Alice. LS swapped Hombre.

[IIGW]

This is one of the few forums still up and running with great information on all years, makes and models.

That being said, over the past year or two, I have assembled a fun toy that destroys rear tires.

A little background information. My place of business was about 30 miles one way from me, so I needed a fuel saver to get back and forth. My tubbed blazer (in my signature) is a fun car to drive, but sometimes risking a car accident in that worries me.

Quick search on the internet and found a local person willing to sell or trade an Isuzu hombre (S10) for cheap, as it was his mother’s car and she needed something bigger. I had a couple blazers at the time and after an hour or two one left and in came the hombre.

An hombre is an S10 with modified panels, similar to the differences between a 1970 Chevy and GMC. They both look the same at first, but there’s plenty of differences.

I went with the hombre, because it was basically free, had plenty of new parts, including clutch, cylinder head, rear axle, brakes etc etc… so to me, it was a reliable form of cheap transpo back and forth to work.

Advance a year or so into the future and the hombre received a lowering kit, new wheels/tires, roll pan, body work, cheap paint job, and decent audio system. You got to look good while going to work, and if you don’t have good tunes, that hour long drive can make one go nuts.

One day returning home after work, my little truck died in traffic. Not thinking at all, I crank it over, fire it up and keep’on truckin. The only issue, is I never paid attention to the temp gauge that was pegged on hot.
Next time she died, that was it, either popped the head, burnt a piston, who knows, but I was coasting to the side of the freeway, already on my cell phone looking for who’s available with a trailer.

Month or two goes by, and I’m deciding what to do with this truck. No way was a putting a dime into a 2.2 with maybe 87hp that couldn’t keep up with traffic with the ac on. So, a V8 swap it was. Now I’m a gear head, I’ve got a couple SBCs or BBCs laying around at any one time, but I also have a few late model 4.8/5.3 takeout’s.

I’ve done several swaps on customers vehicles, but never my own. So, the time had come, do some research and find out the LS S10 swap is pretty straight forward, and only a few issues needed to be addressed, such as needing a swap oil pan.

I ordered some dirty dingo engine mounts, they are local to me, and I try to support family owned business, cruised over to SoCal parts and picked up some hooker cast headers and a Holley oil pan. I’m a fabricator by trade, so I wouldn’t need anything else, and will probably cut or modify the new motor mounts any way.

Took about an hour to remove the front sheet metal and get the old engine/trans out. I could spin the engine over by hand when it was laying on the ground, there was zero compression. I put the motor/trans onto the local for sale adds, and in a few days, someone came and picked it up for scrap.

Bolted up the oil pan and dingo motor mounts and a core 4l60 and started to fit the combo in the frame rails.

With the research I did up front, I found out others have had issues with space between the radiator and engine. So, I made it easier by cutting out my firewall, and moved it back almost 3 inches. With doing this I could slide the motor back, which cause me to swap the motor mounts left to right as they wouldn’t adjust that far back, and voila, it all fits, and works great.
During this time, I dropped off a separate LS core to the local machine shop buddy, Trevor, and had him bore/hone/deck/r&r cam bearings, clean heads, surface, seals, valve job, bigger springs for cam, all the basic go-fast stuff. Luckily, I was able to call up Justin and gave him a 4l60 to have built to handle the power levels I was going for.

Once the exhaust was built, and everything was in its place, the truck was stripped, and frame rails painted, new bushings and suspension pieces, james dehumped the lower arms for me, and I assembled the new engine.

I decided at that time to remove every trace of factory GM wiring form the vehicle and replace with an aftermarket wire harness. The LS/trans will have its own harness, and the truck has its own, and the vintage air has its own. Three totally separate circuits.

Since then, I’ve put about 8 or 9 thousand miles on the combo, had the new torque converter let its clutch go on an 8-hour drive to car show, which caused me to miss the show, get the trans rebuilt, and luckily warrantied by my faithful trans guy.

I’ve made a few changes during those break-in miles. At one point I got tired of a one-legger rear, so I pulled the cover and welded up the spiders. Yes, I did. Never broke it, and put about 4k miles of daily driving on it going through 4 or 5 sets of tires. Black lines do matter.
Never knowing when the rear would leave me stranded, I knew I’d need something stronger. 8.8? 9 inch? Something else? Being this is a toy, I needed something the normal S10 wouldn’t have or be seen at the local hang out.

So, I called winters and ordered a quick change for the truck. 9-inch axles and outers with a gear driven locker will be plenty strong for what I’m doing, and I have never seen a quick-change axle in any minitruck. Only seen a handful under a few Vickie’s at the local hot rod hangouts. It was and is a win in my book. My combo was tuned with the factory 3:42s, and the quick change has a ratio of 3:40, its nearly identical. About 7 minutes, and I have 4:30s when I flip the gears over. It’s pretty cool.

The overall build theme for this truck is of the 1990s minitruck era. Everything old is new again, and yes, minitrucks are on the rise again. Being I’m currently 45 years old, my most fond memories are loading up a $1200 minitruck with no suspension and rolling out to a 3-day car show on the Colorado river and making life long memories of a time that will never happen again. There really is no describing what it was, or how it was, but it was 100% amazing. Eventually the truck will have the essential crazy 90s graphics on the sides and a hood mural, but for now, it will stay one solid color.

I wanted my truck to stand out from the others. It’s not on-air ride, it’s just got a simple lowering kit, so what to do to make it stand out. Paint color choice. I’m a 90s kid, so I went to home depot and went to the paint color selection, and started looking. I knew what I wanted, but I had to find the right shade. Finally, I found 3 or 4 examples, and took them home. I then went through all of my saved picture files and found the cars I needed to narrow down my color choice to just 1. And there it was. The most beautiful odd color I remember from essentially growing up.

Call it what you will, it is not pink. Coral, peach, salmon, whatever, but don’t call it pink. Unless I race you, then I’ll tell you it’s sad you got beat by a pink truck. 😊

-james