[Jlo1986]

Originally Posted by skorpioskorpio

If you are very resourceful, very lucky, a good fabricator, have a place to work and not a perfectionist you might be able to pull it off for less than a couple grand. If you are starting from nothing, I doubt you can do it for any less, this route means either cut down a C10 frame or do the front only and keep the leafs and drums in the back. However if you need to ask that's probably not you.

If you want to buy all the parts off the shelf and send them somewhere and have some one do the work for you, you can easily be in the $10-20 thousand or more range. Complete aftermarket front ends ready to bolt on go for $3-6 thousand depending on vendor and features, complete aftermarket chassis are also available starting in the $12-15 thousand range. Even if you buy a complete chassis you'll probably still need to change the wheels, drive shaft and trans. You'll need a motivated shop to do the work, as most will think you're insane and the ones that don't will either see it as a challenge (good) or see you as pile of money (bad). Very very few shops would be willing to cut down a frame or build a 2 wheel drive frame from junkyard parts. Again if you have to ask...

You will also have to decide what your budget is for what you start with. Looks like you are in California so you may be able to find a fairly rust free truck but probably not for under $10K and it will likely be worse than you think it is. I've heard tales of rust free Blazers and seen some that claim to be and they wern't, even in the Southwest. Mine was in the desert in the Central Valley all it's life and appeared to only have a couple bubbles in the paint on the passenger rocker but once off the rockers were a horror show inside, needing floor ends, rockers, lower A pillar gone, lower B pillar gone and windshield frame corners are in need of some reconstruction. The rest of my truck was very solid. Ignorance is bliss, consider ignoring the bubbles and going with a patinaed truck. I've seen the same bubbles in almost every "rust free" truck I've seen.

When I looked for mine I was not going to spend more than about $12K, was not going to hack up someones lovingly restored truck, or a low mileage survivor. I specifically looked for a truck that had it's original California plates on it so I knew at least that much of it's history and kept one more original Cali truck in California. I personally strongly favored Jimmys over Blazers, but that's just me. I didn't care if it ran, mine did and it didn't, it ran but didn't move. I am only keeping the frame rails and the body, I've kept no other part of the chassis or drivetrain and mine will cost at least all the numbers I've quoted in this post combined by the time I'm done.

Thanks for the input. The Blazers i have come across for sale in California, range from $3600 (no motor/tranny) on to 18k. I just figured that any blazer i purchase, i will want to paint and do interior, not to mention motor work. Hopefully i can find something that runs and relatively rust free for 5k.