[MaxPF]

Most guys increase tire size progressively: 33's to 35's to 37's and so on. I started with 32's when I bought the truck, and put 33's on it shortly thereafter. 33's are the biggest a Blazer will take without a lift. Like many others, I decided at some point I needed to go bigger. I ended up buying 37" Dick Cepek Radial FC-II's and mounting them on 15" Black Soft-8 steelies. Now, thesde tires wouldn't fit on my truck without a lift, but I already had a plan.

I scored a set of 2-1/2" lift Rancho prerunner springs from another wheeler.



2-1/2" wasn't quite tall enough, so I built a pair of 1 inch "zero-rates"



In order to avoid cutting the rear part of my fenders I moved the axle forward about 2 inches. Here's the result, with the then-new Cepeks mounted up:



To lift the rear I used a shackle flip. A popular easy flip was the "Echobit" flip, which was a bracket that converted the stock tension shackle setup to a compression shackle setup. It required no cutting or removal of stock brackets and gave about 6 inches of lift. Since old Blazers usually suffer from saggy butt syndrome the extra bit of rear lift is welcome. I built my own Echobit-type brackets:



And the final result:



With big tires and wheeling I eventually ended up with the dreaded frame cracks around the steering box bolt holes. I welded the cracks up and welded some thick washers around the holes to hopefully prevent a recurrence: