'85 K5 "Denali" Blazer: Front 4-link

[Conner]

This thread is for the general discussion of the Item ‘85 Blazer resto/build. Please add to the discussion here.


Current Project: Front 4 link conversion


Build Index:
Teardown

Interior​

Remove engine/transmission​

Parts Gathering

Rally wheels​

9.5" 14 bolt semi float rear axle​

Hard top with factory tint windows​

Tilt steering column​

6.2 and 6L80E from a Yukon Denali​

Front 4 link coilover conversion and steering​

Squarebody Suburban bucket seats​

Rust Repair

Driver floor, rocker, kick panel​

Passenger floor, rocker, kick panel​

Wheel houses, tail panel, bed floor​

Bedsides​

Firewall​

Tail light plate, old tire carrier holes​

Roof, cab-to-topper area​

Windshield frame, cowl, upper firewall​

B-Pillars​

Engine/Transmission Install

ORD crossmember and motor mounts​

Yukon to Blazer swap​

Transfer case rebuild​

Frame

Steering braces​

Front frame plates​

Rear frame plates​

Rock sliders/steps​

Suspension/Steering

Crossover​

Front ORD links​

Rear ORD leaves​

Axles

Front rebuild​

Rear rebuild​

Paint and Body

Media blast​

Interior

Restore bucket seats​

 

[Conner]

Before actually even picking up the truck, which I drove to Houston for, I went with my wife (then only girlfriend) to Oklahoma for a set of 5 Rally wheels. Currently they are still “yard art” LOL, but the plan is to blast them and powder coat them black. My brother in law has the gun and oven to do that, which should be fun. I have new trim rings and “4x4” stickers in my car part storage room (aka our dining room), and I’m hoping to have the center caps re-chromed, if I can find somewhere to do it.

 

[Conner]

Few more of the truck

 

[Conner]

I removed most of the interior stuff to assess the rust situation. This is when I started to realize it was a lot worse than I originally thought. I knew it needed rockers, quarter panel patches, and the back of the bed floor.

With everything out, I could now see it also needed various patches to the cab floor, front kick panels, the rear seat “kick panels” (not sure what they are actually called, the bottom of the B pillar where the lower seat belt bolt attaches), more areas of the bed floor than just the very back, and more.

 

[Conner]

I pulled off the fenders and core support, etc and removed the engine and transmission with the help of my dad and brother in law. Not pictured but we of course pulled out the NP208 also. I am not going to reuse the engine or transmission, but I think I will rebuild and use the NP208 when the time comes.

 

[Conner]

My brother in law was generous enough to long-term lend me his MIG welder. I have since bought my own, but he got me up and working for the first 6 months or so.

I ordered patch panels. I tried to read reviews and get stuff that was at least close to the original thickness. For the most part, the panels are pretty decent, except the floor pans. They only vaguely resemble the actual floors, and needed a lot of modification to fit correctly. More on that later though.

 

[Conner]

For whatever reason, I decided to start on the driver side rocker/floor area. First I cut out the “rear kick panel” (or whatever it’s called, the bottom of the B pillar by rear seat passengers’ feet).



Looking closer, I realized that this panel folds up to make the little ledge above it, and also wraps over and folds back down into the seam between the bed floor and the front edge of the wheel house. Mine was pretty rotten, as can be seen from above.



The next thing I did was a MASSIVE mistake, and even after fixing this screw up, I’m still kicking myself for doing it. If you’re reading this and have similar rust issues as these, do not be as stupid as I am LOL. I saw online that you can purchase new wheel housings, and I decided that I wanted to remove mine so that I could clean up that seam in the above picture. Being a moron, I decided to cut the wheel housing out so that it would be easier to drill and pry out the remaining piece that’s attached to the bed floor and inner quarter panel with spot welds.



When I received the new wheel houses, I realized that these were one of the panels people are talking about when they say the aftermarket stuff is extremely thin. The original wheel houses are probably 16g, if not a little thicker. The new ones I got from AMD (they sell them but don’t make these particular parts) are probably 20g and holding them side by side, appear to be about 1/3 the thickness of the originals.

It was drastic enough of a difference that I actually opted not to use them, and to undo my giant mistake I welded the wheel house I cut apart back together, which took FOREVER. More on that later. Luckily I didn’t make the same mistake on the passenger side, and I removed that one a lot more gracefully. I’ll say it again, if you find yourself in this situation, learn from my idiocy LOL.

At this point I finally started putting metal back, rather than cutting more out. I made some repairs to the support structure behind the floor and rear kick panel thing. These were my very first welds on the truck, and some of the early ones I even went back later and cleaned up, so don’t judge me too hard LOL.

 

[Conner]

Next up, I cut off the rocker panel. It had a pretty shocking amount of flaky, chunky rust inside.







After that, I cut away at the outer edge of the floor. I’m not sure if this is the easiest, or “right”, way to do this, but I did that floor edge / inner rocker in 2 halves, a front and back. My thought was that the rocker sits on that ledge of the floor, and if the rocker isn’t positioned correctly vertically, the door wouldn’t fit/shut right, so I needed that floor ledge to be in the exact same spot once I was done. By leaving half of it on the truck while I fixed the other half, I could line up the new pieces with the old to ensure nothing moved around. In hindsight, I think it worked pretty well this way (and the original door did fit back on, by the way).



Getting into that front floor outer edge area, I realized there’s multiple layers of things and in my case it was all rotten. The innermost layer is that floor support pictured above. Then the floor pan bends down (this is the “inner rocker”) onto the support. Working out from there, the next layer is the bottom of the kick panel, and then finally the actual rocker. I opted to replace my entire kick panels rather than try to patch just the bottom of it.



With the old/bad metal cut out, I started cleaning up the remaining good metal (removing any surface rust or old paint and then putting on epoxy primer and a couple coats of cheap spray paint).

 

[Chickntrk]

Isn’t body work fun

 

[Conner]

This area was one of the harder areas to rebuild for me. The numerous different panels layering together and the awkward space that you’re working in made things tough. It also didn’t help that the replacement floor pans don’t even really fit (if someone told me they accidentally sent me the wrong ones for some different truck, I’d believe it, they are that bad LOL).

I cut away the outside edge of the floor a few inches from the kick panel. I also cut the corresponding replacement panel to fit. This took numerous test fittings with the kick panel to make sure I was happy with how everything lined up. Once it fit right, I primed/painted everything that would be covered up, and after drying, got to installing them.

I used a variety of welding clamps and patch panel clamps to hold it together. There were a lot of spot welds and a decently long stretch of butt weld to get the floor section and kick panel permanently attached.

 

[Conner]

Isn’t body work fun

I actually have enjoyed what I've done so far, although I am admittedly getting tired of it at this point. I want to move on to the more fun stuff!

 

[Conner]

Next up was the rear half of the cab floor.



This was where the poor fitment of the replacement floor pans really stood out. I am very glad I did the floor in a front and back half, rather than all at once, because the rear panel had the dimensions all wrong for the “ledge” that the rocker panel sits on. I had to modify it substantially to make it work. There may have been an easier way to do this, but you can see what I did in the pictures. It took forever.





I sectioned the new piece at the bend (see above) and then filled it with another piece in order to get the dimensions right. Maybe there’s a better way to modify this piece, I tried something slightly different on the passenger side (stay tuned) but honestly both methods sucked and took forever.





After that I scabbed on the “inner rocker” piece, which also needed a decent amount of modification to fit right. I was trying to recreate how it originally was as closely as I could.



In the above pic it looks like the kick panel is way crooked. It’s a little bit of an optical illusion because the bottom of the front inner rocker wasn’t cut square (I trimmed it before the outer rocker went on), and also it actually was partly crooked. I measured and put the square hole and the fender nut on the kick panel exactly where the original parts were, because I was afraid the fenders wouldn’t fit right otherwise. Whether it’s just the sloppy ‘80s construction or cheesy aftermarket panels, that ended up making the kick panel sit a little crooked in relation to the inner rocker.



After many hours, the edge of the floor / inner rocker was done. I took it down to bare metal and sprayed on epoxy primer and multiple coats of cheap spray paint before putting the outer rocker on to hopefully avoid ever having to do this again.

 

[Conner]

I also fixed the bottom of the inner B pillar support structure. It was rusted through pretty bad.







I welded it full and ground the welds, but apparently didn’t actually take a pic when I finished LOL.

Next up, I fit the rocker.



I put epoxy primer and multiple coats of spray paint inside before attaching it in hopes that it won’t ever rust again.





Finally all welded on!

 

[Conner]

There was a small piece of the floor up in the front left corner right next to the firewall that was rotted out, but the replacement floor didn’t go up that far (seriously those crappy floor pans drove me nuts LOL). I made a small patch for what I had to cut out from a flat piece of extra floor pan that I wasn’t going to need.

The hole, again this is the front/left most piece of the floor, right next to the firewall and kick panel:



The process of making the patch (this took forever and there is likely a simpler/better way to do it, but this is the only way I could figure out):



















Here it is fit into place. I of course went back and forth test fitting and adjusting a thousand times while making it.



All zapped in. I built up a lot of extra filler material at the bottom to be able to smooth out that contour using a die grinder. As usual, I probably did this the hard/wrong way, but this was the only way I could think of at the time.



And finally all smoothed out. It’s almost upsetting to think how much time this took me for such an insignificant and out-of-view little patch, but I’m relatively happy with how it came out.

 

[Conner]

Next up was to fix the piece of the quarter panel that’s right behind the rocker (so in front of the rear tire). I got the patch in but hosed it up unfortunately and I’m not happy with how it came out. I plan on cutting it out and redoing it with a new patch, but haven’t actually gotten to that yet (I’m a little butthurt and have been avoiding it LOL), so I’ll give all the screwup (and hopefully much improved end result) details on that whenever I get around to fixing it.

After the quarter patch, I moved on to the rear kick panel, bottom of B pillar thing, where the lower seat belt bolt goes. No one that I’m aware of makes a patch for this, so I made one out of 16g sheet metal.

This was a pretty big pain the butt, partly because I don’t have any decent way to bend the metal, much less on a compound bend like this piece is. On top of that, it’s a semi complicated part, with the welded in nuts on the back side that have to line up properly and also the piece that folds in with the bed floor.

Here is the old piece removed:



The horizontal support piece that runs along the front edge of the bed floor was also bad, so I fixed that with some 14g sheet metal.





I made the kick panel patch starting with a flat piece, then welded on the curved edge that spot welds to the floor pan. Then I measured for and added in the nuts on the back for the B pillar bolts. I also took a small piece of 14g and spot welded it to the back where the seat belt bolt goes, and then welded in the correct size nut on that. I think between using 16g for the panel, plus 14g for the reinforcement for the nut, this should be substantially stronger than original.



The paranoia of future rust is now overwhelming, so I also epoxy primed and painted this, which once installed would be inaccessible. I put seam sealer on the reinforcement seams and the welds as well. Paranoia, LOL.



After making the other half, which is essentially a rectangle with some bent pieces on 2 sides for the spot welds (to the inner quarter and then wheel house seams), I realized that I would have to weld it together in place, because I couldn’t fanangle the piece in whole.





Finally all in and that little B pillar tab that bolts down reattached. I did epoxy primer and a couple coats of paint in the “captured” area beneath the B pillar tab, and hosed the rest down with cheap spray paint just to temporarily prevent surface rust.

In hindsight I’d have liked to get the seam to the floor pan a little tighter, but it is welded down of course and I plan on generously applying seam sealer when the time comes, so I think/hope it’ll be ok.

 

[Conner]

After the driver side rocker and associated areas, I took a little bit of a break. I gathered a few parts for later. I also pulled the exhaust and fuel tank out.



I mentioned the Rally wheels above, which I love the look of. That’s probably a dumb reason to limit myself to 6 lugs, but it is what it is. Reading here, I’ve seen a lot of discussion about the weak points of the factory axles, particularly the rear. While I don’t plan on doing any super crazy off roading with this truck, I would like to do more mild stuff (I like to go camping in national parks and see/stay in places that require high clearance 4x4 roads to access). I also have aspirations to do some variety of LS for the engine. Given that, I was a little concerned with the factory rear end, so I found a 6 lug 9.5” semi floater. I’m planning on rebuilding it, but for now, I’m tripping over it in my garage LOL.

 

[Conner]

Next up was the rocker, floor, kick panel, etc on the passenger side. I did pretty much the same thing as on the driver side.

 

[Conner]

I had to do some small patches on the passenger floor. I opted to do these small patches as opposed to trying to put the entire new floor pan in because as mentioned before, the new floor pans do not match the originals very closely at all.

The first one was right above the front body mount. The floor had bubbles/rusted up from underneath. It looks like water got in between the floor pan and the reinforcement piece beneath it. Thankfully the actual body mount nut/cage thing was pretty clean.





Reinforcement piece made of 16g spot welded down. Primer and paint between every layer…



Floor patch spot welded to the reinforcement piece beneath it, and butt welded to the floor pan around it.



And finally all ground down



This area on the driver side had not rusted/bubbled up, but after doing this side, I was worried about it. I cut into that area the same way, and even though it hadn’t rusted up through yet, it was pretty nasty in the seam between the floor pan and the reinforcement piece, so I rebuilt it all the same as this side. Glad I did, it may have rusted through 5-10 years from now and been a bigger deal to fix then.

 

[Conner]

Gathered a few more parts for future use. The hard top that came with this truck had some fiberglass damage, and I found a much nicer one with factory tinted solid glass, so I snagged it. I also got a tilt steering column in very nice shape to replace the somewhat rough, non-tilt one that came with my truck.

 

[Conner]

I cut off the front edge of the bed floor, right where all the body bolts are next to the drop down to the cab floor. I suspected there was some rust in there to clean up. I cut out some of the horizontal support beneath it to clean up the seam between the horizontal and vertical supports as well. I was on the fence about doing this since there wasn’t actually visible rust, but after cutting into it I’m glad I did because it may have popped up at some later date.