Just bought a Chalet-pics

[77blazerchalet]

Originally Posted by motornut

..there must be some upgrades that would make this safe tho

Our man DW "1976K5CHALET" could probably tell you exactly what was upgraded, I forget the details myself. Over at the blazerchalet.com site at this page, it partially reads, "Other folks point out that the truck is awful heavy for a half-ton vehicle, and the DOT may have noticed that either the rear axle weight rating, or perhaps the overall gross weight rating, was exceeded in practice by these trucks.... One story goes that the DOT offered GM the option of recalling all the trucks, or ceasing production with a "no fault, no foul" rider; if the story is to be believed, GM took this latter route and quietly dropped the model." (I now administer that site, but it was put together by DW and another guy about 10 years ago).

My own former Chalet had the factory axles & suspension, yet one of the prior owners added Rancho overload springs. DW's Chalet had aftermarket airbags added in the back, so most guys would agree that they were still underdone from the factory. Other guys in our Yahoo forum have put orphaned Chalet shells on their non-original Blazers, but I assume most have done something to handle the extra load. One went so far as to add two extra body-to-frame mounting points, but I never had the chance to ask him why he did that.