1986 K5 Blazer name: TBD

[pender1]

1986 K5 Blazer "Fade to Black"

Hey guys. This is my '86 K5 that is the continuation of me learning how to work on things.



My previous project truck, a '84 K10, sacrificed much for the K5 to live. It's story can be found in brief picture form here: https://imgur.com/a/swNeI
It was completely totalled and after the insurance payout I basically broke even on it including all the parts I had added. It became a parts mule.



It's almost mean to make the truck watch all of it's parts go onto the Blazer.


I bought the Blazer in decent shape other than a leaking head gasket (which became a much larger problem later), but otherwise in pretty ok shape.



This was the G80 locker in the rear axle. It is FUBAR, but I was going to swap the axles anyways so not a huge loss. The K5 had 3.42 gears in it which are a little tall for my needs and I've already got nice new 3.73 and luchboxes in the axles from the truck.


I may have taken #frontendfriday a little too far.



I'm everyone's favorite neighbor.



After swapping the rear axles, I had a little vibration which I chocked up to lose steering, but when new balljoints did little to fix it I went looking and found this:



Bent axle shaft as a result of he car that hit that tire when this axle was in the truck. Oh well. I've got a "new" ebay axle shaft on the way as we speak and a new wheel bearing and seal waiting to go in.

 

[pender1]

Anyways, remember that head gasket leak mentioned earlier? Well it became a big leak.



And so the engine came apart.



And when that didn't work, I got drastic.



I was making all of 5lbs of vacuum and had virtually no compression so away the worn out 350 and the wobbly 700r4 went.



I was already planning on swapping the SM465 from the K10 into the K5 and doing away with the 700r4, I just wound up swapping the motor out of the truck as well. It's a bit on the underpowered side, but the little 305 gets me down the road for now. I'm saving my pennies for a new engine, haven't decided if I'm going 350 or 383 yet.

Obligatory sunset photo simply because I like it.



This is my current state of affairs. Got a new bumper on the front, still doing a bunch of wiring fixes inside (don't even have a dash right now). Put in a Tuffy center console with a radio mount and I'm putting toggle switches in the stock radio location. Some of the stuff in this first post is out of chronological order, but I grouped it so it would make some sense. Hopefully I'll update as I go from here on out, and maybe take more pictures (it's tough to remember to photo things when you're a 1 man workcrew). And if you notice, the huge black spots that have spontaniously appleared in the paint, the PO painted the whole thing green and blacked all the chrome with no paint prep what-so-ever. So all the paint is flaking off and looks like crap (hence the name). Think I may paint it grey...



Future plans include rock guards, roll cage, cutting the existing doors into half doors because they are already full of bondo and keeping the doors off of the truck for full doors, fabing bumper wings for the front, building a rear bumper with a tire swing....and the list goes on. I really need to think up a better name too.