1985 V8-S10 Blazer

[TireSmoker]

Are you concerned about the bundled and closely parallel plug wires?

So I found some simple black wire separators in inventory and have applied them. I don't have a pic, but they look a little better and safely away from the exhaust.

-Dave

[Maverick]

Are you concerned about the bundled and closely parallel plug wires?

So I found some simple black wire separators in inventory and have applied them. I don't have a pic, but they look a little better and safely away from the exhaust.

-Dave

Not a bad idea even though, from what I've been reading, newer wires have magnetic shielding to protect all the under-hood electronics. Didn't know that. Cross-firing can be a problem in the Ford firing order 1-5-4-2-6-3-7-8 if the 7 & 8 wires (rear cyls on left bank) are close and parallel.

MSD makes some nice red separators.

[TireSmoker]

I've been driving it a bunch since the distributor swap and am overall pretty pleased with it. However, it pings a lot on the 87 octane under load. The timing is only at 6* initial, so I may step up to 89 octane. On the night I bought it, I tried brake-torquing it and it coughed, sputtered and basically failed to do a burnout. Last night while sitting at a light with Tony, I brake-torqued and it instantly started spinning.. (one wheel peel) It has an odd shake/vibration just off-idle that is gone by 1600rpm or so. Not sure if it's a fueling issue or something else. I may swap the Holley for the Edelbrock 600 from the Vette just as a test.

I'm unsure what to do about the radio speakers. The doors have holes for speakers, but I can only get two of the 4 mounting screws in for each speaker, as if the the holes are just slightly too big. I also have to run new speaker wires, as the ones already in the doors run to the back, where the amp used to be. The door panels are the most beat-up part of the interior, and a new set is ~$250. I could then cut new holes for the door speakers. I'm undecided about making that investment. The rear seat speaker openings will accept a 6x9, but they are too shallow for just about any aftermarket speaker. I'm trying my best to use what I have without buying anything.

One disappointment -- went to the car wash on Sunday, and it seemed the frame was hitting the tracks from being too low. That's a real bummer. I'll wait till next year to investigate further. Taller wheels/tires may solve it. Worst case would be swapping the 2" drop spindles for 1" drop spindles, which I think would even out the rake it currently has.

Temp tag expires on Dec 14th and I wont buy any plates till after my birthday in Feb. I'm lucky to get all this drive time with the warm weather, and the rain that washed off the first salt they put down last weekend.

-Dave

[TireSmoker]

Well, just been playing with it the past month or so. Not being super happy with the Holley carb on there, I decided to borrow the Edelbrock 600 off of the Vette. I dont remember how much adjustment I did to it on the Vette in terms of rods/jets, but I don't think I did much. However, it does seem to run a bit better with the Edelbrock.

Tonight, I decided to see what different wheels look like on it. The set of Centerlines that I bought for the Chevelle in summer 2015 was a 5-wheel set, with an extra front. So, I grabbed that and one of the rear wheels off the Chevelle and bolted them on. Looks tons better than those smoothies. Its interesting to see how what a big difference there is from 215-65-15 to 215-70-15. They're almost an inch taller and help to reduce the rake.

I cant wait to get rid of those smoothies and put either these or ZQ8 wheels on it.

-Dave

[Basement Paul]

Those do look sweet. Does it already have lowering springs in the back? I think if the back were dropped another inch / inch and a half, it would sit perfect. That taller tire helps a bunch in the front.

-BP

[TireSmoker]

The rear already has some lowering blocks installed. I really think before this is all over, I'm gonna end up changing out the 2" drop spindles up front for 1" drop spindles.

-Dave

[Basement Paul]

Bringing up the front, will also bring the back down somewhat. Win, win.

-BP

[TireSmoker]

I finished up the stereo installation. This Sony was purchased back in 2010 and was going to end up in the Chevelle. But that never happened. I got the radio, 6 1/2" speakers, and a set of Sony 6x9s for dirt cheap when I opened my amazon.com credit card. Amazon is where I also ordered the installation kit for the Blazer, which was like $10. There's a small gap between top of radio bezel and HVAC controls, I'll have to see if one of the other pieces from the installation kit fits better there.

It has totally improved the vehicle! I now have tunes (am/fm/cd/aux-in/usb) and no longer have a torn apart dash with wires hanging out. As a bonus, the factory speakers were still under the dash pad, so I have four speakers, when I was only expecting to have two. (dash + doors). There are openings in the back for 6x9s, but they are shallow. I'll figure something out there later. For now, it sounds pretty good for stuff that came out of my basement.

-Dave

[MostMint]

You said basement

[Basement Paul]

It wouldn't have sounded as good if it came from the attic.

-BP

[TireSmoker]

Last weekend, we took the Blazer up to Presque Isle Casino, near Erie, PA to play in the Sunday tournament. This was our 2nd trip up there for this tournament, and just like the first, I cashed after we chopped the pot when we were down to 6 players (78 buy-ins) $55 to enter, and I left with $400.

The truck ran perfectly. Mostly 70-80mph driving on I-90 with a few full throttle blasts. But this thing hates revving worse than any other small block I've driven. 4500rpm seems like a struggle, but it's decently torquey under 3500. I pulled down a touch over 14mpg.

While the radio sounds pretty good, it has an odd problem. I have a 32GB usb drive plugged into it -- but when playing songs, I get skips like you'd get from a CD player. While composing this post, I did some searching and found this:

https://us.en.kb.sony.com/app/answers/d ... usb-device.

which basically says, the skipping could be caused by a bit-rate that is too high. That's counter-intuitive for me, as a higher bit-rate should provide more data (ie- more accurate) for generating the sound. I'm also not sure if there is a quick way to reduce the bit rate on a large number of files. More investigation required.

-Dave

[TireSmoker]

I've been continuing to drive the Blazer the past couple months and it's really running nice. I finally corrected the speedometer, which has been waaay off since I bought it. It was reading 40mph when I was going a GPS-indicated 60. I also knew that 2500 RPM was ~72mph

I used this page to figure out my rear gear ratio -- http://www.angelfire.com/fl/procrastination/rear.html -- turns out I have a 2.73 rear gear. No wonder this thing is kind of a slug.

Once I knew the gear ratio, I went here, http://www.5speeds.com/calculators/SpeedoCalc.html and figured out which speedo gears I would need. Tony had a few speedo gears from when he changed his, but didn't have the right combination. I ordered up a 9 tooth drive gear and 18 tooth driven gear from https://transmissioncenter.net/shop/drive-gear/

But, no job ever comes out perfect. There's a little metal tab that holds the speedo-bullet in the tailshaft housing and it was missing, or so I thought I had ordered the little tab when I bought the speedo gears, but when I went to put it in, I discovered the bolt that holds it in was broken in the tailshaft housing, not just missing. And of course, I didn't find that until I had already put everything back together. I'll tackle that another time. It's stayed in this long without it, I'll tackle that another time.

But the good news is that the speedo now reads perfect. $50 for both gears, the speedo bullet, the metal tab and shipping. I probably didnt need the bullet, but bought it just in case. Money well spent.

Tonight, I decided to take it out to the dragstrip instead of the Chevelle. I've been wanting a baseline number in case I make some improvements. The forecast was for warm weather, and potential rain, and I was feeling lazy about changing tires on the Chevelle, so it was as good a night as any. I got several compliments on how it looked, which was nice. So, the good news is that it's at least faster than my dad's Mustang, but barely. My best of the night was a 15.72 @ 89 MPH with a 2.29 60-foot. I can't get the shifter down into 1st gear, so it shifts at 4000 RPM 1-2, and I'm crossing the line at about 4300 in 2nd gear. I got 4 time runs in, but lost in the first round. I tree'd the guy (.1 to .21), but I hit the brakes at the the last second. He ran 13.67 on a 13.66 dial, so he was right on. I went 15.90 on a 15.75 dial. Being my 5th run, I was happy to go home early to watch the Cavs/Raptors game #5 in the Eastern Conference Finals. Cavs are crushing the Raptors, beating them by 40pts late in the 4th qtr!

-Dave

[TireSmoker]

I thought I had posted another update in September, but I guess not.

So I ran some pretty terrible times at the dragstrip in this thing earlier in the summer. I left it together, but knew that once the season wound down, I'd have to address the lack of power. By the times posted today, Kurt's 187k 3.5 V6 would solidly beat me. The Saturn would crush me. I've got 5.7L compared to 3.5 and 1.9! I'd really like this thing to trap at 100+ MPH.

Going through the Tiresmoke parts bin, I have a pair of stock Vortec heads, a Performer RPM intake, and all the associated gaskets and even a set of head bolts from Mostmint's acquired inventory. I already cleaned the set of head bolts, so that they are ready to bolt on once I got the old heads off.

I had removed the top of the engine and the intake sometime back in September. I pulled the radiator and un-used AC condenser too, so I can start engineering a solution that will allow me to run an electric puller fan(s). The plastic flex fan, is just unacceptable. It's less than adequate in true stop-n-go traffic, makes too much noise, and it surely costing me power at higher engine speeds. Recall that it doesnt really rev over 4500 rpm.

I couldn't get the heads off then because the exhaust was in the way, and to get that out, I had to cut exhaust under the car. This was near the end of September, while in October two weekends were occupied with Chumpcar races. (an abysmal weekend in Pittsburgh, followed a couple weeks later by a great weekend of two podium finishes at Road America.

Today, I got under there and cut the exhaust so I could get it out of the way of the headbolts. My co-worker Tony recently gave me a Ryobi sawzall (barely used) & Black/Decker jig saw (brand new) because he was never going to use them again! The sawzall cut the exhaust like butter. Chris was over with assist today.

I got the heads off without any real difficulty. 991 castings, which are truck heads with 1.72 intake valves. The Vortec heads have a smaller, superior combustion chamber, which will gain me almost a point of compression. The intake port is way better too. Head swap alone could be 30-40hp, possibly more since I had small valve heads. I could do just the head swap and not spend a dime. I have everything.

The dilemma is the cam. The engine has to come out to do a cam swap. A cam swap, along with the heads would really wake this thing up. But to get the engine out, the driver's side top bellhousing bolt is really tough to get at too. I bought a couple sacrificial wrenches tonight that I can maybe custom bend to get this bolt out.

The other issue with a cam swap, is what will the current exhaust system support? Looks like 2 1/4 at best. Full length headers (installation issues unknown) would require significant exhaust re-do. The more common mid-length swap headers appear to be unpopular because they're barely better than manifolds, and getting collectors bolted up is a PIA. The gains aren't worth the hassle, allegedly. I currently have a set of 'swap manifolds', not sure what you'd call them.

To be continued...

[GMJohnny]

Dave....

How hard is the transmission bolt to access when the cylinder heads are off?
Maybe you could get the block out, cam it, and re-install the heads afterward?
Perhaps you could drill a hole (the size of the socket required) in the firewall
just behind the bolt, to act as an access port and then plug it up when the install
is done. You have until April to get the truck back on the road (assuming that
you don't want to drive it at all in the winter). You will kick yourself if you do
all of this work and THEN decide that it needs a cam, but that could always be
next winter's project! The real question is -- Why will it only rev 4500 rpm? Is
the cam the real reason, or is restriction of exhaust, crappy heads, maybe a
timing chain that is installed on the wrong ( +2, -2, or 0 ) way is causing that
as well. Just some input!!

GM

[MostMint]

I was thinking two things:

1) why not pull the engine and trans together
2) u can change a cam without changing heads. If you want to make this a bigger project you certainly can but if you just put on the new heads and intake it will run a lot better and you won't have to go to the next level. It really just depends on where you want to spend your free time. Also - do you have a cam or are you buying one? The Chevelle is already fast this is a secondary utility cruiser so do you want to throw a few more C notes at it?