tank. It turned out my radiator and engine were very clean, the green coolant in it had discolored slightly, but got almost no particulates in the drainpan. But, when I pulled the intake hat off and got the upper radiator hose out of the way, there was an open vacuum port on the front of the throttle body, just sitting wide open. Capped that off, cleaned more useless crap out of the engine bay, changed the oil and coolant, switched out the crappy fail-safe thermostat for a regular 180* stat and it idles cleaner, cruises smoother, has quicker throttle response and REALLY picked up power in the mid and top end. The entire cruise control system and bracket are gone, because they didn't work, the washer bottle, pump and line are gone, becasue they didn't work and I tried to adjust my headlights. The passenger headlight adjusted fine, and looks a ton better, the drivers side will not come up, so I'm gonna have to get the trim ring off and see what's going on.

I also dug into my front end to try and find what's causing the vibration, bushings are worn, but not excessively, 3 of the balljoints are near perfect, one is nearly shot, lol, and my tie rods are in pretty good shape, very little excess play in the idler arm. However my steering box is bad. I have a solid 45+ degrees of dead steering. I got the rag joint cover off in a few pieces and it's in as good of shape as one can be, so I got under it and held the pitman while someone cranked the steering wheel back and forth, and got nothing at all. So I got on the box to adjust it and turned it a whole turn in 1/4 turn increments and it made no difference at all. So a new steering box is first up on the list. I'm hoping to find a monte SS box, but if I can't I'm going to look at AGR and Lee boxes. I'm leaning towards the Lee because I know I can send it back and get it re-tuned when I get my 275 or 285 tires on the front.

Steering problems suck, glad you got it figured out!  I went through 2 steering boxes before this one, both developed massive leaks and then massive play. 

I hate driving trucks with big dead zones in the steering.

I also hate dealing with vacuum leaks and fail-safe thermostats. lol 

I hate dealing with ignition problems, which is my next guess in the dieing truck saga. It died again last night on my way to work. Ran fine the wole length of the freeway with not a hint of problems, got off the freeway, and it died at the light. Got it fired back up, no problem, starting sputtering and chugging so I gave it some gas to keep it running, throttled it around the corner and when I got off the throttle in the parking lot at work, it tried to die and chugged hard, but I made it into a parking spot. Here's to hoping it fires up and gets me home in the morning. It ran great for that one day I drove it after all that work though!