1985 V8-S10 Blazer

[TireSmoker]

So it was a bad news/good news weekend. The bad news is that my valvesprings arrived Friday, but they're the wrong ones. And the right ones are on factory backorder, which means it could be a while. They said there might be 1 set left, they will check on Monday. So, I couldn't finish the heads.

The good news is I scored a pretty complete ZQ8 suspension setup. Front coils+isolators, fat front sway bar/mounting brackets/endlinks, plus Rear leafs, rear swaybar with axle and frame brackets, plus a set of rear shocks which are alleged to be in good shape. $200 on craigslist. The guy Nick from Streetsboro has brought a few S10s up from Tenn (rust-free) to part out. He could be a good potential source for other parts.

-Dave

[TireSmoker]

I contacted Alex's Parts about the wrong valve springs and got that corrected. I'm hoping (but doubting) the correct ones will show up by the weekend. That will get me back on track there.

Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on the engine, I started thinking about the radiator again. I found this radiator, which looks perfect. https://www.summitracing.com/parts/gri- ... k-65211828 I'm gonna look into getting the radiator opening modified instead of cutting the core support like shown in the Summit reviews. See modifications here: http://v8s10.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=17576

While I'm figuring all that out, I'm gonna paint the exhaust, as well as the ZQ8 suspension pieces.

-Dave

[TireSmoker]

On Saturday, the parts pile grew a little larger with the addition of Paul's 3.42 posi + hop shock and bracket. Later that day, I washed all the parts with soap & water and some scotch-brites. On Sunday, I got the paint out and gave everything a good coat of paint.

-Dave

[TireSmoker]

Valve springs arrived yesterday and I was able to get out there tonight and sorta figure it all out. I bought a nice valve spring compressor tool from Summit. *Much* better tool than the old pry bar that you'd screw onto the rocker stud. https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sum-906784/overview/ A couple of the reviewers there were correct when they noted it can compress the spring at not-quite-the-correct angle. Combine that with that valve moving a little bit made getting the keepers back in a real challenge. Played with the first valve a couple times to get a good system worked out. I now have 2 of 16 springs changed, but the next 14 will go pretty quick.

The springs are from http://www.alexsparts.com -- they make a drop-in kit with new springs, retainers, and keepers. I bought a new set of valve seals to complete it.

Scope creep has taken this project from a simple head swap to an almost entire driveline replacement, with rearend, new springs, swaybars, and likely new spindles up front. I'm just trying to make sure I pick at it a little bit every night. I'm not going to make my original Christmas deadline, but I can foresee being done by mid-January. I'm stoked to see how this thing turns out.

-Dave

[Blue_69_malibu]

I heard a rumor that rear-end was 12 second and 450 HP certified.

[Basement Paul]

Track tested, S10 approved!

[GMJohnny]

I heard just the opposite. A little old lady owned it and it was used
to get groceries on sunday morning...in July...every other year...if
it wasn't raining...in Arizona.... a hardly used piece.

GM

[TireSmoker]

I had a productive day in the garage today. BP came over and we made some significant progress on the rearend swap. We got the old one without too much hassle. Ended up cutting the axle U-bolts when my impact gun would only take off one on each side. No biggie, because the old ones would've been much too long since I won't be using the lowering blocks anymore.

Not sure what this old rearend came from. The way the backing plates were held on is nothing like I've seen before. Also, the drums required for the new '03 rearend are a little bigger, so I need to get some new drums. Will probably have to get some new brake lines too.

But all the heavy lifting, literally and figuratively, is done.

-Dave

[TireSmoker]

The rearend swap is mostly complete at this point. I was finally able to put it back on the ground tonight.

I bought all new brake hardware for Paul's rearend, although I did use his original brake shoes, they were plenty good. I made up some new NiCopp lines and replaced the frayed flex hose to the axle that the previous owner routed *over* the left-side exhaust, straining it when the axle was off the ground. The brakes are plumbed and bled. The biggest holdup was the axle u-bolts. The ones from Autozone (that I had to wait for) wouldn't fit without grinding out the holes on the piece that goes on the bottom of the leaf springs, and I didn't want to do that. Classic Chevy wanted $30+ for each u-bolt. I got them on gmpartsdirect.com for $18 each. Ordered them on the Jan 8th, and still didn't have them on the 18th, when I called them to check. the lady said they only had 3 of the 4 I ordered, and the 4th showed up the day I called. They arrived on the 21st (yesterday).

I still need to mount the rear sway bar and hop-shock mount to the frame. Then it'll be on to the front suspension where I need to change the front springs to the ZQ8 springs, and swap the sway bar for the larger ZQ8 bar.

-Dave

[AKROVER]

I am sure the brake shoes were still good because Paul never slowed down.

[GMJohnny]

I like the new stance! Looks sweet!!

GM

[TireSmoker]

I like the new stance! Looks sweet!!

GM

Well, it's not quite done, stance-wise. I still need to replace the front springs, and I haven't looked at the spindles yet. I did run into one snag though -- the bracket for the hop shock and the rear sway bar look like they need to be in about the same place. If I have to choose one or the other, I'll take the sway bar over the hop shock. It's definitely going to require something custom.

At the other end, the engine is finally done!

"Use stupid parts, get stuck doing stupid mods." -- so this whole project started off with me wanting to use up as many parts in my inventory as I could, which included the finned aluminum oil pan & aluminum timing cover. These were pieces that didn't work on my 400 years ago (to be fair, they didn't list 400 in the description). Anyway, I put them on this 350 and no issues -- until I went to put the timing pointer on. The flange on the timing cover is probably 1/4-3/8" thick -- much thicker than stock stamped steel. It screws up the mounting of the timing pointer. A stock pointer was overhanging the balancer, so it would be impossible to read. SO, I bought a trick looking Moroso piece with a little needle for the pointer. With the shiny cover, and pointer, I figured a stock balancer would look a little crummy, so I found a replacement that matched visually, and was fairly inexpensive at $60. Problem solved, right? Wrong.

Chris came over and while trying to mount the pointer, it wouldn't sit flat on the cover because of the radius at the cover's flange. Grrr.. so, he did some clearancing on the pointer while I was still working on the rear brakes. After he finished, we were drawing the balancer onto the crank it got tighter at one point, but it clearly wasn't fully on. Just figured it was tight, being new. I was using a breaker bar, and it lived up to the name -- I broke my installation tool after not seeing that the balancer was hitting the lower mounting screw for the new pointer. Caught us both by surprise. It just barely didn't clear and left a little ding on the balancer. You can see it right behind the "1610" marking.

I started looking online at different pointers and saw some that had the lower bolt at a different mounting depth. I almost bought one, but then figured I could just modify the one I had. We put it in the vise, and after couple cuts with a jig saw, and I had something that worked. (there was a few days between breaking the tool and success modifying the pointer). Re-installing the balancer the second time was a success. Once it was on and the pointer was aligned for TDC, I could finally finish putting the engine back together. I had to wait until the pointer was lined for TDC before I could put the driver's head on, so it had really been holding me up. Lesson learned: had I been content using stock pieces, it would've been together a couple weeks ago. But, the end result looks much nicer than stock pieces. Pick your poison.

This past Sunday, while watching the final hour of Rolex 24 @ Daytona, Chris came over again we bolted on the heads, the intake, installed the lifters, and adjusted the valves. I attached the water pump, carb, and distributor to take a picture, but they'll come back off when I set the engine back in the truck, but it's ready to go back in!!

I still have a lot of work left, but I'm starting to see a faint light at the end of the tunnel.

-Dave

[Blue_69_malibu]

"There is nothing stock about a STOCK car!"
-Tom Hegan, Esq. (The Godfather)

[TireSmoker]

One of the main goals I wanted to accomplish during this engine upgrade was to eliminate the mechanical plastic flex fan (direct drive, no clutch) to an electric fan. The flex fan didn't have a proper shroud, so it would heat up easily when sitting for short periods of time (drive-thru, for example) and was just a drag in performance. Even with the low-po engine combo, there was a noticeable improvement when I ran it for a couple test drives with the flex fan removed. And the flex was just noisy. yuck.

I removed the A/C condenser and ordered a radiator that could sit farther forward into the core support. After seeing Paul's radiator plus a few others on v8s10.org, I took my brand new aluminum radiator to a welder and had the neck modified. I was nervous how it was going to turn out since it was certainly not returnable any more. I think it came out great. And I think I should have enough room for a puller-fan.

Now I need to come up with brackets to hold the radiator in place and to mount the fan(s).

-Dave

[GMJohnny]

The radiator looks mint! When I had my 442, for a very short time I had an electric fan on
it. The fan kit gave me these funky zip tie things that had a large plastic circle (about the
size of a quarter) on one end and a push-on "female" end on the other. You simply pushed the
zip-tie through the cores of the radiator, one on each corner, and that was it. It literally took
four minutes to install and it held really well to the radiator. I did ditch the electric fan
because it was not balanced 100% and the car would vibrate when it was on. I went to the
factory clutch fan and didn't notice any difference in power, and it looked stock.

GM