72 Surprise Blazer

[treyvette17]

Ok everyone, I am finally going to build the Blazer I have been trying to build for years. This is the 4th Blazer I have owned and had to sell the other 3 for one reason or another. This time, I am not letting this one go. I am going to call this the Surprise Blazer because so far that is what I keep saying as I find out new things about it. When I first bought it, I had checked it all over and knew it had some rust and previous repair work done. I didn't realize to what extent until later. Guy I bought it from didn't know much about it but told me up front that he thought it had a head gasket issue. No problem, was going to rebuild the motor anyway. Got it home and went to work. Sent the motor off to the shop and a few days later got a call. Well we have a problem. Surprise. Guy tells me that the block has a crack in 2 of the cylinder walls. He said looks like someone tried to fix at some point in the past. The valley has rust everywhere. The heads each were cracked. I asked if the intake was good. Nope. Cracked too. So I go look and sure enough all cracked. And the block was from 1977. The shop owner offered me a 72 block he had at the shop for free and the build began. Nothing too crazy. Just made it a strong 383 Stroker but nothing ridiculous. Meanwhile I sent the tranny to be gone over just in case. Surprise. The shop calls me up and said they were not sure how I even drove the Blazer on and off the trailer when I bought it that it was so bad and worn out. In my defense, it probably never went over 300 ft total between on and off the trailer to where I started taking it apart. Nice total rebuild there. Now to the body. I had noticed some odd welding under the Blazer when I bought it but figured it had just been normal repairs. Well upon looking from the inside once everything was removed. Surprise. It appears that the entire back half of the Blazer is from another Blazer. There is a weld line from door to door with some reinforcement mental welded in also. I'm sure that's going to make body work even easier, especially in the rocker boxes area. Now the paint was not my taste so I had it vapor blasted down to metal then primed. If anyone knows the history on this Blazer I would love to hear about it. I am 99% sure that at some point it was in a Club in Oklahoma City that may have been called Hardbodies. I could still slightly read the residue from the sticker that was on the tailgate. Who knows what the next Surprise will be around the corner. I will try to attach pics from when I bought it.