diesel blazer to small block swap

[robby]

How hard is it to swap a small block into an 85 K5 Blazer? I have my 79 K20 with a good 400 to use. The Blazer has that braking booster with the powersteering set up. Any body done it? Blazer is really nice all there, he wants $1,200 for the Blazer I don't want to kill myself and have junk when Iam done.

[arveetek]

Don't do that.....that would be a shame! Repair that diesel and you'll have a great wheeler with lots of low end torque that gets nearly 20 mpg!

But if you must, any Chevy small block will bolt right in. You'll need all the other accessories to go with it, PS pump, alternator, a/c compressor, radiator. You can keep the hydroboost if you want. Just get the hoses and stuff off of a one-ton truck that had a 350 with hydroboost. Or you can swap in a vacuum booster.

But I vote for keeping the diesel!

[rockman20]

I vote for keeping the diesel as well. There are more things to consider with this swap.

I bought a 82 Scottsdale with the original 6.2L stripped and a 350 installed. The man was a moron who did this. He used all of the accessories off from the diesel. Alt, power steering, etc. Most of the brackets he was able to shim since the water pump is not the same on the 350 as it is on the diesel. But the power steering bracket he never modified so it was not in line at all. So at an idle, you could not use the power steering or the assisted brakes. The pump would just stop turning because there was not enough belt touching the pulley.

Had to cut the bracket and weld on a new flange to get it to line up properly.

You never mentioned the transmission in the Blazer. I have the 700R4 and am not pleased with it right now. My converter locks up in 3rd gear at about 30MPH. I have no idea how the guy wired the lockup on this transmission yet. I am still working on my other problems first. The truck also does not shift right since it shifts sooner for the diesels low end torque. I am going to swap out the govenor on this soon and hopefully that will take care of this.

Doing the swap from the beginning might not be too bad since you will know everything you have done. Buying one that has been butchered and having no idea what the hell he did SUCKS! I found an entire wiring harness just the other day that had bare wires and went to nothing. I have no idea what the hell this is for! What I might end up doing is starting from scratch and redoing everything. Definetly not what I was looking for, but I think it will save me the hassle in the future.

I personally, would of liked to have the original 6.2 in it. My dad has one in his 3/4 ton conversion van and he loves it. It has been modified with some extra duty heads, cam, and the transmission and rearend have been beefed up as well. It use to tow itself and a tandom axle enclosed race car trailer as well.

No problems with the engine. Just replaced glow plugs, pump, and injectors and the engine now has about 168,000 on it. Uses a bit of oil now, but not bad for that high of a mileage diesel.