71' Blazer Rust bucket build

[richard2717]

Picked up everything from the machine shop this morning. Had a heck of a time getting new flywheel bolts but they finally arrived. All the driveshafts checked out good but still put all new joints in. Flywheel resurfaced, new 11" clutch kit and new arp clutch bolts. Gas tank showed up this morning as well.







I don't feel like much got accomplished this week but I worked on it every day. Takes a lot of time cleaning up and painting the little stuff. The gas vent line clips look like they were originally orange so that is what I went back with. I think it looks pretty good so far so gonna continue on with that.






Got the front rear and springs pulled earlier today. Got all the old bushings and sleeves drilled out and used my little drill hone to clean up the inside of the spring loops. Once I get everything painted I can get the new urethane bushings installed. I was surprised that the bushings that are in the cast hanger on the back of the spring, I was able to pull them out by hand without beating, drilling or even cussing. I went ahead and ordered all new grade 8 hardware to reinstall everything. The front spring bolts were seized inside the bushing on both sides and my ingersall Rand 1/2" impact would not budge them. I hand to grind down one of my 1" drive sockets to fit inside the spring perch but the big gun busted them loose without breaking a sweat (unlike me trying to hold that big bastard).





Have had no luck getting my buddy to actually stop by about getting this transmission and t case resealed. Still hoping to find someone local to give me a hand with it.

Calling it a day for today but will get a fresh start in the morning getting everything cleaned up and painted on the front end (already blasted the main portion and have in epoxy so should not take too long to get the rest of it clean now that it is broke apart.

[richard2717]

I bought all new Moog parts for the steering. Here are pictures and part numbers for anyone needing them in the future. I got these at Rock Auto. I will get a picture of the tie rod ends & part numbers tomorrow.

[notsolo]

Hey Richard...Your making good progress in a short amount of time, it's slower going when you want to make it nice. Can't have it both ways. Looking good...LMK if you need a hand...Ed.

[richard2717]

Originally Posted by notsolo

Hey Richard...Your making good progress in a short amount of time, it's slower going when you want to make it nice. Can't have it both ways. Looking good...LMK if you need a hand...Ed.

Thanks Ed. Some days it looks like I have not even touched it but worked all day on it. Others I only get a couple hours but see major changes, go figure right. My hope is to have it all back together for a local car show here 1st weekend in June, but I may be a little optimistic Still an issue getting parts here in a timely manor and The transmission is still up in the air at this point. If I can't get it figured out I have a 4 spd & 205 transfer sitting here I can put in it for the time being, but I really want to keep the original 3 speed. That would at least allow me to drive it over the summer & fall but just creates a lot more work down the line.

[68panelman]

Your in it now Richard, looking great! A HS buddy had a 69 K5 with 3spd column and a bench seat, fun truck. Keep up the good work and progress!

[richard2717]

Originally Posted by 68panelman

Your in it now Richard, looking great! A HS buddy had a 69 K5 with 3spd column and a bench seat, fun truck. Keep up the good work and progress!

Thanks Mike

[richard2717]

Pulled both rears and got them blasted. Did them one at a time. Pulled the Dana 1st. Got it epoxy primes and some chassis black on everything. Replaced the spring bushings with all new ones. Got it all reassembled this morning. Removed the 12 bolt right after that. Had to break out the 1" impact again. Glad I was replacing the U bolts anyway. Snapped 2 out of 4. She just don't know her own strength. Got the engine and transfer case cross members bolted back in with new grade 8 bolts. Used the black Phosphate flanged head bolts so I did not have to worry with painting them. Could not find them in 9/16" for the leaf springs so had to get yellow chromate bolts for them. Ran out of daylight so I will prime & paint the 12 bolt in the morning. Once I get that back in I can install the gas tank & finish running the brake & gas lines. I am going to wait to do the brake work on the axles after I mount the body back on the frame so I can use the lift. Will post some pics tomorrow. Gonna grab a shower, got sand from *sshole to shoe sole as pops would say.

[DeadheadNM]

Good progress. Strong work.

[richard2717]

Originally Posted by DeadheadNM

Good progress. Strong work.

Thanks Pete.



Got the 12 bolt and related parts epoxied & covered in chassis black this morning. Letting it all sit out in the sun and cure for the day before bringing it in to reinstall. Hoping to get it all back together tonight.

While waiting on that, I have been tripping over the drivers seat sitting in the floor since the tear down. A couple weeks ago I bought some used seat covers off one of the FB blazer pages. I did not want new since it would look odd with the original back seat cover. I may at a later date buy all new covers but this will get me by for now and was cheap. I pulled the old cover off of the seat and tried my hand at putting the new to me one on. We have a really nice day here today so i was able to sit everything out in the sun to help it all along. I think it came out pretty good never having done it before.
Gotta go dig the passenger seat out of the upstairs storage so I can get it swapped out.

The rear seat was missing from this rig when I bought it but I parted out a suburban that had 3 row seating that had really nice seats in it so I kept both of them for both of my Blazers. These covers while not "correct" for this Blazer will work just fine for me.

[richard2717]

Got the rear end back in it along with the new gas tank. I bought a NOS fuel sender from Sharpie years back and has been sitting on the shelf waiting for this project, so put that in as well. My brake booster setup showed up yesterday so mounted it up to make sure there were no issues. The master Cylinder will come back off when I go to set the body back on and it still needs to be bench bled anyway. While hooking up the brake pedal rod I noticed a lot of added wires under the dash so right while I have the body on the lift I am going to clean that up and change out the heater control for a nicer one. It makes it nice working to be able to stand up in and work thru the transmission tunnel instead of laying on my head to work under the dash.

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Starting to look a whole lot different

[richard2717]

Well my transmission help never did show back up and I got tired of waiting so i finally found a book with good detailed drawings and assembly order. Transmission is all together with new bearings, seals and gaskets as well as cleaned primed and painted. Got the flywheel, clutch, pressure plate, throwout bushing, motor mounts, fuel pump, water pump, oil pressure lineand heater hose fittings transferred. Bought some POR 15 engine orange paint to brush on as well. Don't care for the black Got all the engine pulleys and power steering cleaned up and painted.

Took the gas tank back out to install the factory spacers that I forgot to put in the 1st time. Saw them laying on the table and was like got it all back together correctly now though.

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[richard2717]

Now that i have my books I feel like I can go ahead and get the dana 20 back together.
In the next day or so I am going to get the engine & transmission set in place. Thursday Mama and myself are headed up to spring Carlisle and hope to find a front floor panel while up there. This one is not terrible and I have patches here for it, but after putting the new one in my panel truck, it seems to be the easiest way to go. If I can't find one I will just go ahead and repair this one.

[richard2717]

This book is pretty detailed for putting stuff back together.

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[richard2717]

Had a few minutes to work on it this morning. Starting to get it reassembled as much as possible while the body is off.

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[richard2717]

Feels like i am jumping all over the place (I am ) but it keeps me motivated to get this thing done. Thursday I took the wife with me to Spring Carlisle and sourced a new front floor pan. Only saved about $50 vs having one shipped but it put it in my hands right away. I am glad I took a 4 wheel wagon with me to get it back to the truck I am getting real close to wanting to get the body back on the frame so I figured before that happened I should pull the front clip off of the tub so I could do a couple metal repairs to the passenger side cowl area. I cut out the rust, Made patches, sprayed rust encapsulator down into the cowl innards with the supplied hose & nozzle that I got from Eastwood. Welded in new patches and started to grind it all smooth. Will finish that up today hopefully. Right while all that is accessible I am going to drill the spot welds out from the front floor seam and remove the passenger torque box (nothing left of the driver side) I will run some temporary screws in to keep it together until I get to the floor replacement. I need to search some threads to see if others have done the floor pan on or off the frame or if it makes a difference.

[richard2717]

just some more random shots of the metal repairs

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[richard2717]

I also mentioned earlier that i bought new Dorman 2.5" ramhorn manifolds. I bought some 2000 degree paint for them and decided to go ahead and get that done. I have an old oven here I use for small powder coating projects and figured I would bake these per the can directions. Holy hell the smoke on the 2nd and 3rd baking would kill ya if you don't have good ventilation. In the end they came out looking nice, guess time will tell if it actually was worth doing.
I also got in touch with my paint supplier to see if they can still cross reference my old Martin Senour paint code over to Nason single stage urethane so i can do some lower and cowl touch up. If that is a bust I will contact my sign paint supplier to see if they can. My sign paint is already a satin finish so that would help with matching up this old original paint.

Plan for today is finish up the front metal work, get the heater core box refinished with all new gaskets. The existing heater core looks to be in great shape and I am not a fan of the aluminum replacements so since I can't find an oem replacement at the moment I am just going to leave this one for now. The two places I know have the oem cores are both back ordered with no eta. I asked Wes at Classic Heartbeat to let me know when he gets them back in stock.

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[richard2717]

Well I got some of what I set out to do and opened another can of worms as well.
I got the metal patches on the cowl ready for epoxy.
I got the heater box pulled apart, cleaned up, metal parts bead blasted & painted and have it ready to put back together once the paint cures. Got all new gaskets for it as well. Only hiccup is the fan blade is toast from leaves and dirt in the housing with it. I have a large pile of fan motors and not one had a real nice fan blade so I went ahead and ordered a new one along with a bunch of other stuff I wanted or needed.

The can of worms comes in the form of fender rust. It could not be seen until I pulled the front clip off the tub but the upper inner brackets that bolt to the cowl were completely rusted out. I had another set of fenders here that the outside of them were toast ,but the part I needed was in great shape. Soooo, I pulled them out, got to marking, cutting and drilling spot welds. Put them in the blast cabinet and cleaned up the surface rust and got them in etching primer. Cutting them from the old fenders was no big deal because the rest was scrap but getting the rusted section off the good fenders took some work. Drilled an 1/8" pilot hole in all the spot welds so I could keep an eye on the weld as I ground the old bracket away. I chose to grind it away instead of total drill out because the spot welds were almost 3/8" and I did not want to lose all the good metal as well. Hacked it up in smaller pcs with the cutoff wheel and it worked out pretty well. I got lucky on the 1st one and did not even have to trim anything. It fell right in place the 1st time. I will do the passenger side tomorrow. Gonna go work on the garden foe a bit before it gets dark.

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[richard2717]

More pics of the fender repairs

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[sperger72]

Do you have more pictures of the floor fix?

[richard2717]

Originally Posted by sperger72

Do you have more pictures of the floor fix?

If you are talking about the orange rear floor, no, It is still in same condition as where I left off. I need to finish that up as well at some point. I guess it all depends on how deep I get into the front floor replacement this spring.

[richard2717]

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Finished up the passenger side fender repair this morning.














I still have to reassemble the transfer case. No clue why I am still putting it off now that I have the assembly manual that goes into pretty good detail. It is supposed to hit 80* here today and then in the 60's for the rest of the week. May spend some time out in the garden getting it ready instead of spending a lot of time on the truck today. Gotta get my fencing back in place to keep the varmits out. Time is getting short now to get everything planted.

I also realized that the new starter I have sitting here on the shelf that I thought was going to save me a few bucks is the wrong one. I was thinking it was a manual transmission starter and it is for an automatic. Oh well, it will still be here for another project.



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[richard2717]

Glad I am not painting the entire truck. Has been a couple years since I bought any from the automotive store since I have a mixing station for my sign paints. My distributor for sign paints is back ordered by 6 months on a lot of my needed mixers so that was not even an option for me. 1 gallon of single stage urethane and quart of activator was $550.
Last time I bought any it was 1/2 that.

[richard2717]

Any idea how hard it is to find one of these little bastards when you pull the shift shaft cover off before putting the cap back on to contain it. It is the spring loaded detent ball that I had just installed (2 of them) and realized as I was sliding the cover up to meet the case that my dumb ass forgot the gasket. Instead of walking away for a few minutes to collect myself, I snatched the shaft cover to pull it off and out of the corner of my eye watched this one shoot up in the air, bounce once then disappear into the abyss I call my shop floor. Knowing I would likely never find a replacement, the search was on. After removing everything in the immediate area very carefully and scanning the floor with my 18" wide magnet I came up empty handed. Lets start moving tables, nope not under there either. After 2 hours searching I found that this little bastard will roll a long ways. It was 25' away from where I was working laying right out in the open. Almost twisted my ankle when I stepped on it going to the office. Gonna sit here for a few and take a break before going back to try it again.

It took me an hour this morning to figure out how all that went together again only to have to pop it back apart for the gasket. Hoping 2nd time goes easier.

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[richard2717]

I learned a new word today....perseverance... But I will be glad when the mechanical side of this thing is over with. I only ended up pulling this thing back apart what seemed like a million times before I got the shift rails to go back together correctly then 3 more times to get one set of gears back in correctly then 4 times to get the thrust washers to stay in place while I set the center gear set and middle shaft back in place. I used up all my cuss words yesterday so today was nice and calm. waiting on some primer to dry for the metal tag and locking clip for the center shaft so I can get it buttoned up and hopefully hanging back on the transmission.

EDIT: One thing is for sure. IF you have never done one of these (heck even if you have) take PLENTY of pictures before and during the breakdown. If I had not done that, even with the books I just bought, I don't think I ever would have gotten it back together. Thankfully I took plenty of pics before I removed something and right after I removed it for every step. Saved them all to the computer and ended up printing a lot of them out to lay on the table during assembly. Also don't leave it torn apart for weeks before trying to get it back together. Make sure you have everything ready to go.
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