Some assembly required……

[72blaz]

Looking Good!! Following!

[Chulisohombre]

Great work so far. I did my rockers with just the top On and my gaps stayed perfect. The top keeps the a puller from leaning back when you
Have the rocker off pretty good. Not everyone is so lucky it sounds like though.

[stick72]

Thanks! Made a little progress, got most of the work done on the drivers side, probably still need a little welding/grinding/cleanup but moving on to the passenger side now.

Chulisohombre - noticed you are in Bangor, I used to live about ten minutes from there in Portland, PA. Moved south because I hated working on rusty vehicles. Guess that didn't work out like I planned.....

[Chulisohombre]

I've been in Bangor since 2001. Lived in Portland a couple years off of state street. Good little area. Not a lot of old Chevy trucks left. Depending on when you left I had this truck as a daily driver for the first few years until the salt kick the body's butt. It used to have "the beast" painted down the sides and eyes and a mouth on the front fenders like the world war 2 planes. Yeah I guess you didn't beat the rust down there. It just followed you. Haha

[jaros44sr]

Nice work looks great, keep going

[stick72]

Worked on the passenger side over the holiday weekend, this side seemed to go into place much easier than the drivers side. I hope that was just because I learned from the first side, but it definitely makes you start second guessing your work, wondering if you did something wrong on one side or the other.

I'm working out some bracing for the door openings. I picked up the new bedsides, tailgate and bed floor about a week ago, so I want to brace everything well before I remove the top. Its a little tough to figure out where to brace to, since pretty much everything behind the doors is coming off. I think the best I can do is tack steel to the cargo step plate and at the cab around the door hinge area.

I'm not really sure if I will put the back half of the truck together, and then pull it off the frame, or pull the tub, do the frame, and then reassemble everything. I guess my preference is to pull the tub and do the frame, and reassemble it. The tub will be able to maneuver around easier, and I can get the underside completed with exception of the area under the torsion boxes. I was going to leave those on until everything was back together, and complete the outer rockers and new boxes at that time once everything is fully assembled, the top is on, and everything aligned correctly.

[IronCanine]

Great progress!!!

[jaros44sr]

X2. Looks terrific, good work. Can't help on bedside, never did it

[stick72]

Well, its finally a convertible. I braced the door area by tack welding to the step up panel, and I'm getting ready to remove the bedsides. I has happy the only area that doesn't seem to be full of rust was the windshield header, was hoping I wouldn't have to do any repair there. It looked good from what was visible, which was one of the reason I took a chance on buying this Blazer. I did have to drill the head off the passenger side bolt holding the the top on. Its a spinner, not sure how I'm going to repair that. Sucks because other than a couple of small stress cracks the top is in great shape. Maybe someone will have some ideas about that, but doesn't appear to be simple. If it were stripped I could helicoil or something, but this is a captive nut or something that has broken loose.

[IronCanine]

Nothing better than taking her top off for the first time. Congrats. I'm afraid you might have to cut into the top to repair it in a way that satisfies you. I don't think we had to replace any hardware in the front of the top...but most of the stuff in the rear had to come out and be re-fixed and glassed back in.

[stick72]

I'm running out of parts to remove.....I pulled the cab and pressure washed the frame just to she if there were any obvious issues. Frame look great other than a thin stop on the rearmost bed mount. I probably throw the cab back on, and call a media blaster tomorrow.

[raggedjim]

It's looking good. I also struggled with the drivers side, especially the rocker panel and getting the a-pillar lined up. Lots of cutting and welding to get it all lined up.

Good luck, Rg

[stick72]

Had the frame and other parts media blasted, and then rebuilt the drivetrain with new joints, bearing and brakes. Slow work, but now I can turn my attention back to the body.

[IronCanine]

Looking good. Congrats on the progress. Keep it up. Looking forward to more.

[stick72]

A lot of assembly has taken place…..but to be fair, I should have posted a bit more frequently, I had two weeks off around Christmas, so I probably got a dozen 10 hr. days’ worth of work done over that timeframe.

I know there all always a lot of questions around replacement panels, and pretty much everything from the tub back is replacement, so I thought I would give my observations around what I experienced.

Overall, I was reasonably pleased with all the aftermarket panels. Do they drop into place, require no fitting, and bolt up perfectly?…..not exactly. However, I don’t really know if NOS stuff would either. It’s a 40+ year old vehicle, tolerances were not as tight then as they are today, so I suspect the assembly line had its share of fitting as well.

My assessment

Bed Floor – I don’t want to say perfect, but I haven’t found an issue yet that I could attribute to the bed floor. Every hole lined up, every captive nut worked.
Bed Sides – Generally pretty good. The annoyance I had is that the bedside would not fit onto the bed floor. The “pocket” that the rear of the bedside has in one case was smaller than the rear bed rear support, and in the other case it was identical. With a little bending I got the “identical” one in, but on the other side I had to drill out the spot welds to spread the pocket to get it on. You would think the folks manufacturing the parts would double check that they fit together. I would say some of the issues I experienced were self-inflicted. I tightened and loosened a lot of things a lot of times. Sometimes it was intentional to confirm fit, sometimes it was a mistake, and I would later find something I forgot to install that would have make since to do first.
Biggest challenge – The area where the bed side, bed floor, rockers, torsion boxes and re-enforcement plates gave me the biggest headache. To be fair, there are about a dozen bolts that need to line up between all of these pieces, but in my case the re-enforcement plates seemed to be always slightly off. Doesn’t mean the plate was the issue, maybe it would have dropped right into place on a different vehicle, but it my case I spent a couple hours per side laying on my back with a Dremel tweaking holes to gets bolts in,

Advice/Things I learned the hard way…
I didn’t chase any threads, but I tried to pre-test every captive nut with a bolt with anti-seize. If you are working by yourself, holding the part with one hand and trying to start a bolt with other, makes life much easier. I usually knew when I ran across one I had missed…….

Bedsides are heavy, secure your work – Even if you think they are positioned and balanced and you can reach for a tool, don’t do it. After making that mistake I always secured the bedside in the ratchet wench I rigged up for removing the top, my penance will be some bodywork on what had been a perfect panel.

Still a long way to go

[DeadheadNM]

Stong work - looking good. Thanks for sharing your observations.

[Chulisohombre]

That ought to help someone else in the future. I've also found most panels are close enough that they can be tweeted to work. After 40 years our trucks have been beat up if not only by their own weight bouncing down the road. It's a learning curve for sure. I always tack something in and then measure again twice before final welds. It would suck to have to reorder the same sheet metal
Again because you trimmed it a 1/4 inch too short. I like the fact that most of the aftermarket panels give a little extra metal to make sure you can cut out all the rust around a joint. Good work.

[stick72]

I've been busy working on the top and hatch, the hatch was in pretty bad shape, I had two really bad ones that I turned into one decent one.

Picked up a vortec crate motor. I think I will use a TBI injection, but I'm still procrastinating on the decision.

Decided to use 2006 Chevy seats,they fit pretty well. I really regretted not fitting them before I welded in the new torsion boxes, wasn't much fun getting the reinforcement plates through the torsion box end caps

[lks dcvn]

Looks great - lots of great progress on the blazer.

Keep the pictures and progress coming!

[stick72]

Finally getting around to spraying primer. I got about half the truck done, still have the doors, fenders, tailgate and the top to do. I sprayed epoxy on all the old bare metal and let it sit for 24 hrs before I sprayed the 2k primer. Slow going but still making progress.