Black Hills blazer build
 

Hi every one. My name is Scott and I finally paid for a subscription to this GREAT site!
I am from Rapid City,S.D.. I have had numerous 67-72 trucks and love the blazers the best.
I bought a stock 72 cst about 10 years ago. It eventually got a 6inch lift,36inch swampers,and lots of body damage. (the black hills have great rock trails) What was a restorable blazer was used hard. (yea I already kicked myself in the head!) I found another 72 cst that is very solid and am currently giveing it a full rebuild/resto.
It will be orange of course. 454 th400/205 a/c tilt, tach, 6 inch lift, aluminum slots, (love that 70's stuff), black interior, and a soft top if they are ever available again! I own a restoration shop so that will help alot.
I will try to figure out how to post pics so I can join in on the fun!
See you all later, Scott

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Welcome from California. :mm:

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Welcome to the board from Seattle. Post some pics of both rigs!

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Welcome aboard! Do like I did and get your kid to help with pic's- they are great with this computer stuff! Great Lake state welcomes you to the greatest K5 forum out there!

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Hello Scott,

Welcome from Rapid City! Sounds like you have a great time riding in the hills. Is your ride orange right now? I was sitting at the Elk Vale McD's last Saturday and saw a lifted Blazer going north that had the hardtop and body was painted orange. It looked pretty nice but I was quite a long ways away. What shop do you own?

I live in Green Valley and work just across the crick so I don't get out much!! :-}

Later---DAC

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

I forgot to tell you how I do pics so I went to edit and got sidetracked by a phone call and when I went to finish it said that there is a time limit on editing!

I download my digital pics fullsize on my 10 year old Gateway, and using a $20 program I got at Sams Club called "Picture It" (by Microsoft)
It is easy to size any pic (JPG) to under 100 kilobytes as required by this site. There are a lot of folks here that know how to get around that 100 KB requirement but it raises hell on my computer when I stumble across them. Someday I will enter the 21st century.

Later---DAC

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Thanks for the reply! My blazer is currently broke down. (bent rear spring perch from last summer) Thats what got me going on my other blazer. Plus after doing a couple of Dakota Territory Challenges (I used to be active in the black hills 4-wheelers) it is pretty beat! My shop is called Scottrods and is on the corner of Seger and Dyess. Stop by anytime. Scott

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

You're not getting off that easy. Ya gotta have some action pics of your blazer. We don't care what condition it's in, we all just want to see pictures of blazers.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Welcome to the board, nice tale of the trails. ;)

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

I will try and get pictures up as soon as possible. Hopefully in the next few days.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Will be waiting patiently for pictures ;)

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

A few days turned into a month, but I think I got the picture thing figured out with a little help from a fellow board member.
I found a few old pics of my orange blazer that I had to take a digital picture of to download. They may not be the best but it is what I could find for now.
Here is my blazer in the beginning. Stock with rally wheels and some Mickey Thompson Baja tires.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Next pics are with 6" skyjacker lift, 36"swampers, 6point cage. Blazer is a CST, Tach, air, am/fm (missing), Extreme tow hooks.
When I got the truck I didn't know any thing about the hooks. I thought someone put them on from a bus or something.HaHa!

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Here are a few pics of my current project.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

A few more.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Looks real good, keep at it! What kind of shop do you run?

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

I have a restoration shop. I do body and paint up to turn key restos. And yes, I LOVE my job!

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Oh, here are a few "action" shots. I will try to find some more.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

These pics were on a rainy,slippery,waterfall. You go up at an angle and with the rain I slid over to the driver side where there was a 18" or so rock on top. Rather than back down and take a different line I figured I would try it and see what happend. If you look at the pic of my underside my left front tire wasn't to the top of the rock yet. It felt like it was going to flip over! Believe it or not my wife and kids didn't make a peep!

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

:welcoem: aboard from the deep South. I'm lovin' the color of your project, Turp, even though you're planning on changing it.

Best of luck on the resto! :metal:

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Everything I've ever painted for myself has been Black. It is my alltime favorite
color on a vehicle. This blazer was going to be black. Orange is one of those colors that doesn't work on everything. But on these blazers it really works good! My wife doesn't agree. She says orange is for fruits and veggies! She'll learn to love it! lol!!

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Sweet rides, I agree orange looks great on 1st gen blazers.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Thanks for posting the pics, enjoyed checking them out. Will be great following your progress.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Thanks for posting the pics. Nice rigs. Looks like you've had a lot of fun with the orange one. You should check out how VTBlazer replaced the rockers on his rig with sliders. He also created some quick-remove door pins so he could pull the doors for summer wheeling.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Cool, glad to see some pics! I have always liked the orange too. I once had a 70 gmc longbed 2wd that was red. The paint was so faided it looked orange, to this day the wife and I argue about the color! Any pic's of the shop?

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

I am going with a 454/400/205 combo. Here are some mock up pics. I wanted to keep the large truck pan so I modified the stock crossmember with a spare that I had. I went this route instead of making one from scratch with tubing so it will still look stock to the casual observer. I ended up dropping the center by two inches.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

I moved the crossmember ahead two inches. I then moved the trans/transfer case back one inch. The 400/205 adapter is one inch longer than the 350/205 adapter.So by doing it this way it put the transfer case stick in the same location as it was stock with the 350/350/205. The fan fit perfectly inside the 2wd bb shroud. Half in half out.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Cool pics, Scott! Even tho I saw the truck in person, the crossmember pics definitely clarify what you had to go thru to use that bigger pan and to keep from messaging the firewall. Nice work!

Later---DAC

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

swyfor5, here are a few shop pics.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Sorry to say, I looked at the photos and those are actually buss hooks. I happen to have a bus missing the hooks, so if you wanna just ship em out....

Sweet blazer, and its a good looking shop also.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Welcome to the board looks like ya do some pretty sweet rides..

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Here's whats been happening in the last month.
I pulled the 454 out of my donor truck. It had been rebuilt but I HAD to open it up for a look. Zero ridge and very obvious hone marks. They also used a double roller chain and had it balanced as well. The guy that had it supposedly spent a buch of money on it. Maybe he did. As I suspected...flat tops. YUCK!! Those will have to go! No 8 to 1 compression for me!LOL!
I thought I was ready to pull the body off the frame but decided that the first time I get a dent in my new GM rockers, I am going to be PO d! So I built some rock sliders. Also figured I would mount my cage now as well.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Here's a few pics with cage in blazer.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Here's a couple with the top on.
Hopefully this weekend the body will come off the frame!

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Turp, sorry for slacking on reply's. Nice shop setup! Maybe you've seen my threads on the bumper lately, kinda taking up all my spare time here. Getting close to the end of my custom bumper journey! This is the best forum on the web for 1st gens I have ever found, great bunch of guy's here! Keep the pic's coming! I dream of setting up my barn/shop for resto work and look forward to more pic's of how some of you guy's are already "doing" it!

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Great progress report! :cool:

Will the cage be tied into the frame or bolted to the tub for the final install?

How'd you build/mount the rock sliders? Any better pics of em?

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Good job modifying your engine crossmember - I went that route also to get the necessary clearance. Your pics are great and one of them nicely shows the driver side firewall issue and how that can be addressed by moving the motor forward.

You're doing a great job and I will enjoy watching your project progress!

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

When I had the cage in my orange blazer it was just bolted with 6"x6" plates on the bottom. After a summer of hard wheeling in the rocks with no top, my rear body body brace/u channel (below the tailgate) was bent downwards outside the framerails. Presumably from climbing rocks and putting downward pressure on the rear cage legs. When I put the top back on it would not seal towards the back of the bedsides. There was about 3/8" of daylight between the top and the bedsides! I'm not going to "wheel" it like did the other one, but plan to attach it to the frame. I will post pics of what I came up with.
I will also post some good pics of the sliders and how they are mounted as well.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Awesome, looking forward to what you come up with here! Looking at going at these same areas on my build soon, thank's.

Re: New member from the Black Hills
 

Here are some pics of my "rocker savers".
I mounted it to the frame at the body mount locations thinking that would be the strongest point. The outer rear tab will mount to the outer most rocker end cap bolt. A very strong location as well. For the front tab I will weld a piece of flat stock with a nut welded to it inside of the rocker box.
Hopefully these will work for that ocassional rock or log that that I drive over against my better judgement.LOL!