My new project, the new Hammer project aka ball buster. It started with a 1989 Chevy K5 bought from Odin here on CK5. It came totally stock, in great shape with replacement sheet metal included with the deal. The known problems were a smoky 350 with 193,000 miles on it, and a stuck tailgate window. The known rust issues for me were voided by the new fender well and rocker panels that went with the truck. After buying the truck and driving to a friend’s house (he’s a mechanic and I hired him to do the engine work, which is beyond me). Everything seemed to be going good. This was January.
My friend worked on the engine on his off day and soon corrected/repaired the valves, gaskets, wiring spark pugs, rotor and other components. While Bob worked on the engine I ordered a lift kit from Topgunzcustom. I had decided after all the research on CK5 to get a 4 inch lift that would fit my 35’s from the other Blazer and still be a DD and weekend off roader. From Topgunz I chose the Rough Country all spring lift kit. Mostly because of the price, but from what they offered it seemed like the most complete kit. After a week I received half of the lift kit. It turned out that UPS lost the two rear springs. Topgunz quickly arranged for me to receive a replacement pair. Of course right after that the missing pair showed up, one with a broken clip. In the end Nobody Wanted them back too costly to ship back so now I owned a kit and a half.
Two weeks ago Bob and I started the teardown of the front of the K5, out with old springs in with the new. We worked trying to follow probably the worst set of instructions ever printed. Rough Country as it turns out has less than three pages of instructions with the kit, and what they have suck. It doesn’t tell you much, or just what OEM parts you need. The kit itself looks good, but does not include all the hardware you need. Instead you have to guess what parts you have to salvage from the old parts. Example the metal sleeves for the shocks. We had to burn them out of the old shocks just to use with the new ones. I was really disappointed at the lack of instructions in the instructions, RC really leaves you hanging. For me a novice installing this kit would have been nearly impossible. For an experienced mechanic like my friend, it caused tons of delays, not cool.
The other problem that delayed this project was seized twenty year old bolts. On each spring we ran into at least one bolt that refused to come loose from the metal sleeves on each spring. This is after soaking each bolt for several days. Several cost us a lot of time and busted knuckles. So at this point we have more than half the job done. If it was spring we would have more daylight to work by and would be finished, but the cold and darkness has slowed us down.
My friend worked on the engine on his off day and soon corrected/repaired the valves, gaskets, wiring spark pugs, rotor and other components. While Bob worked on the engine I ordered a lift kit from Topgunzcustom. I had decided after all the research on CK5 to get a 4 inch lift that would fit my 35’s from the other Blazer and still be a DD and weekend off roader. From Topgunz I chose the Rough Country all spring lift kit. Mostly because of the price, but from what they offered it seemed like the most complete kit. After a week I received half of the lift kit. It turned out that UPS lost the two rear springs. Topgunz quickly arranged for me to receive a replacement pair. Of course right after that the missing pair showed up, one with a broken clip. In the end Nobody Wanted them back too costly to ship back so now I owned a kit and a half.
Two weeks ago Bob and I started the teardown of the front of the K5, out with old springs in with the new. We worked trying to follow probably the worst set of instructions ever printed. Rough Country as it turns out has less than three pages of instructions with the kit, and what they have suck. It doesn’t tell you much, or just what OEM parts you need. The kit itself looks good, but does not include all the hardware you need. Instead you have to guess what parts you have to salvage from the old parts. Example the metal sleeves for the shocks. We had to burn them out of the old shocks just to use with the new ones. I was really disappointed at the lack of instructions in the instructions, RC really leaves you hanging. For me a novice installing this kit would have been nearly impossible. For an experienced mechanic like my friend, it caused tons of delays, not cool.
The other problem that delayed this project was seized twenty year old bolts. On each spring we ran into at least one bolt that refused to come loose from the metal sleeves on each spring. This is after soaking each bolt for several days. Several cost us a lot of time and busted knuckles. So at this point we have more than half the job done. If it was spring we would have more daylight to work by and would be finished, but the cold and darkness has slowed us down.
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Is that a Ranger on boggers to the side?
