76 Blazer Project thread Updated 6/19/15 Long over due updates

[1979jimmy350]

Well I have not given any updates in way to long. I have driven the truck some but for the most part it has sat until just a few weeks ago when I decided that I wanted to drive it this summer. There are a bunch of little things that I need to fix/ improve on it.



http://s160.photobucket.com/user/blander66/media/8A3069E1-E645-4F5F-B451-9581A1E8E846.jpg.html

I was getting a lot of oil from my PCV system into my intake manifold so I tried disconnecting it and adding a breather in the valve cover that still did not work so well. So i pulled the intake and cleaned everything up really well.



I am adding a LS6 Valley cover that has the PCV valve in it to allow me to draw out the crankcase fumes where there is less oil splashing around. I will route the PCV line thru this catch can



This should catch any oil mist that happens to make it thru. I will run the line to a port between the throttle body and the inlet to my supercharger which is a region that should have vacuum under most engine operating conditions.

I also just picked this up, which means I will be able to weld some fittings to the valve covers to run beaters off of for the fresh air intake to the crankcase

 

[GWeakland620]

Never seen this build before

Nice battle scars

 

[folkenheath]

Cool to see it back.

You will love that TIG welder, I bought the same thing and you can't beat it for us DIY hobby guys.

 

[1979jimmy350]

Cool to see it back.

You will love that TIG welder, I bought the same thing and you can't beat it for us DIY hobby guys.

I really hope the TIG works well when I get it back. I plugged it in and it would not even strike an arc, contacted miller and they had me send it in for service, nothing like a brand new TIG that is dead out of the box

 

[folkenheath]

yeah, that would suck. I am sure they will fix you up. Can't you just exchange it for a different one if you haven't even used it yet?

 

[1979jimmy350]

yeah, that would suck. I am sure they will fix you up. Can't you just exchange it for a different one if you haven't even used it yet?

The welding shop I bought it at does not stock TIG machines, so it was shipped to me directly from miller, its not as simple as just a exchange

 

[1979jimmy350]

Got the new TIG and started practicing




the 1st thing I had to TIG on my truck was the hedders. They are out of a F-body so they have EGR ports on then that were blocked off. Well one of the flanges on the port broke off and caused a lot of noise. So I pulled the hedder to fix the hole and decided to cut the other one off and weld it up too as it had a crack on it and would have failed soon.





I made sure to drill the end of the crack so it would not propagate further.




Here is the patch that I welded on the lower EGR port


As part of redoing the PCV system to better handle boost I am adding a breather to each valve cover for clean air to be drawn into the crank case. Rather then just use slip on hose I wanted to Use AN lins so I welded -6 AN Fittings to each valve cover



More to follw soon, I would like to drive this around later this month

 

[1979jimmy350]

Well I have not updated this in a while and I have gotten a bit of work done

I decided to upgrade to aftermarket fuel rails. well the Brackets they came with work on cars or on the trucks with stock injectors. Well I am running the tall body 60lb/hr injectors so neither of the brackets worked for me. So I took the two types of brackets and made a set that worked for my application


I also took the opportunity to redo some of the wiring in the engine bay, I have learned a lot about wiring in the years after I did the swap and now have access to a lot more wring items.

One of my O2 sensors had the wires cooked a while back and I had repaired it with a splice, well that is not the best way to do it and I had some length to take out anyways. I cut down the wires and put new cable seals and terminals on the wires




Here it is all done


As part of the rewiring I decided to shorten a lot of the ECM wires that were to long, and also added cavity plugs to the spot were I removed unused wires. Most people overlook this detail on a LS swap but its important as on this style connecter when you put a pin in you puncture the seal and have to have a plug in the hole otherwise the connector wont seal out water and dirt.


After I completed the wiring I put is all back together and only ran into a few small issues. I had intended to convert to a flow thru fuel rail system rather then a return less rail. Well with the tall injectors and aftermarket rails I ran into a clearance issue with my blower, this made it so I had to stay with a return less style rail setup, I am hoping this wont affect my fueling to much.

After all that The truck was ready to do some tuning on it so I installed a RAM laptop mount and hit the road





Now that its back on the road I still have a bunch of small things to get done. I need to get the Tach and Speedo on the dash working (currently using the Laptop for that) Fix my rotted out rocker panels by replacing them with square tube sliders.
I am also going to replace the seats with some better condition and more comfortable ones from a fiero I parted out. The nice part about the fiero seats are they have speakers built into the head rest so I then also want to add a head unit and some speakers to the truck

 

[1979jimmy350]

I need to get back to work on this thing someday, blew the clutch slave cylinder not to long after i got it going again. Drove it to my new place i bought and its still sitting, owning a house has distracted me some lol

 

[Bent77]

I need to get back to work on this thing someday, blew the clutch slave cylinder not to long after i got it going again. Drove it to my new place i bought and its still sitting, owning a house has distracted me some lol

They do that

 

[Tony Vickers]

cool, thanks for the reply. I am about to tackle the same thing on my 73 using the 6.0l lq9. All three positions you mentioned I know about on mine. I am going to run A/C on mine so I was hoping you had crossed that bridge. Looks like I will be doing that on my own.

Once again thanks for the information.

Cheers,

Rufus

I have a 06 6.0 LQ9 in mine and if you get the hooker headers, they clear the frame so no need to cut it. Also dirty dingo sells b A/C bracket for a 508 type pump. I run Vintageair which helped clear some space in the engine bay.

Here is a pic of the hooker headers. Plenty of room!

Hope this helps

 

[1979jimmy350]

Well figured its time for an update, after sitting for a while i pulled the truck out and finally fixed the clutch slave cylinder and swapped to the 12 bolt hummer rims i bought a few years ago.
I discovered the best thing to do when dealing with hummer rims is run tap thru the nuts and a die on the studs it makes assembly and sealing of them so much easier

Well the exhaust that i had on the truck was a pair of flowmaster 40's they were rusting, and just did not give me the sound I was looking for. The rest of the exhaust was in poor shape and rotting away.

So i hauled the truck to work to give it some TLC in prep for a wheeling trip in Aug


Drained all the fluids (diff's tcase trans engine)

I shopped around a bit for exhaust kits and settled on this one from summit. I did not need the polished stainless but this kit was cheaper then all the other 304 stainless kits i found. Its only 18 gauge vs most others are 16 gauge.



As part of the exhaust redo I am adding this to the system, hoping it will give me a better sound and maybe a little more power


I went with a set of magnaflow stainless mufflers they were a "used Item" on amazon so only $30 each, the box's they came were trashed but the mufflers were just fine.
I added V Band clamps to the mufflers to make servicing the exhaust in the future a little easier
Adding the xpipe was a pain it really complicated the routing of the tube and used up a lot of my U bends lol


I have the front half of the exhaust done and am doing the final welding on it, I still have to do the rear but had to go to China for work for a few weeks so that delayed things a bit.

I also wanted to finally add some back seats that are bolted down and safe, something i never had before on this truck. I had a spare set of fiero seats in good shape so I decided to use them.

I welded some square tube into a frame that the seats will bolt to. I then used all the factory bolt holes in the rear floor for mounting points






I am also changing out the front seats for some GMT 800 seats I had laying around. had heard they were bolt in upgrades, but they are defiantly not, I have to make some adapter brackets.
I will try to post more updates leading up to the wheeling trip

 

[jekquistk5]

Cool to see you back at it.

 

[1979jimmy350]

Cool to see you back at it.

Thanks, slowly but have been making progress, it has been nice to drive it on the road again, looking forward to put some miles on it next year when it gets warm again

 

[jekquistk5]

Thanks, slowly but have been making progress, it has been nice to drive it on the road again, looking forward to put some miles on it next year when it gets warm again

Yah same here. We should meet up next year sometime. Rob(@RivMan) lives in Pinckney, and I live on the Pinckney outskirts.

 

[1979jimmy350]

Yah same here. We should meet up next year sometime. Rob(@RivMan) lives in Pinckney, and I live on the Pinckney outskirts.

Nice for sure, i work in Ann Arbor and live out in Stockbridge

 

[jekquistk5]

Nice for sure, i work in Ann Arbor and live out in Stockbridge

Yah I think we all work in A2.

 

[RivMan]

I'm in for a meetup! Great build, don't know how I missed it!

I have an LS swap on deck for my truck, would love to check yours out!

-Rob

 

[1979jimmy350]

I'm in for a meetup! Great build, don't know how I missed it!

I have an LS swap on deck for my truck, would love to check yours out!

-Rob

Cool, let me know if you have any LS swap questions, I wrote a tech article thats posted on this site for LS swaps, and I do wiring and engine controls as my day job