1972 Blazer - 'Bullet' Project

[BLUE THUNDER]

Looking good Tom. The Bullet is looking great. Excellent score on the parts Blazer. Are you gonna part it out or build it up as well?

[lks dcvn]

Haven't decided yet Mario - I know the 2wd needs a body swap or a ton of body work...

I now have all the parts to have a driver [minus brake work] for pretty cheap and have it pretty much rust free with OEM sheet metal...

I didn't do much yesterday afternoon out in the garage - I am waiting to see the driver door that board member JUSBLAZ has that I will be looking at later today so I am waiting to put the front fender back on until I see if I will swap doors or not [probably will though].

This morning - I got the torsion box welded in and did the door open/close test again - works good - tested the door lock/unlock - worked good - driver side stuff is mostly done...however I did have to wallow out 2-3 holes on the b pillar support a little bit to line everything up - not a big deal I guess.

I got the rest of the trim holes welded up today on the driver side and moved to the rear of the truck where I knew there was some body work waiting for me [pix in the next post]

There were small 'tie offs' for lack of a better word that I haven't decided if I am going to reuse - they might be useful down the road sometime. I will see if my buddy who powder coats can clean them up a bit.

[lks dcvn]

Rear Body Damage - nasty damage in a bad spot.

I tried to pop it out - no dice.

It is raining or I would go out and check the extra bed in my backyard to see how it looks and cut it off and patch it in.

[70k52wd]

Thanks for checkin out my Blazer thread. I see you kinda like Blazers too.
Your doing a great job on Bullet. Really nice parts score.

[lks dcvn]

Got the new door last night [minor rust on the bottom ridge, but nothing like the other blue door] - but didn't get it mocked up last night.

I did today though after work.

I don't know if I got lucky or not, but it fit great the first time I bolted it up.

Then I went to loosen the parts from the blue door to find that some PO had tried to loosen most of them and stripped most of the screws on that door - so I will have to figure that out tomorrow.

I am dragging the white door to get media blasted tomorrow and see if I can get a coat of blue paint on the inside of it before I hang it again...wish me luck.

Pix are below.

[VA72C10]

cool. Maybe try a combination of soaking down the fasteners in pb blaster or wd40 overnight and then use a dead blow with a hammer against the screw with the screwdriver in place to remove it. or get one of those screw removal tools.

[1956cameo]

Congratulations on that awesome score! Alot of good parts there.

You are really starting to leave me behind in the dust. Since I am bieng trasfered to a new position at work in a couple of weeks that gives me less days off I will be falling even further behind you. Oh well keep up the good work.

Also how does the door and rocker panel fit up with the new door on there?

[lks dcvn]

Door and new rocker - fit is a bit different than the blue door - but close enough for me not to worry about it - We will see how the fender lines up...

It is a GM door so the fit was closer than an aftermarket one for sure. The gap at the front of the rocker and the b pillar area was where it was a bit different, but after mocking it up and looking at it - it was pretty close.

I have the door off the truck again so I could prep it for painting the inside...

The parts truck should be in my driveway this afternoon -

Does anybody have a crappy top near me that they would be willing to part with for cheap/free?

[jaros44sr]

No screw can withstand a 2 lb. brass sledge and an impact driver. Driver head will form the phillips in the screw

next PBPower Blaster

then heat

then drill the head off and use a stud extracter if all else fails

Nice work ur doin'

[lks dcvn]

No luck with the impact driver -

I moved on to something else and gave it another treatment of PB Blaster.

Front Fenders were on my list to get done this week so I can get the whole truck painted at once...

Some surface rust here and there on the fenders so I stripped the emblems, removed the lights and stripped the paint.

I haven't had much luck finding the 3M disks to strip the paint so I might have found an alternative -

Once they were stripped I cleaned off the dust and treated them to a rust prevention paint coat...

While I was doing it - I stripped the suspect parts of the new door and then coated that as well.

Pix are below.

I am hoping to get this thing back in one piece in the next two weeks. Not sure if I can pull it off, but that is the goal.

[VA72C10]

nice progress. Did you chemical strip the fenders?

[lks dcvn]

Nope - I used to use the 3M strip disks like the one below.

I used to find 5 piece lots on ebay for pretty cheap so I bought 2 sets [10 total] and I am on my last one. I contacted the person that I used to buy from and they said that they were no longer able to get them - so I was at HF today and found that they have a similar product - for $4.99 each.

I picked one up being skeptical - but the one I got today worked better - yes something from HF worked better than a 3M product. It took me 20 mins to strip two fenders and the door to bare metal.

I have plenty of the 20% coupons for HF for when I go there - I wonder if I can get them to sell me a case for 1 SKU and get the discount - since the coupon is only good for 1 item.

[Tom Vogel]

[QUOTE=

I used to find 5 piece lots on ebay for pretty cheap so I bought 2 sets [10 total] and I am on my last one. I contacted the person that I used to buy from and they said that they were no longer able to get them - so I was at HF today and found that they have a similar product - for $4.99 each.

I picked one up being skeptical - but the one I got today worked better - yes something from HF worked better than a 3M product.

[lks dcvn]

It was nice outside most of the weekend so I did some work in the driveway - cleaning up the 'new' seats, cleaning out the rust and grinding dust from the past 4 months...yuck.

Here are a few pix of the rust in the back [right around wheel wells - I take it these [wheel tubs] are just bolted in and I can clean that rust up and then bolt the wells back in with some seam sealer...can anybody confirm this?

There is also some minor rust in the floor near the tailgate that I will need to deal with as well...

I also mocked up the passenger fender while I was out there to see how it looked all one color -

[lks dcvn]

Today I got the front of the rear quarter welded in - it will need a skim coat of filler to get it really dialed in though...

I also filled all the trim holes on the passenger side while I had the welder out again.

That should be the last of the welding except for the windshield frame replacement - and I might leave that to a professional since it involves some tolerances for a w/s that I would hate to screw up and have to redo.

We will see though when I take it to get an estimate - I might faint at the price and tackle it myself.

I need to get the passenger door moved back a bit in the door opening - I will likely do that when I do both doors for the final fitment once I have the driver door on.

[VA72C10]

Looking good!

[Chevyman63]

That looks great Tom!

And the cookout can be almost any time. I will get the plans started and we will see if we can get Kurt and Jim to show up.

[NorCalTank]

Great work..Is that rust bullet on the bedside and door?

[lks dcvn]

Thx for the comps guys - nice to have some motivation along the way.

Rust Bullet - pretty much the same stuff - it is the Master Series Coating found at www.nomorerust.com

I just picked up 2 more quarts for other stuff I need to coat - this stuff goes a LONG way - it covers on the first coat and the second coat is added protection.

I don't have a 'long term test yet' but this truck will probably see Ohio winters when it is done - so that will be a good test.

[JUSBLAZ]

Looks good! Take advantage of these nice days.

So hows the door? From the one picture it looks fairly clean. Was there any bad areas?

Rich

[VA72C10]

Nice progress...glad to see you moving right along!

Have you given yourself a timeframe for paint?

[lks dcvn]

No time frame on paint yet...I will be staying with the Blue to make it easier. I don't want to take the whole thing apart - I just want it to be solid and be dependable.

No more major welding now - just fixing the inside of the bed and the area around the rear tubs...

Once the minor welding is done - I will start the body work on it for the questionable areas [crease on pass door, B pillar areas, etc.].

There isn't any major damage on the body - just some bumps and bruises along the way that will need to be fixed.

[68 TT]

Great progress. Keep at it.

[1956cameo]

It's looking great!

[lks dcvn]

Thanks guys. I haven't done anything with the Blazer for about a week. The vacation has been mentally refreshing for this project. I stared at it almost every day for many months...so spending some time working on other projects has been nice.

Now that it has been warm - I got the yard stuff done, house stuff done and working on odds and ends that I have been putting off for when the sun gets here.

Once I get the part I need for the door [thanks again 1949gmc!]- I will hang the driver door again and be putting more time into getting it wrapped up -