Chassis Build Up & Design

good to see the heater hoses fit with the truck intake. I wasn't sure how well that was going to work out.

awesome progress!

They fit pretty well. Almost as if the intake were designed for them to be right next to it. If I were up for making my own brackets and could find a long 5/8 hose with a right angle on the end I'd run them straight along the fuel rail and down around in front of the head. Something I'll keep in mind to clean up the engine bay in the future, but this will work better than great for now.

Took Al's advice and threw a roughing mill in the bridgeport tonight. Wow did that make a difference. Pretty much finished the bracket shape in the time it took me to do the one edge yesterday. I may actually have these done before the weekend.



They're shaping up already. Took the grinder to the inner blend to smooth that out.



Also hooked up the vacuum line as I bought the hose for it on the way out to the shop. 3ft was exactly the right length to come over from the one-way valve at the body harness.





There's an unused vacuum port on the truck intake on the passenger side.





Break off the tab and it's good to go. I used a 1/4" right angle boot and 7/32 vacuum hose with a 1/4 to 1/4 straight fitting in between.

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i was looking at your heater hoses and realized i may have a better solution back from my rx7 days...
http://www.norotors.com/index.php?topic=12149.0
not quite sure on the length of the hoses, but the 90 angle really cleans up the WP side.

I didn't measure the barbs at the firewall so i dont know which p/n is most appropriate, but in case you guys cant see the pictures on the rx7 forum,

Posed the question a couple of weeks back and it didn't seem like anyone has gone through the trouble to find molded heater hoses that fit the LS1 in a FD chassis better than a straight hose that bends way up on the fender liner. Well, after several trips to my local auto stores I have the solution.



Gates 18078
Gates 28471

and for our Canadian brothers here is a set of alternative part numbers found by quinns in reply #47:

Dayco 87611
Dayco 80405

I haven't verified the above part numbers, but I expect quinns has tried them.

The picture above doesn't actually show both of the correct hoses. I later found that 18078 was a better fit since it is a 5/8" hose that scales up to 3/4" right at the water pump nozzle. Gates 28471 is 5/8" all the way though. I've found that 5/8" is a good tight fit on the heater core barbs (may require boiling the hoses + windex) and my LS1 water pump uses a 3/4" and a 5/8" barb, thus the need for one hose to transition to 3/4"

They aren't truly "drop in" like my title says as they will require a little shortening, but it's pretty dang close and when you're finished, the routing will look factory.

Lane

Here are the real hoses side by side:



And wrapped in DEI fire sleeve:



Aaaaannnd installed (Although it's hard to see with all the most excellent A/C equipment in the way  :yay:)



Lane

also of course i forgot to take pictures, but your engine appears to clear the heater hose firewall ports better than mine :/

Al had actually mentioned trying to pick up some right angle hoses like that and run them up along the fuel rail. Would definitely clean things up and I will certainly remember those part numbers are here for me to grab in the future. Although that 3/4 to 5/8 transition hose won't work on the S Trucks as they have a 3/4" on the heater core. What I have already will work well enough for now as I'm just trying to get it on the road in the next 24-36 hours even if everything isn't exactly how I'd like it.

Speaking of, lots has happened in the last however many weeks I haven't updated. I have tons of pictures of different things and I might try to post somethings up this evening as I munch on the pizza I just ordered. Haven't made time to do much other than work on the Blazer, travel, and run Tough Mudders this past month.

So back to the rear brake brackets. Spent some time on the sander rounding off the sharp corners and applied some machinist blue.



Took my template and traced out the lines I wanted to cut before going to town with the roughing mill again.  I took several before and after pictures with the two brackets.









And here's the second bracket in progress.

With the holes drilled none of the lines need to be perfect, so I eyeballed my cuts by sweeping the bit along the scribe until I felt like it was close enough.









Learned along the way it was easier to drill a hole ahead of time to drop the end mill in for the slots. Especially in steel.







I also tried to accomplish all of the cuts in the same direction without moving the work piece.  The second bracket went much quicker as I learned from the first run through.



Flipped over the brackets and more bluing.





This side was almost all excess material, so I hogged away where I didn't need structure.



Again trying to cut all the parallel lines at once.



And they turned out mighty fine and pretty much spot on to my original design.









Another round of powdercoat and they're ready to bolt on. Probably my best application so far. I got a thick even coat on these.

Got the axle back and Al needed the hoist a few weekends back, so a friend of mine stopped by and helped me get that back in as well as swap in the 2" drop spindles I finally decided to order. I wasn't happy with the stance and the wheel was definitely contacting the upper control arm when steering at full droop.

New stance is much much better. I'm currently sitting on 3" blocks and factory shackles. Back end could drop a bit more with the sliders when I get them on, but I may mill the blocks to keep this height.



With that I had to figure out if I could use the heim joints for the tie rods. I really didn't want to modify the spindles to use a through bolt as that would leave me stranded without the availability of part store bought replacements if I had a tie rod failure. I finally had an epiphany when I realized I could combine the tapered stud and bolt through concepts I had read about from S10forum and clear both at the center link and the spindle.

I started by grinding down the hex shoulder that was on the Speedway bumpsteer kit. I then centered it up on the mill with the boring head and cut it down flush with the OD.  Add this to the list of projects that would have loved a lathe.



After test fitting at both the spindle and center link I cut all 4 studs down to 3.35"



Added cotter pin holes for the castle nuts. The center link taper pulls the stud in further. Hence the different locations.





And bolted it all together.  Definitely a moment of victory on this project as this problem had been haunting my mind for weeks.





I am currently in the middle of sizing the tie rod sleeves, so I have no pictures of the final install yet. Sean had suggested a 15" and a 14", but for my truck is looking more like 13/14".

I stopped by the junkyard for a few things recently and found a couple 2 door Blazers with interiors that weren't completely trashed. Much of the rear trim in my Blazer had been broken/tossed along the way and the rear carpet was in sad shape, so this was a nice find even if it distracted me from the rest of it for a short time.

Got it home, cleaned up, and decided to get it all installed before the barn animals made use of it themselves. I really wanted to get the roof rust repaired before I put in the headliner, but not in the cards at the moment.





Al had also been working on a bluetooth arduino solution to plug into the back of the factory radio and use the remote tape deck interface. He loaded me up with all the components and I spent an evening soldering and building the sub harness.  It only needed 12V from the main harness, so we tapped into the amp turn on lead in the main radio connector and I added an in line connector, so it can be separated from the dash. Ended up being completely plug and play otherwise. Found a small spot behind and to the right of the glovebox to install the module.

With the axle installed and the brackets powdercoated I installed the rear calipers.









I don't think I mentioned it before, but the Moser axles ended up being the more affordable option. The S10 8.5 isn't very common to begin with and apparently I have the shorter version of axles of even those. Total cost for TrueTrac, Moser Axles, New Bearings/Seals, and installation was $1165, but considering labor was only $240 and I couldn't beat the price on any of the other parts it was money well spent. And now I have the 3.73s and locking diff I've been wanting for a while.

Al stopped by to help me bleed the brakes, but it didn't go very well. The rear calipers were bleeding fine, but the fronts were only letting out a trickle and the pedal wasn't firm until the bottom of the stroke. After digging through part drawings and google searches I confirmed our suspicion that I hooked up the lines to the master backward. I had dug into it before, but not sure how I came up with the opposite decision in the first place. It didn't end up being as big a mess as I feared and as of today the brakes are bled with a very firm pedal.

The before routing.



I was able to use the original lines as a template to get the rough shape and work from there.





On the other side of the engine bay I got my coil air intake tube cut down. Used a K&N kit from a 2003 Silverado (KNN-08740 for just the tube) and cylinder filter from a 1998 Vortec Silverado with a 45° coupler. The filter might be a bit excessive, but I wanted something with plenty of surface area.



Chop about 4" off the end and it all fits snug to the fender.







You can also see that I've got the passenger inner fender installed and a replacement coolant reservoir on top. I grabbed this from a 98 era Malibu/Alero/Grand Am and it is a pressurized tank to work with the capless radiator I am using. The inner fender is a 36" diameter x 10" wide aluminum trailer fender. It bolts into the factory location with some tweaking and trimming. I tried dimpling a recess with a pair of sockets for the bolt I'm using to support the coolant tank. I ended up tearing the aluminum before I got it deep enough and realized on the way over to have Ryo weld up the tear that my dimple dies would have been the tool to use... next time ha!

Lastly I got my forward lamp harness wired up. The fuse block from a Lumina has lots of flexibility for bussing, relays, and fuses, so I went that route to run larger gauge wires to my headlights. In the process I moved the DRL to the turn signal bulbs using some switchback LEDs and integrated the e fan too.





The unloomed mess.



Got it all tamed.



Bled the clutch today while I was doing the brakes and gave the truck a quick alignment before measuring up the tie rods. If it's not moving under it's own power real soon it's going to be from something unexpected.

Looking great - the attention to detail is awesome.

that's a nice update!
Al needs to market that bluetooth thingy. I want one!!

watch out for powdercoat on brake brackets. I would highly recommend taking it off again before long-term driving and grinding off the coating anywhere that gets sandwiched.
Several of my chumpcar friends have seen issues where even with a well torqued setup, the brake heat softens up the powdercoat and causes the bolt to lose tension (torque) which causes the caliper to basically fall off. typically contained within the wheel but the worst failure has caused full lockup of that corner which isn't fun on a track, could be catastrophic on public roads with no run off.

You also spent way too much time/effort on those brake brackets but they look good!

oh and that rear carpet makes your rear area look so much better than bare floor!

Great pictures. Great update. Funny to the spectator that you're even customizing the already custom parts like the taper studs.

Al needs to market that bluetooth thingy. I want one!!

I've got extra of everything in the box except the bluetooth board. I'll order up a few more of those from china, should be in before Santa. I'd like to think that a v2.0 could be entirely contained inside the radio.

Harley- take a picture of the wiring notes sheet that went with that if you didnt already. Save me from using my brain again to remember where the wires went to.

i have the s

Funny to the spectator that you're even customizing the already custom parts like the taper studs.

I've got extra of everything in the box except the bluetooth board. I'll order up a few more of those from china, should be in before Santa. I'd like to think that a v2.0 could be entirely contained inside the radio.

Harley- take a picture of the wiring notes sheet that went with that if you didnt already. Save me from using my brain again to remember where the wires went to.

typical Harley needing to touch everything!

awesome!
FYI my radio is different from the one pictured, if it makes a difference. Mine has both the CD and cassette deck in the unit directly. not sure if that changes anything

i think it's this one

That does make a difference. I'd like to do an adapter for that style, which is also in my trailblazer, but havent yet.

I was going back and forth on removing the clamping surface powdercoat, so now firmly on the remove side of the fence.

I'm not sure how much time I could save in making the brackets. All of the weight reduction slots were just a matter of moving the table over and diving in again once I already had the part clamped down for the main cuts, so not much extra there. A CNC plasma would make short work of the outside shape, but still need to add in the clearances and offsets on the mill.  Although if I were to go back in time I'd join that makerspace I found in Ferndale and make use of their CNC mill.

If the custom part doesn't fit well.... gotta make it. I did the same thing with the LCAs too. haha

I was a brake booster, electric fan, and a misfire issue away from driving the Blazer out to the West Coast a couple weeks back. Just returned to Michigan yesterday and picked up the parts to sort through the last of it. Unfortunately I have to pull the front clip and the dash to do that. Don't forget to test your junkyard parts kids. I'm definitely kicking myself.

While I was bleeding the clutch a few weeks back something went pop and pretty much all the fluid came out. I was able to get it to bleed and work, but it never really stopped dripping, so I had to assume the worst. Ordered up a new clutch kit and an aluminum flywheel thinking there was something wrong with the used parts I picked up way too many years ago. New slave was ordered too as well as a remote bleeder line because something was leaking and the stock bleeder was much harder to deal with on the T56 than the NV1500 I last bled on the Isuzu. Once I had the transmission out it became obvious what I had screwed up. The bolts I nabbed from my pile of misc transmission parts were too long for bolting on the slave and it must have tweaked or turned somehow without the appropriate clamping. I slapped it back together with the new parts and got everything to bleed without a splash or dripping this time.

With the engine running and a full cooling system I noticed a significant leak coming from the water pump. That ended up being the seal to the rear cover, so I pulled that off, trashed the trashed o ring, and sealed it back up with RTV after a thorough cleaning of all the oxidation that had built up over time.

Shortened up the aluminum tie rods I picked up from speedway. From my memory the passenger side was 13.5" and the driver ended up being 14". Definitely shorter than the recommendation of 14/15, but ended up being easy enough to do on the mill. Did another quick alignment and the truck seemed to track fairly straight with the wheel off only 10-20°.







Made a template out of cardboard for the Cold Air Box.





I picked up some aluminum with similar specs to the trailer fenders I turned into inners - 0.8 5025 Marine Grade Aluminum.  After many measurements and some fun cuts I realized my usual technique of clamping into the vice and bending by hand wasn't going to easily work on something so large, so I spent an hour or so in between some painting and sealing projects to fabricate a simple sheet metal brake.

This piece was pushing the limits of the setup, but it pulled through.







I ended up having to get creative with the vice for the second bend on this one anyway, but again turned out as planned without excessive effort.





This panel fills in the gap at the bottom between the inner fender and the core support. Per usual I pull out my dimple dies as often as possible.



I made a couple stud brackets to easily bolt the fuse block and coolant bottle mount to the fenders. They received the usual powdercoat treatment.



Bolted on the coolant bracket after bending it up in the brake and using the press to create a depression for the hook feature on the bottle.





The engine bay now looks like this:



I've got one more panel to close out the top of the airbox and mirror the dimpled piece for the other side too, but this was plenty good enough for a test drive. Fit and trimmed the driver side inner at some point that last week before I left.



With all that done I bolted on the rest of the front end and bent up a quick bracket for the license plate to take the truck for a test drive. The brakes were very hard to actuate due to the booster, but I wanted to get it down to the gas station and fill up the tank, so I went for it anyway. It did seem to pull pretty well, but the engine was definitely breaking up most of the time due to the misfire. The clutch operates well even with the light flywheel and the transmission shifted smoothly. When it was firing right it was definitely fun, but with all the issues I never got to really push it in any direction on the 10 mile jaunt.













I think I solved the misfire before I flew off to the West Coast. Haven't had it out on the road again and I think I'll get the brakes and fan working before I do.

Most of the misfires were happening on cylinder 6 according to the misfire counts in the PCM. I could get that to show up at idle and low load driving around the yard and after "fixing" a few things it is now gone. It was either a small vacuum leak at the port I opened up for Blazer's vacuum system, a poorly repaired ground done by me a few days earlier after I sliced it putting the transmission back in, or a little gouge I found on the head on the cylinder 6 sealing surface. I offset the intake as much as I could to avoid the gouge and now I'm seeing 0 misfires in the count.



The next test drive will be telling, but I'm hoping successful. Now to go clean up the barn a bit and start tearing things apart again.

Nice! It runs! The stance looks great too. How is clearance and turning radius with the monster front tires?

aw, i was hoping you made it in the blazer but i guess timing was a bit crunched.

Front stance looks great! I think the rear needs a little more poke.

How's it feel to drive something that hasn't been on the road in what, 25 years?

Front definitely settled a bit more after driving. I don't think I could have planned it better and I love it. I think if the rear was an inch or so lower the poke would be just right, but that will require modifying the spring mounts and frame. Will have to see how the rest of it goes and what time I have after it's road worthy.

With the brake booster and e fan out of commission I couldn't comfortably and safely drive it more than I did already, let alone across the country. Add in the 2 days I spent chasing down the misfire and the timeline went right out the window. Almost took out a deer on my first test drive as it was haha definitely not enough pedal ratio without the booster in the equation.

Clearance and turning is better than I expected. Seems like it is a bit reduced, but I haven't done any parking lot maneuvers and have been playing it safe driving around the driveway and yard. Definitely appreciate having the adjustable stops as I've already turned them in a bit. I'm honestly impressed with how much angle I've kept. From the quicky turn tables I made up for the alignment I'd say it has somewhere between 25-30° of angle, which is where my rough modeling and calculations said I'd be. The limiting factor at this point  is the sway bar, but the frame and brake line at the rear are a close second.

Bump for update?

Harleys been working like a madman on this beast.

"like" a madman? have you seen his beard recently?

The beard and I are sitting at the alignment shop currently. Been driving it around quite a bit the last couple weeks sorting out a misfire, but I think I've got it worked out now. I've got a few pictures to upload and I'll drop an update sometime in the next few days.

Washed it over at Al's house yesterday for the first time in 6 years or something.