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How do you feel about K5s being cut up to nothing?

MOBK5

MOBK5

1/2 ton status
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Im just curious about how everyone feels about all these K5s being cut up to nothing and skinned over tube.

To me, the K5 Blazer is the most badass vehicle ever made. I kind of get queezy seeing these awesome trucks being turned into jungle gyms.

Im not trying to start a flame war so please dont take this the wrong way if you did turn yours or plan to turn youre K5 into a buggy.

So, whats youre take on this:
 
Eh...

At least they aren't being squashed to 18" high and sent to China!..:mad:

I hate seeing even a completely wasted GM "K" truck getting sent to the crusher..seems like such a waste..many don't have ANY parts removed or saved either..I see them DRIVEN into the scrapyards,and moments later,a Forkloader sticks it in the crusher,and it leaves on a flatbed 18 wheeler..350,NP205,SM465,and all!..:(

I can see crushing a rotted out body..but the DRIVETRAIN too??:mad:

I like the K5's and pickups classic good looks..especially the 67-72's.and 73-87 years..

I'm not a real big fan of the "truggys",but if I lived in the desert,and had one,I'm sure my opinion would change in a hurry...:crazy:
 
It's all about progression. It just starts off little by little. Mine was a tub when I got it, yea it looked good in the pictures, but I bought it to flog, after I knocked off the 40 lbs of bondo.

Knowing what I know now, It's all about useage. What do you really want to do with it, then understand what it is going to take to make it do what you want to do.

Why put Dana 60's under a blazer if you are not going to wheel it hard? Kinda along the same lines.

Just my opinion.

Great topic!

Rob
 
Look at it this way , many nice trucks do exist , so they are not extinct :D

Its impossible to save them all however , and its also not fair to save them all . I like to to see the real clean ones kinda kept clean , and the really yucky ones hacked to chit . Thats my opinion , but we got to be practical and fair here .

What I mean by fair , is that we all get to use our trucks as we want . Whether you , or I , like it or not .

Some guys don't have access to all rusted out hulks anyways , with the exception of my second 83 which came from Ohio , I have yet to see a rusted out K5 in AZ . How can you not cut a nice truck , thats all we have :D:D
 
diesel4me said:
I hate seeing even a completely wasted GM "K" truck getting sent to the crusher..
I can see crushing a rotted out body..but the DRIVETRAIN too??:mad:
Click to expand...
I would cry.. that would seriously ruin my live to see that. Hey, why don't ya sneak a dana 60 out next time that happens :p:
James
 
I look at the old pix of my truck, blue and white Cheyenne with no top ... and compare it now to the half-door full-cage camo monstrosity ... I miss the old look sometimes. I keep threatening to buy a cherry 73-75 ... but dammit, I'd start modifying it too =))

Anyway, point being, yeah, some of these truggies are hardly Blazers any more, the UAV case in point. In my case, I'm straying kinda far ... but I cut my fenderwells on the basis of rust and old Bondo, not tire clearance ... the truck was too far gone to do any real restoration. There are cherry ones -- and fun ones like the the guy in MI with the all-fiberglass trucks -- to balance those that more or less look like a K5, like mine, and the truggies that look like Tinkertoys.

Cool Tinkertoys, though.

-- A
 
hmm

well I dont know about you guys, but im leaning twoards bad azz jeeps like this one, just seems so cool

532757_248_full.jpg
 
I had a hard time when I decided to cut on my truck. It had a perfect body. I came to the decision that I had to do it to wheel like I wanted to. After the first cut it wasn't so bad. Like said before, it's your truck, build it to suit you, not someone else.
 
i dont realy like hacking up a k5 to make a "jungle jim" there great trucks anyway i think it might be easyer to just take the drivetrain and start from scratch and sell the rest to someone like me and y put skins on it if its onyl got get destroyed on trails thats my 2 cents woth

around mere most of the cars go a to scap yard or a car dump wats in the car dump anyone can go up and take parts and at wen it starts to get full they crush them. got a good solid cab off a 78 ford f250 for a friend one time never seen no k5s up there yet
 
dont really have a prob with it... it ain't my property.. and it ain't like K5s are rare or anything. If someone chopped up a Tucker or something, sure I'd be saying "WTF?!?!?!". K5s are meant to be used/abused. 4x4-evolution of the sheetmetal is fine by me.

j
 
I hate to see nice ones chopped up, but I doubt that many people go out, buy a nice one and cut it up. Once they are rusted/beat up chopping seems to be the way to go. If you wheel it hard, that is going to happen at some point.
 
I hate to see really nice K5s hacked when there are so many ones with crap bodies that can be had for cheap.

However, my fundamental approach is that its your rig that you bought with your money, so do whatever you want with yours and Ill do what I want with mine.

I had a complete stranger come up to me while I was getting new tires put on my Blazer and berated me because he was a logger and he actually used his truck off road for his job and he thought it was stupid for someone to buy a truck and off road it and tear it up for anything other than work.
I told him right quick that untill he buys me a Blazer than his opinion on what I do with it dosn't really matter. Just because I don't need to wheel to be a city planner dosn't mean I can't go offroad for fun after work.

Due to my weird thinking I have three rigs now though. One is a Nice bodied K5 that is mechanically very capable but I wont take it off road because I want to keep the body nice, the other is a stock pavement queen that I use as a DD and putt around town camping/fishing/help around the farm truck because I really like driving a nice Blazer, and the third one is an S10 bodied, k5 frame total beater that I will be severely flogging.

Now if I had a different mentality I might have the Balls to just hack up a good Blazer and make it a great wheeler and only have one off road truck to maintain and insure, but im nostalgic and I like to have my stock bodied, carpet interriored, quiet, nice road mannered truck also.

I can totally see why someone who really wants to wheel would hack a good K5 and not have an extra vehicle around. I just cant do it myself.

One thing that I believe is important is to keep in mind where you want to eventually end up. If you see yourself in a buggy where the only thing left K5 is the frame you may want to consider keeping your K5 the way it is and just build a tube buggy from scratch. That way you can have the exact dimensions and suspension setup you want, plus youll still have your nice street legal K5.
 
Bottom line: It's your ride so if you want to cut up a cherry K5, that is up to you. There may be a more economical way to get to the vehicle you want if you are just going to hack it and beat it. I think a lot of people start with buying a decent blazer and then small mods lead to bigger ones and they desire to wheel harder which leads to bigger mods and they end up with a tube buggy.

I like having sheetmetal so that you can tell what the truck is, however I knew that the type of wheeling I wanted to do would require some hacking so that is what I did, then put a nice paint job on it and hopefully I will be able to wheel pretty hard but still look pretty too. Also I like the run what ya brung thought. No trailer queens allowed!! Guess if I had a tow rig and a trailer I might think different but then I would have built it differently too.

do what you wnat to your rig if iits what you like. I don't prefer the hydraulic vehicles or the real low slung low profile tire look either but I do respect the fabrication and modification abilities displayed in them and try to see how I can use those modifications to make my rig better.

"STEP AWAY FROM THE SOAPBOX!!"
 
Chaddy said:
If its beat down...build it......if its not.........restore it.
Click to expand...
That's right; no one said you could only have one Blazer. Your wallet might dictate that you can only have one, but if your cash stack is fat enough, you can have a stable full of Blazers. In any case, it's smarter to buy something suited to your intended purpose.

Buy a rust-holed, rough K5 and build it into a real brutal machine that can tear through the mud or climb up the rocks. Buy a straight, well cared for K5 with a tiny bit of surface rust, and make it into a shiny and sleek street machine. You can find either type of raw material without too much looking. The show-ready originals in high #2 condition are hard to find, but with enough looking, you can probably find one of those too.

Though not quite to the extent that the first-generation Broncos are yet, the value of the oldest Blazers is getting up there in value. Even to the point where some crazy people :D will buy them to restore and are willing to dump some serious money into cherrying them out. Hopefully, like the more desireable muscle cars, people will regularly be restoring them from heaps to jewels.

They might not as rare as Deusenbergs, but when you walk out of a shopping center, it's easy to find your K5 in the midst of all those trailblazers and explorers and all the other cookie-cutter SUVs (tract housing on wheels).
 
I had not planned on cutting on my K5 at all but after the first time out and I bent the rear quarter under behind the rear wheel well I did not think twice. Got the saw and cut it off.:D I have already reserved myself to the fact that I am gonna wheel it, Im gonna get body damage, and when it is bad enough it will become a 4 seat K5uggy:D .

Ira
 
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