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May 2009
When
"Beastly" developed the need for a drive shaft, pinion and ring gear, it
was the perfect time to hunt for a parts truck to upgrade the 1/2 ton
running gear.
In
search of a parts truck we found this...... "Beauty"
Originally rebuilt locally in the late 90's with a most
of the work documented on Off-Road.com as
Project Blazin. Since, Beauty went through two other owners after
its build. The first neglectful, and the second with good intentions but
never got around to cleaning it up.
And now, at its final home...... |
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I had my eye
on this truck for almost four years prior to this point, knowing if we
left a note we would pay top dollar.
Then is disappears for about 6 months, only to reappear posted for sale
minutes before I logged on late one night, priced within my "parts
truck" budget. So I was up bright and early the next morning, knowing a
deal like this would not last. Not quite the parts truck we were looking
for, but a sweet deal with a ton of desirable extra parts. |
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June 2009 |
The 454 Before Clean-up
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Cap Rotor Plugs and Wires, this did wonders considering the mismatched
set that dissolved as I pulled them off. The exhaust manifold gaskets,
which were blown out from being horribly loose.
Scrapped the 10 year old rubber
fuel line and rusty filter and bent up a new steel line. A new water
pump with a full 1 ton cooling system conversion. Degreased and
repainted the engine and accessory brackets.
While doing a brake inspection and flush I broke the bleeder screw in
the left caliper, so it got new calipers up front and finish flushing
the brake fluid. |
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August 2009 |
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One of the
many parts we received when we bought
the Blazer, was a new tailgate complete with a power rear window
assembly and a factory wiring harness, already painted to match. It
spent the summer stored safely in the living room prior to being
installed.
And a chance
for a
Hollister Hills test run. |
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September 2009
This website
was created. |
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The valve
covers were installed backwards hiding the oil fill cap behind the PCV
valve under the master cylinder. This was the perfect chance for an
internal inspection and to get the casting numbers from the heads. I
remove the factory tabs before stripping, repainting, and reinstalling
them on the correct side. |
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November 2009 |
The
454, clean up continued
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Continuing
with rewiring of the engine harness, rerouting the harness away from the
intake manifold.
At this point there are not any wires on top of the engine.
Beauty was
voted "Truck of the Month" for December 2009 by our fellow members of
the
ChevyK5Blazer.com
forum.
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February 2010
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old dry rotted donor |
almost new Grant GT |
donor replacement |
I traded the
old dry rotted steering wheel as a donor to a parts truck that only need
the function of steering . In return I received an almost brand new base
Model Grant GT steering wheel, complete with the mounting adapter.
The
Grant GT was installed in Beauty solving the space issues between the
aftermarket seats, roll bar and steering wheel. While its good factory
steering wheel complete with a functional horn button and all contacts
were installed in the
Bastard, upgrading the old wheel and replacing the missing horn
button and contacts.
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March 2010 |
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A little more play
time at Hollister Hills
Voted "Truck
of the Month" for April 2010 by our fellow members of the
ChevyK5Blazer.com
forum. |
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May 2010
The brake
pedal was getting soft over time. With a closer look at the brake
system, I discovered evidence of a slow leak from the base of the master
cylinder on the vacuum booster. Fortunately the master cylinder had the
original GM part number on it "29895-C", identifying it as one from an
80 3/4 ton Suburban or 1 ton truck with 13 inch rear brakes. After
picking up the master I gave it a quick bench bleeding, and swapped it
into Beauty followed by a full hydraulic flush. The pedal is solid now.
Utilizing my
license plate frame idea from the
Bastard,
I made a few more for Beauty and
Beastly. |
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June 2010
While
servicing Beauty, I decided it was running hotter than it should be
running. Not overheating, just hot. It was time to do some basic
maintenance anyways, and a good time to dig a little deeper into the
engine. |
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I stopped
after I pulled the intake as I had already found a few issues. The
intake gasket was hard and brittle with evidence of leaks everywhere,
and the bolts used on the intake were too short only allowing about two
threads on each bolt into the head. Rather than spend hours cleaning the
corroded Edelbrock Performer 2.0 EGR equipped intake, it was replaced
with an Edelbrock Performer 2.0 free of an EGR valve. All intake
manifold hardware was replaced with new stainless steel hardware of an
adequate length.
I had been
planning on rebuilding the Rochester, and already had the rebuild kit.
After opening the carb I found very little, as the inside of the carb
was almost spotless. The worst thing I found within the carb was that
some of the hardware was loose, so another possible vacuum leak was
sealed. Topped the Rochester off with a new 14x6 K&N air filter and
filter wrap.
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I knew the
valve covers were slightly warped from when I had previously pulled them
to paint them, but found them to be worse than I remembered. Considering
the time, money, and effort to track down another set of basic valve
covers that are not warped and repaint them, they were replaced with
Summit Racing's die-cast aluminum ball milled valve covers. This was a
pain as I had to almost completely remove the master cylinder and vacuum
booster assembly from the firewall to install the valve cover
underneath.
A few other
odd ball details were also attended to while I had the engine apart.
Polished the oil dip stick tube, painted the master cylinder I installed
a last month and polished the brake lines down to the frame. Removed the
exhaust manifolds and thoroughly clean the gasket surfaces. Rewired the
engine harness to a location almost completely out of sight. And pulled
the radiator overflow tank for a thorough cleaning.
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A faulty
headlight switch started killing the one Interstate battery that had
been in the rig since we bought it. The cab light would turn on
intermittently while driving or while parked. Turns out the switch just
needed a little tweak on the spring arm that grounds the cab light
circuit. This is what we were waiting for, a justifiable reason to buy
new batteries.
I started by removing the battery cables that were already in the truck to see
what I had to work with and to take measurements to see what exactly I had and what I
needed for the new cables. |
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The Positive that was still in the truck was
originally between the main battery and the auxiliary solenoid. When the
dual circuit was disassembled it was rerouted in a sloppy fashion to the
starter. Where the cable was routed it was a lot longer than it needed
to be, but about six inches short for where I wanted to route it going
back to the auxiliary solenoid.
However it is the perfect length to be
routed between the main battery and the starter if I ran the cable along
a different path. It now drops down out of sight running between the
core support and battery, down under the overflow tank, then to the
frame rail. Fortunately the ground cable for main battery was the
perfect length to follow the positive cable down to the front of the
block.
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The Optima batteries were easy to get, but due to the unusual size and length I had to
source and build my own
cables. I found a cheap little battery lug press that works quite well,
used heat shrink on the lugs to seal the cables, and
to help prevent chafing of the positive cables they were all wrapped in
convoluted tubing.
The positive cable between the main battery and the auxiliary solenoid
was run into the core support to keep it out of sight and to avoid
pinching it with the radiator top plate. The auxiliary ground cable is
run down the core support, next to the horn, then over to the frame
rail, and under the power steering pump using the rear pump bracket bolt
as the attachment point on the block.
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The
Wrangler NW Power Products dual battery circuit
had been originally installed about twelve years earlier and was
incomplete when we bought the rig.
Replacing the missing cables was the easy part, however I decided to
contact the manufacture for the proper operating instructions for the
dual battery circuit. A quick call to the tech line, and within minutes
I had the complete instillation and operating instructions. |
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After relocating the main battery
cables, the ugly and sloppy mess of transmission cooler lines became more
exposed. The braided stainless steel line that was installed with the
transmission, I chose to leave alone for now. However the return line looked
to be one of the factory steel lines, dirty, rusty, and bent in many places
it should not be.
All the nine feet of old rubber line that was installed with the
transmission cooler twelve years earlier, was replaced with new steel line. The
exception being of a few inches used as a union between the steel lines and
the barb fittings at the transmission cooler. This is not by any means the
final result for the cooler lines as I plan on running a different cooler in
a different location, but simply taking an old sloppy mess and cleaning it
up significantly to ensure there are not any restrictions from kinked or
swollen rubber line. |
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August 2010 |
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I found a
rather large puddle under Beauty one morning. I followed the leak up to
the water pump, grabbed a rag and wiped the water pump to dry it off a
bit and to get a better look at where the leak was coming from. Then a
drip turned into a stream as I exposed a hole.
Apparently
during the machining process they cut a little too close to the water
jacket leaving a very thin wall.
Fortunately it failed at the house rather than out on the road. |
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March 2011 |
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Voted "Truck
of the Month" for March of 2011 by our fellow members of the
ChevyK5Blazer.com
forum.
The new
Truck of the Month sticker is beautiful!
A vinyl trophy! |
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September 2011 |
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Being donated from the
1973 parts blazer is a Dana 60.
Before the swap
could take place the D60 needed help.
A shock mount had
been completely ripped off of the axle tube, so a new mount needed to be
fabricated.
Next up is
fresh fluids, turn the rotors, serviced the bearings, king pin bushings with
springs, and
OffRoad Design's braided
stainless steel brake
lines then it will be ready to swap in. |
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October 2011 |
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Swapping axles with
the
1973 parts blazer.
The Dana 60 is now in
Beauty along with the 14 bolt because of the Detroit Locker. |
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November 2011 |
Off Road Design's
cross over steering,
and a tie rod from WFO's to replace the bent stock tie rod. |
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Beauty
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1974 K5
Blazer "Beauty" |
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