Project: 40/Yr old makeover.

[BlazinC5]

Thanks Oldschool. With any luck it will start warming up around here and I can get back to work on the Blazer... At least today it was sunny and somewhat warmer so I felt like cleaning up around the rig a little bit...

[rsavage]

Great story and build going on. Subscribed.

[Secret Squirrel]

Always warm down here in Shreveport, time for a move BlazinC5. It's so warm you'd be done already! Plus I need your help on the Elky!

[BlazinC5]

I finally couldn't stand it.. I had to go and do somthing with the Blazer. It is sunny here today even though it's only about 35 deg. So not to bad. I grabbed my lil parabolic heater and set it up pointed at my back side.

So grabbed the welder and welded up the cracks in my lower door mount of the A-pillar. It just needs a lil more cleanup on there and the nut thingy put back in place for the backside.

here is the backside, inside the A-pillar. Seems it turned out pretty smooth.

I also cut out the lower kick panel to help fit the inner rocker panel.

[BlazinC5]

So I began fitting the inside rocker panel too. I still have a bit of cutting and fitting but it looks like it will fit nicely.

Ever wonder what it looks like way up inside the A-pillar. You can see the door light switch too. I was surprised my camera took that shot.

After working on that for a little over three hrs. My hands were freezing, as also my air tools. They get to cold, they loose power and hanging them off the front of the heater only lasts for a few min once I put the air to them. So I feel I did accomplish at least somthing today. But after a HOT shower it's time to get ready for work.
BTW Squirrel, Maybe in the future. I'll keep ya posted. But you should put a post up somewhere to show the elky off. After all, it is kinda a truck. And it's crazy cool too.

[BlazinC5]

Spring has finally sprung around here. My original plan for the day was to clean up some stuff in the garage and do some rearranging of things out there.. Soon after clearing the spot next to my blazers drivers side I found myself tinkering with my parts. Long story short, cleaning took a back seat.

I been contemplating the way I was going about the rocker and floor replacment. It seems as though there really is no good way to get into the underside of the floor with that rocker box in the way.. So.. Time to get the tools out. My boxes are in great shape so I don't want to damage them any more than I have to.. After careful thought of how to remove the welds from them and the cab suport (and some trials and that ain't gunna work's). I came up with the plan. I used a wire brush on my cordless drill to remove the old undercoating at the welds and a couple of flat areas near the front and the rear of the box next to the welds.


Those flat area's I am talking about, I went ahead and got out a small drill and 1/4-28 tap. Putting the tapped holes there are for 2 reasons. One: for alignment perposes when I put the rocker back in, and two: too hold the dang thing up so it don't fall on my head. keep in mind, I used a 28 fine thread tap just because the sheet metal suport for the cab is thin. it will have more thread in the hole to grab than the corse thread of 20.


Time to dig some weld out now.

[BlazinC5]

After muddling through a few different ways to dig the welds out. I came up with a couple of my favorite air tools. A Dyna file (on the left) and a 3" cut off disc on a small angle grinder. (on the right)

I have this thing about air tools... I love them. Even though my air compressor is I think older than my dad... And yes I got it from him. It barley works for my air tools. But for now it works, and while it is pumping back up, it allows more time to drink beer. First off, I used the cut off disc to hog out the bulk of the weld. At least, where it would fit up there between the frame rail and the rocker box. And of course beeing carful as to not cut into the cab support.

Next, the Dyna file. For those of you that don't know what a dynafile is.. Basicaly it is just a hand held belt sander. Off hand, I don't know what grit I am using here, but it is course and grinds the weld pretty fast. Because it is about 3/8" wide, It is accually pretty easy to grind in tight spaces and just to the base metal without going to far. Plus it grinds flat.

Now that I ground out the welds, It is pretty much a D shape. I'll be able to reweld that area where the factory welded it.

As for the tapped hole I have now, I will probably just plug weld it when I am all done re-attaching the rocker box. I am hoping that tomorrow I can finish grinding out the rest of the welds. (only two were left under there before the wife got mad at me for not coming to dinner.) and I am hoping that I can just drop it down and fatigue the welds on the very front lip still hidden by the front clip. One last thing. Saftey first... Saftey glasses will not work with all the dirt, undercoating and metal shaving flying around in that tight space. Use a face shield.

[BlazinC5]

So, I got the rocker box off. Even though I found that I still had to fenagle my 3" grinder up to the front area to weaken the welds in order to get the box off. Just dropping it down in the rear, just wanted to bend the upper floor area. But its off now, and nothing is out of the norm there.

Now that, that rocker box is outa the way.. I figured things would be easier to fit parts back up in there. Well, it ain't.. Key parts are considered the best. Rite. Well, they sure arent the same as OE. LOL Boy,, What a mess. After a few hrs of messing with stuff, trimming and fitting the inner rocker I called it a night. Nothing is where is should be And I am gunna have to take a step back to figure it out. Uggg. At least its out of the way right??

[oldschool18]

Take a step back and then think how great its going to be to get her on the road again, and then keep taking pics cause I have to do the same thing to mine but my rocker boxs are already off.....thank you mother nature......lookin good Blazin

[jaros44sr]

Well done, youre getting there! You cant imagine how many times i was ready to throw in the towel on the sheet metal job, probably the most fustrating job of my whole build so far. Even had to buy new panels, cause i screwed up one or two

Trust me, they will start to fall in place, youve waited all winter to do this job. Keep going, cause if i can do it, you can do it. Sometimes you just have to empty your entire tool box, to get it to fit. And, it doesnt look like you have enough tools out yet LOL

[BlazinC5]

Originally Posted by jaros44sr

Trust me, they will start to fall in place, youve waited all winter to do this job. Keep going, cause if i can do it, you can do it. Sometimes you just have to empty your entire tool box, to get it to fit. And, it doesnt look like you have enough tools out yet LOL

I been thinking of another way to attack this stuff, so hopfully next weekend things will be figured out.. And Trust me when I say, the pics don't show hardly close to the amount of tools that I have out. or what I will be getting out.. And BTW, Oldschool, Every time I go into the garage and I see this truck, I envision it on the road, haulin a$$.

[jaros44sr]

Originally Posted by BlazinC5

I been thinking of another way to attack this stuff, so hopfully next weekend things will be figured out.. And Trust me when I say, the pics don't show hardly close to the amount of tools that I have out. or what I will be getting out.. And BTW, Oldschool, Every time I go into the garage and I see this truck, I envision it on the road, haulin a$$.

Let me guess, panel adhesive and rivets....i was looking at a spot weld gun today, under a hundred bucks, cause i have to dissassemble my hood and all the bracing to repair rust on the leading edge

[y5mgisi]

Great build!

[BlazinC5]

Originally Posted by jaros44sr

Let me guess, panel adhesive and rivets....i was looking at a spot weld gun today,

I was thinkin it might be easier to just mold them parts back with clay. But a spot welder would be pretty cool too.

[Secret Squirrel]

Time for an update Blazin, all the snow is gone ... no excuses get-er-done!

[BlazinC5]

Ha HA,, You funny squirrel boy. What can I say?!?!?! Not much in the way of progress. With Spring,,, Springing into action, So do many other activities. And no. I am not anywhere near where I had hoped to be at this point and time. In the past couple of weeks I did some more work of fitting my panels a little. Taking that step back and all. But I made a little progress of getting the outer rocker to fit.

Tri plus,,, The best,,, Hmmph. Could be better. Not knocking the supliers by any means... Just wish the fit was better from the manufacturer. As ya see here in the next couple pics, there is about a 3/8" gap I am fixing at the floor joint.


But test fitting is slow. and time to work on it is even slower. Yes the weather has been great here the past week. But other things have come up.. I had to make a trip to may parents place and help them out with what I could in the single overnighter I managed to carve out of my life. However,, I came back with a surprise....


So no work on the Blazer this weekend at all. But that was a nice gift from my parents. Even though, my dad don't know I took it. I am not proud by any means to Aquire this, the way I did, But Dad will not miss it and my mother told me it was better somone got some use of it rather than let it rot away like everything else around there. Dad bought it about 8 or so years ago, and soon after had his stroke. Since then the power to the outbuildings was cut off due to the electrical having issues. So it has not ran for quite some time. As the pics show some of the dirt it aquired just sitting there. Most was knocked off loading it and beeing blown off with the drive back home... there was close to a half inch on it.
I'm doing some cleanup on the compressor and even started to get the wiring set up for it. So in the next day or so.. I will accually have a decent compressor. While I was driving home to Mom and dads, I came to a realization. I am 35. One more year will mark the fact that I have been out of that place for over half my life. I know most of you probably can't say they lived in one spot all through growing up. But I found myself wandering around the old farm just looking for all the changes. Sure the house is different since it burned down a few years back. But a house from the late 1800 goes up hot and fast. The other buildings remain mostly the same, Epecially since my dads stroke. Hardly anyone has moved anything in the shops. It's like walking into a time warp going there.. I can pick out things, like horse harnesses that were left hung on the barn wall since before I was born. Or the rope swing I hung in that very barn when I was barely a teen. It is amazing what memories sitting on a simple rope swing can trigger.

[BlazinC5]

Well, It's sad but it has been over a year since I made any updates to my thread here. Alot has been going on in my life in that time period. Some good, Some bad, But, that is how my luck is I guess.. lol
About the time of my last post. A close friend of my wife and I sold us a lil Nissan sentra gas saver. Ran great and was at about 30+ mpg. He put a new engine in it and probably broke even with the price we paid him. But that was short lived. In Oct. This happend.....




My wife was coming home from work and it was raining pretty hard. Some kid in his moms TrailBlazer coming onto the intersate way to fast, lost control and sideswiped her with enouph force to throw her into the vehicle on her left side and blew the passenger air bag.. Mind you, In that particular spot there are 5 lanes. And this kid crossed 3.5 of them claiming the steering on the trailblazer wasn't working properly. I picked my wife up and took her to the hospital to get checked out. She was mostly ok, Shaken up alot, possible cracked sternum, a few bruises and her shoulder joint is still messed up. Needless to say we have not yet settled with the insurance yet.
As for a mid summer of 2012 project (before the wifes accident) I had decided that with all the overtime and extra work I had been doing I needed to treat myself with something to make me feel better at the end of the 12+ hr days i put in.

43- 80lb bags of concrete is a chore to mix and pour out in a slab all by yourself.

But what can I say, the end result is so Frigging worth it. .
With loosing the gas saver car in Oct. 2012, we got the cash value of the car payed out to us and I was satified with the offer very well. We went out in Nov. 2012 and hunted down a 2006 Chevy Aveo with 125K on the clock. Yeh buddy, things were lookin up again. First road trip in that lil car we got 35 MPG and i wasn't goin easy on the throttle.

So, January 2013 rolls on in, My wife was not feeling quite rite. Face twitching and numbness on her scalp. We go to the doc and they tell us we need to got to the ER and have them look into it alot closer. Well, after 2 days of her in the hospital, the bombshell was dropped. Multiple Sclerosis. (MS). She is still working but now her paychecks are all going for paying the medical bills that were rolling in and left me with all the house bills. It sucked my saving dry. No thanks to the way insurance has changed in the last couple years. But we are dealing with things and have made adjustments to keep us going.

[BlazinC5]

Last later spring I had a long talk with the wife and I finally convinced her that we need to move. Just by selling our house and move closer to where I work will save us ALOT of money each month. The fact that I have outgrown my current shop needs is a big factor too. So I spent a good portion of my time in the early summer picking things up and organizing stuff. I even managed to get a deck built in the back yard to compliment the hot tub. I managed to scratch off enouph stuff, I finally got to spend some time working on my Blazer. Woo-hoooo Time for the fun stuff.

After taking a larger step back to look at what I was doing. I first off wanted to evaluate the rocker box. Still pretty solid. Surface rust and some nasty dried up undercoating.


Even the inside was pretty dang good.


These blocks were welded on for a step to get into the cab. Guess i don't need them any more. So i cut them off.


The attachment points for the rockerbox and suport brackets had some issues. A couple of the captured nuts were broke off and one had the bolt welded on to the floor support. After cutting some bolts off to get it apart, I decided I needed to get a nut back up in the floor support.


My solution to this was to elongate the holes that were missing the captured nut.

[Tom Vogel]

[QUOTE
My solution to this was to elongate the holes that were missing the captured nut.

Another idea would be to weld that elongated hole back up now and put in a nutsert. Either that or weld in another nut... You have to use some judicial heat control to keep from melting the nut though.

[BlazinC5]

Yeah, I kinda left ya'll hanging there when I ran out of time posting last night. But on to the goods.

This is the new nut I am using in the floor support and a heavy wire from a coat hanger to get it into place
.

It's pretty deep in there and not much room so after cleaning out some dirt clods and the old nuts I came up with this idea.


After pulling it through I just lined up the nut with the center of the origional hole and welded it up. The heat on the nut is not much of an issue though. It's welding upside down one handed, while holding the wire steady with the other hand, then looking through the welding helmet in a cramped space and poor lighting while trying not to get burned by falling molten metal or burning through the floor support.


After the welding and gringing the surface smooth, I ran a tap through the new nut to chase the threads. They have a tendancy to shrink a lil.


Next item I tackled was test fitting the new rocker box reinforcment panel. I found that this is a nice part, however, it needed to be modified a bit to fit properly. I would venture to guess that not all these blazers are quite the same dimentions every place. This pic shows I added another hole to the side of it, so I could line up another hole better. Later I welded up the slightly larger hole and ground it smooth.

[BlazinC5]

The next mod it needed was the upper tab sat to high by about an 1/8"-1/4". so I cut it down and rewelded the tab. Next I bolted the panel in place, nice and snug to weld on some more nuts to the part mimicing the OE part.


Once all that was done. I cleaned up a few other parts with the wire wheel including the rocker box support, rocker end cap, lower B pillar and the rear floor support. What you see here is them all cleaned and preped and readied. You can probably make out the flash rust on the rocker support.


After brushing on 2 coats as directed I was quite impressed with the POR 15. It almost has a plastic feel to it.


I took a lil care when going around the nuts to not get much POR 15 in the threads.


But dang,, that is a nice, smooth, glossy surface left by a regular old paint brush. The POR 15 that I used was also close to 2 yrs old, but never opened the can. Still good! More to come later.

[Tom Vogel]

Really Good Job on that nut!

[BlazinC5]

So, after getting those parts POR 15ed. I set them aside to fix a lil something else. After years of beeing sat on, both the rear drivers seat mounts had some fatigue too. The sheet metal cracked and the support bracket was bent a little too.


I found some scrap metal that was rigid for my job at hand. this 1x1 angle iron worked great. I just drilled 2 holes to match the width of the seat mount and ran a couple of bolts into the mount. I used some washers as spacers. This took several setups to flatten it all out.


I also did the same with the underside. You can see the bend in the support bracket here. My bolts came in from the top and had enouph thread to get a couple of nuts on the botom. Using the washers to push from below. from here I just tightend the nuts up till I got it flat.


I then needed to pull the whole bracket up. I pulled off the angle iron under the floor and backed out the bolts to fit a couple of 3/16" plate scraps on each side of the angle iron on top. I used the larger plate scraps to be more supportive (convincing) to the floor with the bracket to move up, rather than the rest of the floor give in to the bracket.


It took a few times of tightening and loosening the bolts due to the spring back the material has in it. As for the floor metal on each side of the support bracket, only one side had a low spot, and a couple of taps with a wood stick on the underside, it came out flush with the rest of it.

[BlazinC5]

Now that it is flat, I drilled some holes at the end of each of the cracks to stop it from possibly cracking more. Then welded them up solid.


I ground it nice and smooth. Not to shabby... While I was doing that I filled a few old holes from screws that over the years held various amplifiers under the seat. I also took out the lil brackets for the old stock jack and tire irons mounts in there. I ain't gunna use them, So I plug welded them holes too.


The lower B piller I made, I had all ready POR 15ed, I got it lined up and began to weld into place. Well, here is something I didn't think much about when enjoying the use of POR 15. It don't like to be welded on. ALOT Even after grinding it back, it still didn't weld easily. So, word to the wise. If your gunna weld it, Don't POR it. However I got it fit up in there very nicely, then touched up the POR 15 over the ground down welds.


The next task at hand was to close up the hole between the B pillar and the cab area. I just used the same thickness of material and cut it out. But pay attention, The material does have some very fine bends to it. Just some minor tweets with a vice and a dead blow hammer did the job. Then I welded it up and ground it smooth.

[BlazinC5]

While getting to the grinding of that little pannel piece and welding back in the rear floor support. I decided to get the big gun out. My big Danco air grinder. Then I found I had more problems. (Other than I didn't seem to get any pictures of me putting the rear floor support in and having more POR 15 in the way of my plug welds to reattach it.) I found something froze up in the grinder. Time to do emergency exploritory surgury. Apperently some water got in my airline from another project earlier in the year and well, rusted a bearing. I WD40ed the snot out of it and worked the bearing back to life. Life just isn't the same without that grinder... But it is nice that the city gave me this mobile plastic bench to work on. (Garbage bin)


Next up, Fitting a whole mess of things together.. When I got the front floor support fit with everything I had to add some material to the large ends ears and drill the holes for the bolts. One side got nuts welded to it the other not. I was able to use 2 OE holes to line it up from the A pillar and one on the top right was close from putting the OE kick panel back in place. the lower right one ,,, well I just made it look good and fit rite.


I had also filled in the mounting surfaces on the tabs top to end for a little more strength and then POR 15ed the end after it's fitting was done


So I got everything lined up and fitting good. I even welded the spud back in that the body mount bolt slips through on the main floor support. Problem there though is the room to weld. and i don't have a spot welder, nor can i justify buying one for this lil detail.


I just used a C-clamp to hold down the outer front floor support to the main floor support and put a couple of welds on the outside. Then welded the vertical tabs on the side. The weld on the firewall side was difficult to get in there to do. And another tip. Don't weld over top of your body mount rubber. I swapped in a piece of aluminum.