Chassis Build Up & Design

The rear is one of my favorite views too!

Not sure what you're asking about the heater hoses exactly. They clear fine at the heater core and run along the intake on the passenger side, but under the fuel rail. I made a new bracket for the stock hose mount to help hold them in place. Let me know if that doesn't answer your question.

I have seen a few people say that the have issues with the hoses hitting the back of the truck intake....maybe thats in the S10 & the Blazer doesnt have that issue.

Good to know.

I guess I can't talk for the standard swap mounts. I made my own to lower the engine an extra inch or so with the extra crossmember clearance the Blazer has over the S10. I basically lowered the engine until the GM hot rod pan was just above the bottom of the frame and made my transmission crossmember to a 5* engine angle.

I hadn't heard of that problem for the standard truck intakes, though, but had heard some people mention it for the trailblazer SS manifold.

When I did my swap in the S10 I used CPW mounts & the GM performance pan it just barely hung below the crossmember like 1 inch & I used the LS1 intake & the heater hose hookups were just above the intake but I could see the truck intake being a problem.

Whats the dif between the truck intake & the SS Trailblazer ??

I don't know what the differences are. I get the impression it performs better than the truck intake, but that's all reading between the lines.

If you didn't know already the Blazer frames have extra height built in, so the GM performance pan is above the bottom of the frame by an inch or so with the CPW mounts. I made new upper mounts to lower it down on my truck.

I see you are heading to Fla......Wish I could get some time off & hang with you.. I am over on the West coast ..Tampa area.

Have a safe trip & enjoy the weather !!

I'll be driving by Tampa at some point on Wednesday.

I'm excited for the new project, but the Blazer should continue to get some love if only to get some of the small issues taken care of, so I can enjoy it more with the warmer weather up here in the North haha

Put another 1000 miles on the Blazer this last weekend. As in I drove about as far as I could within the state of Michigan without leaving the state lines for a hill climb, but not the kind that uses horsepower.







Grabbed a couple pictures of the Blazer in the scenery on the way back.



You can see some of the ice still in the Lake Superior off in the distance.



And crossed the Mackinac Bridge a couple times too.



Weather has been nice, so it's actually been getting driven around town lately too.





Heater core sprung a minor leak about an hour before I got home, so that will be getting replaced once Amazon makes the delivery. Hopefully this one will last longer than 12k miles. 

Also picked up a clutch master option Al and I came across. So far it is looking very promising for curing the clutch disengagement the S trucks seem to have. I'll get some pictures and details up in their own thread in a day or two.

I also need to get ontop of finding a steering box solution. It's more than a bit nerve wracking how much slop the box has. It's mostly fine when I'm pushing the handling, but it's hard to keep it from driving all over the road while trying to go straight down the highway. I do have a couple somewhat local contacts that do steering box rebuilds, but I'll have to see what I find cracking open one of the spares I have around too.

awesome! did you win the hillclimb?

looking forwards to hearing about the clutch MC

awesome! did you win the hillclimb?

I did not haha Definitely had no idea what I was getting into. It was a blast though! I'm sure I can do better than the 44th place I did this time around, but not sure I could win one anytime soon. Winner was under 5 minutes. I came in at 7:40.

Holy shit i just saw the results
a 3:30 gap between the leading mens vs womens? why is there such a big difference?

Women's Winners:
First Place: Anna Mooi, 25, Ironwood, (7:15.3)

Men's Winners:
First place: Ian Torchia, 22, of Marquette (4:47.5)

Good work, you didn't blow an achilles tendon so you did good!

Hahaha yeah still have my achiles intact and nothing else broke either. Calves are super tight. I could hardly get a massage they're so tender/sore.

I think the huge discrepancy has more to do with training/background than gender. On the men's side I talked with a bunch of Mountain Runners, Stair Runners, and even some ski jumpers who run the hills for training. On the women's side it was mostly ultra distance runners, which makes for a strong runner, but like me probably did not have much if any experience running up something like this.

Put another 1500 miles on this. Drove out to Minneapolis for a Tough Mudder. Won it this time and then out to the Cleveland area for a few days before returning to Detroit. I actually got the 7/8 bore clutch master installed, but still having some issues with it. Blazer is currently apart in an attempt to increase the travel, so I'll save the full rundown for another couple days.

I also had the steering box rebuilt by a local place that was recommended to me before this last trip. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now, but still major slop in the steering. While Al was out at the shop working on the S10e he helped me look around for slop in the linkage. Both the idler and center link are worse for wear after only 14k miles. They're also the only 2 pieces in the entire steering other than the steering box that is factory replacement. I've got some ideas of how to replace the center joints with heims, but stuck on what to do about the idler. Easy choice would be to call up Proforged and have them send me warranty replacements, but both of these were fresh when I got the Blazer on the road back in December.

Any thoughts from you guys? I'm not against fabbing up something to replace either, but a fully custom steering has its own set of issues with how many miles I like to put on my cars. Rack & pinion would be awesome, but I've not had any luck finding a front steer rack let alone something narrow enough. I should probably start looking outside the GM section if I decide to really go that route.

congrats on the win!!

looking forwards to seeing the write-up on the clutch stuff

i've been replacing balljoints and idlers almost twice a year back when the blazer was on offroad duty.
are the 2wd and 4wd idlers the same part?
I know people do the 1 ton idler swap on the 4wds but i haven't seen an aftermarket setup i particularly like yet.
not sure how the 2wd frames like that concept

I'm sure you've covered this but a quick search didn't pull up anything.
How did you fasten your e-fan to the plastic end tanked radiator?
i'm used to modifying aluminum end tanks to accept any mounts but plastic is hard to deal with!

congrats on the win!!

looking forwards to seeing the write-up on the clutch stuff

i've been replacing balljoints and idlers almost twice a year back when the blazer was on offroad duty.
are the 2wd and 4wd idlers the same part?
I know people do the 1 ton idler swap on the 4wds but i haven't seen an aftermarket setup i particularly like yet.
not sure how the 2wd frames like that concept

Thanks! I've been placing pretty well this year, so far. I have plenty more races on the schedule, so hoping to bank on those a bit.

I'm half tempted to see how long Proforged will live up to their warranty if I'm replacing them as fast as they seem to be wearing out.

4WD and 2WD steering is all different. The joint at the end of the idler and pitman is part of the centerlink on 2WD. That's reversed on the 4WD. I'm fairly certain from past research that the dimensions of the centerlink are different between the two. Al mentioned the 1 ton idler as well. Might be worth a look what other options are out there if I can't keep the factory idler tight.

I'm sure you've covered this but a quick search didn't pull up anything.
How did you fasten your e-fan to the plastic end tanked radiator?
i'm used to modifying aluminum end tanks to accept any mounts but plastic is hard to deal with!

I used a Cavalier radiator with the built in fan/mounts. It's only 1 speed, but has been plenty fine so far. The Grand Am uses the same core, but has a 2 fan/2 speed setup. I'll probably source this one for future builds. They're both the same core size as the 2.2 radiator, which also happens to be the same size as the popular V8 swap Corvette radiator. The Cavalier and Grand Am are both thicker than either the 2.2 or Corvette. Again, no issues with cooling as of yet and I've driven it in the heat of summer, now.

I recessed mine into the core support, but you could pick up and cut down the 2.2 shroud to mount either of those without any major modifications. The Cavalier does have a slim end tank on the passenger side, which makes it recess easier.

I posted about the clutch and hydraulics in that particular thread, but have knocked out a few other things along the way.

Warrantied the proforged idler and center link. Slight improvement in steering slop. I think. Definitely blaming the steering box for what is left.

I added in an accelerator pedal stop to my bracket. Before if I floored it the truck would go into limp mode because the 2 position sensors would get out of sync and 100% throttle was only maybe 25% of the way to the floor anyway. It's definitely a step up being able to put it "all the way down" and know I'm getting WOT and won't go into limp mode haha

Right angle bracket with a bolt and nut to adjust if desired.



I don't think I shared many if any pictures of my pedal and bracket. It's pretty simple with a C Channel welded to the original pedal bracket at about a 15-30 degree angle. Pedal is out of an S10e, but it's pretty much the same as GMT400 diesel pedal.





Al and I also updated the PCM tune a bit. We had started with the original Yukon 5.3 tune that came with the PCM originally and modified parameters from there.  The cruise has been completely inop and the fuel gauge tables weren't exactly right, so we did a couple segment swaps to match the Vehicle, Engine, and Transmission.

A bunch of other stuff started working right/better and found a few new issues now that most everything in the tune is setup correctly. Idle is lower and happier with all the manual transmission tables setup correctly.

Throttle sensitivity is much improved now too. In first gear before it was so sensitive it would buck if I wasn't at nearly 0 or WOT. I can actually modulate in first gear now.

Also found out that I wired the Reverse Inhibit Solenoid and Skip Shift Solenoid backwards because the PCM is actually controlling them now.

It takes a long time to work out all the bugs on big projects like this. Sounds like it will be perfect eventually!

Does that mean your reverse lockout solenoid is working now? I never did bother wiring it up in my bliz, yours is like a luxury cruiser now. 


Glad its running better. Lets keep picking away at it!