Left for dead: 72 2wd blazer build

[1956cameo]

Critter, Jtrux, Thanks for the info guys. I think removing the dash will be the best route to go to properly fix the rust behind the dash. I did remove the dash to my parts suburban and I think it had about 35 spot welds. That really isn't too bad seeing that the two panels I am taking off of the parts suburban to put onto the blazer had between 40 to 50 spot welds per panel. Thanks again for the replys, hoping to show more progress on Wednesday evening!

[sylfred]

looking good, i finishwd my two wheel drive back in july.

[1956cameo]

Sylfred, Thanks for the compliment. Post pics of your rig. I could use the inspiration!


Well I must be staying busier than I thought. I worked on the blazer a week and a half ago and forgot to updade! I started back up where I left off on the P/S quarter panel. When I put the D/S patch panel on I aligned it by laying it over the body crease on the original panel. However once it was cut off the patch panel ended up bieng a 1/2 inch too short. So on this side I lined the patch up to how well it looked against the door and didn't pay any attention to the body crease on the patch vs. the body crease on the quarter panel. By doing this the P/S quarter panel patch lined up much better than the D/S one did. I also thought it was funny that I bought both patches from the same place but one was by GoodMark and the other was Counterpart.


A whole lot of new metal went into this area. Suprisingly the panels all line up really well to each other and the door.


The next section I focused on was the rotten area at the top of the P/S bed panel.

As always out with the old and rusty. I cut out the donor section from a parts truck but didn't get a pic of it in place.


Since I was at a stopping point for the day on the metal work, but wasn't ready to go home I started taking all of the parts fastened to the firewall off of the blazer.



I should be getting back to the blazer this weekend and updating shortly after. I had been working on smaller parts at home during the work week, but now that it gets dark so early and is cold that extra progress has slowed.

[FRENCHBLUE72]

Nice score count me in on the watchin part..

[1956cameo]

Got a little work done on the blazer today. The first thing I did was finish removing the patch panel that I am going to use from the donor truck. It took a little more work than I thought it would. I found that the top part was three plates of metal deep, so I had to re drill the spot welds from the donor panels side. I also had trouble finding a few "Hidden" spot welds.




Here is the comparison of the old panel versus the one that I am going to use off of the donor truck. Things will be much better off once the switch is made.




Well the only spot weld remover bit that I had broke today. The guide wore out and fell off. So while my dad (Muleman100) went to the store for me to get another bit, I started working on taking the windshield out. It was a little bit of a pain to take the windshield chrome off without further damaging it, but other than that this was a quick task.

[1956cameo]

To no suprise I found some rust hiding beneath the windshield weatherstripping. A little more rust than I was hoping to find (which was no rust) but no so much that I get it patched in a couple of hours. This is the drivers side upper corner.




Here is the damage on the passenger side. It is a little more eaten away that the drivers side. I thought that was a little ironic since the kick panel rust is far worse on the drivers side.




It was starting to get a little late in the day and I didn't want to start removing the dash since I didn't have time to complete the job today so I removed parts instead. I removed the A/C system from under the dash, and also removed all of the wiring that was under the dash as well. Since it looks like this project is going to have to sit out in the weather for a while before a slot in the shop opens up I also removed the glovebox door so the SPID didn't get damaged.




My dad has a teenager (Ben) who helps out in the shop in the afternoons once school lets out. Today my dad said that he didn't have much for Ben to do so he let me have him work on my blazer. I gave him an option on a few tasks he could do. He opted to get a wire brush and clean out the pitted up bed. So far a few pinholes have popped up. Not sure if I need to replace the whole bedfloor yet or just do patches. I will have a better idea of what route I need to go when he finishes that task.






That is as far as I was able to get today. Next time I go out I am going to try and take the dash out, put the donor panel in, and start opening up the passenger side kick panel.

[Jtrux]

Looks good, i'm curious to see how the windshield frame turns out.

[Thealien]

Subscribed for an interesting project!

[jaros44sr]

Originally Posted by Thealien

Subscribed for an interesting project!

Gotta agree! I guess we will find out how one of these things went together at the factory

I think Ben would be a very busy guy, if we could all hire him for a day

[1956cameo]

Critter and jaros44sr, Yeah, I hope he sticks around for a while. It is nice to have someone that can do the time consuming odd jobs while you focus on the more in depth parts of the project.

[Critter]

Send Ben my way! Looking good so far.

[BurnoutNova]

I think this will be an awesome build. I really like when a car or truck looks like it could be factory, and gets people who think they know everything about everything. I'll be watching for sure.

[1956cameo]

Well I had this week off of work so I was able to make some progress. Last Friday I was planning on working on the blazer but since it was brutally cold and very windy I decided to go pick up some parts needed for this project. My dad and I headed out to the Dallas area that morning and got to board member ShanesChevys at about lunch time. We chatted for a little while and checked out all of his rides and then loaded up my much needed parts and hit the road.

I picked this very nice radiator core support from Shane.





I was also able to get a solid passenger side fender from him. The drivers side fender was a fender my dad picked up at one of the local swap meets.





After leaving Shanes house in Ft. Worth we headed down to Midlothian, to board members 14u2nv's house. Here I was able to get a rear seat for my blazer.





He was generous enough to give me a jack hold down set up for my blazer.

[1956cameo]

As much as I didn't want to take the dash out I knew it needed to be done if I was going to properly replace the drivers side inner cowl panel. Here is a shot of the dash after it was removed.





A shot of the bare dash area.





With the dash now out of the way I was able to completely remove the inner cowl panel.





An inside shot of the removed inner cowl panel.





All of the areas that will be sealed back up were cleaned, prepped and primered. I used weldable primer so it wouldn't just burn off whenever we welded the panels back together.

[1956cameo]

The donor inner cowl panel was also prepped and primered in weldable primer.





It didn't take much manipulating to get the donor cowl to line up into place. We placed a couple of clamps on it and started welding the panel in.





Everything fit like the original panel did by the time we got done welding it in. After everything cooled off I went ahead and put seam sealer over all of the seams. Some of it burned when putting the outer cowl panel on, but all of the hard to reach parts are seam sealed.





It took alot of lining up, clamping down, unclamping, trimming, re-lining up, re-clamping, etc... to get the outer cowl panel lined up to make sure the fender and cowl panel would all line up and bolt on properly. This is a shot of the outer cowl in the fitting stage.





I do all of the cutting, measuring, and panel placement, and my dad welds. This seems to be a good system that we have for now, but I know that I really need to learn how to weld for myself.

[1956cameo]

It took a little longer than I was anticipating, and I have ALOT of grinding to do but the outer cowl is back on. So now the drivers side cowl area is back to bieng solid, rust free, and waterproof.





We used a drivers side fender and a cowl to make sure everything was going back together in a way that didn't need a whole lot of shimming to get good gaps between panels. Everything seems to be lining up beautifully; as if nothing was ever replaced.





Thats as far as we were able to get this week. I am hoping to get one or two days worth of work done next week. Hopefully I will get the passenger side cowl finished off by then. Fortunately the passengers side cowl panels don't need nearly as much work.

[Critter]

Good progress!

[my67chevytruck]

looking really good. I wish i would have known you were in town... I live 3 streets over from Chad (14u2nv) always nice to meet board members.
keep up the great work.

[72BlckButy]

Great progress on the project!

[lks dcvn]

progress is progress - I got some welding done on mine, but trying to rebuild that outer floor area where the step up is located is taking me forever -

Nice Work!

[Arizonak5]

nice work man thank you for saving this gem, og 2wd cst man ur lucky!!!!!!!

[Muleman100]

Notice how Nobby put supports in the cab to help keep things lined up. Minor movements can be problems for fit later on.

[1956cameo]

Arizonak5, Thanks!

Muleman100, Braces will be put into place before the floor is removed.


Below is a picture of my SPID for the blazer. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what the California Assembly and California Processing options meant. I assume it has something to do with emissions, but was wondering if anyone knew exactly what it meant. Thanks!

[1956cameo]

Here's the latest progress report on the blazer. I went out to my dad's on monday and worked on getting the floor out of the donor cab. That job pretty much took the whole day to acomplish. Here is a picture of the donor cab once the floor had been removed.




A picture of the donor floor once it was removed from the cab. It is by no means in great shape, but the majority of the back half is in ALOT better shape than the blazers floor.




Before I removed any of the flooring on the blazer I braced the front cab area up with square tubing. I figured that since the floor is in poor contition along with one rocker box bieng almost completely gone it was cheap insurance.




The next day I went back out and was finally ready to start replacing some rusty metal. I decided that instead of replacing the entire floor section like I had originally planned to do I really just needed to replace the rear section. I came to this conclusion because the front half of the floorboard was in really good shape. Instead of replacing the rear floor as one piece I replaced it in two pieces. I primarily did this to reduce the amount of good original sheetmetal from bieng replaced. Below is a picture of the tape outlining the rusty area that is to be removed.




The taped of section of donor flooring before cutting it out as a patch panel. (Sorry for the poor quality. The camera got put onto a different setting and I didn't notice it until later)

[1956cameo]

After a little bit of cutting, grinding, and air chiseling I got the bad panel out.




It took alot of lining up and minor trimming, but I got the donor floor tacked into place. I will be going back later and welding it completely in. I also had to drill holes in the donor panel for the blazer bucket seat bolt brackets (Since there are more brackets than with a truck; and since they are in a different location). Fortunately the front inner seat bolt bracket is attatched to the cab floor support, so that gave me a reference point to base everything else off of. I had to take the drivers side bucket seat in and out of the blazer about 6 or 8 times in order to get all of the seat bolt brackets lined up exactly.





After finishing up on the drivers side I started up fresh today on the passenger side floor board. This side was a little bit more stubborn than the drivers side; of course this side was in better shape and it had more supports attatched underneath.




The bolts that hold the passenger seat rear hold down bracket were both broken off in the floor bolt brackets. I soaked the bolts with penetrating oil for a couple of hours and used vice grips on them, but was unsuccessful in removing them. Since I didn't have time to keep playing around with them I simply drilled them out. I will try to re thread them at a later date.




I am not sure why but this patch panel went in much smoother and tighter than the drivers side patch. Once again it was just tacked in and will be completely welded in before bieng called done. I guess I just had better measurements this time around. As you can see I got all of the passenger seat brackets attatched and in place. This was not an easy task; not sure how Nobby was able to do it after the fact because even with bieng able to remove the floor during this job it was a PAIN. I put the passenger side seat in and fortunately the seat brackets and the floor brackets line up as they should. The seat locks down in the back very easily and releases easily.