1975 K5 Blazer- another beach truck!

[Berg]

Hey guys, I picked up yet another full convertible K5 Blazer. This one is pretty rough but I got it for a steal and the guy wouldn't let me leave his house without it. The list of goodies is pretty decent for it so far. It has:
Factory Tach gauge cluster
14 bolt full floater rearend with 4.56 gears
Dana 44 front re-geared to 4.56's with 8 lug outers
.030 over 350 with flat top pistons and 58cc heads 1.94/1.50's
Crane cam and lifter kit with valvetrain and roller rockers
new headers, intake manifold, Holley 750cfm vacuum secondaries
40 series flowmaster duals
3/4 ton lift springs front and 3/4 ton rear springs with blocks (for now)
(lift to be determined)
Offroad Design Sway bar disconnects
Offroad Design front HD greasable shackles
33x15.5/16.5 Super Swampers on spray painted black 16.5x12 rims (I think...)
SM465 Muncie 4 speed manual with modified (rigged) shifter
NP 203 transfer case (seems to have part-time conversion)

The truck needs a lot of work but it has a lot of good stuff put into it so I can't wait to get to play with it. It has been a truck I have wanted to get again since my old 75 Blazer rotted in half on me. Northern winters with road salt and the beach with salt air (comes with living on an island) have taken their toll on cars and trucks around here and this new-to-me truck is no exception. It has had the front fenders replaced at some point and had some patchwork done around the truck here and there. It is usable the way it is with the body so I will be leaving it well enough alone for now. Someone sprayed the whole truck with an at-home spray on bedliner kit that came out pretty bad. I'm still deciding on what I'd like to do about it. The tailgate hinges are pretty frozen and the bottom of the gate has heavy rust so that will be replaced at some point too. All in all, its a pretty sweet beater!

[Berg]

Here it is:

[68Timber]

Cool! I've got to find an SM465, I've been drooling over them too long now.

[Berg]

This transmission is so heavy duty I don't understand why they would ever do a redesign. The only thing that would have been nice would have been a bolt-on factory OD unit onto the back of it. It seems rare to have an NP203 mated to the 465 also. Not too many years of that happening! I bet someone wanting to make a doubler would love to get ahold of this thing

[Berg]

got some good news... Transfer case turned out to be a 205 with the wrong knob on it. I finally crawled underneath to check it out. The first thing I did to it was take off the makeshift rat fink shifter (it was soft copper tube) and I'm not so sure what to do with the spray on bedliner yet. The quarter panels have some rough spots and I have new fenders, doors, and tailgate already so all I'd need to do is buy a new hood and quarters and re-skin the entire truck. Anyone ever do it before?

[Edahall]

Originally Posted by Berg

got some good news... Transfer case turned out to be a 205 with the wrong knob on it. I finally crawled underneath to check it out. The first thing I did to it was take off the makeshift rat fink shifter (it was soft copper tube) and I'm not so sure what to do with the spray on bedliner yet. The quarter panels have some rough spots and I have new fenders, doors, and tailgate already so all I'd need to do is buy a new hood and quarters and re-skin the entire truck. Anyone ever do it before?

Try using a heat gun to scrape off that spray on bedliner.

I wonder what was up with that funky long shifter.

[Hoods69BadBowTie]

Originally Posted by Edahall

I wonder what was up with that funky long shifter.

I was wondering the same thing haha? Nice looking beater though doesn't look to bad I was expecting worse then that. Sounds like a fun project. I want to find another 4speed blazer there so sweet

[str8axle55]

Looks good, I`d love to have another 75. Nothing like driving around a full size with no top.

[sethv]

Looks to be a 4" lift

[Berg]

Thanks guys, The guy told me it was a 6" lift, looks to be 4" with 1" Zero-rate add a leaves from Offroad Design. He probably put it in when he swapped the axles and realized the truck had the hot rod stance going on. The engine is turning out to be a total disaster. He put a large capacity oil pan on it with a hole in it, zapped a screw in the hole and then shot some RTV over the top of it. He "rebuilt" the engine less than 300 miles ago but it seems to be leaking oil out of the rear main seal and the timing cover seal. I'm debating on if i'd even want to waste my time with this engine or just give someone a good deal on Craigslist and order up a GM Goodwrench 350 and drop it in. Over the weekend I took off the 750 Holley double pumper with NO CHOKE AT ALL and took off the 1" carb spacer too. Instead of buying a vacuum cap kit he just stuck various objects into the vacuum ports and hoses. I took off the Hi volume fuel pump too since it wasn't needed and was forcing more fuel into the carburetor than needed. I also bent up a new 3/8 hard line from the fuel pump up to the fuel filter on the intake manifold since the rubber hose the PO had on it was rubbing on the harmonic balancer. I also got rid of some of the wiring that lead to absolutely nowhere (some of which were un-fused and wired directly to the constant hot on the fuse panel with a finish nail. Let me just say that wire nuts have no place in the automotive field on a permanent repair. I noticed the bent up flex fan had been hitting the upper radiator hose so I just turned the hose up a little and re-clamped everything for the time being. It has an Edelbrock Performer EPS intake manifold but it is only a square flange so I put on an old Edelbrock 650 carburetor I had laying around after cleaning it up a little and I properly wired the electric choke lead to a fused ignition hot lead on the fuse block. I found the stock shifter knob laying in the console so after cleaning up the electrical tape residue that held on the copper pipe extension (i'm serious) I cleaned up both shifters and shot them in rustoleum satin black and re-installed the knobs for a not so ratty appearance.
The guy was going for the rat-rod/zombie hunter theme with the truck all blacked out but the more I dug into it, the thing was really a rolling death trap waiting to take out a family of stick figures on the back window of a minivan. I don't think I'm going to bother trying to strip the bedliner job on the outside of the truck since i already got doors, fenders, a tailgate and a drivers side quarter panel for the truck. At this point all I need is a new passenger side quarter and a new hood. Still haven't decided if i want to go with a cowl induction hood or just get a stock replacement (possibly NOS GM) for this truck yet.
I haven't decided on color yet. Not sure if I should go back to the original skyline blue and keep the blue interior or if I should go with the orange I originally wanted to go with and have the cap white with the white 2 tone stripes on it. There is always the option of all black with gray interior like my 84 K5. I'm kind of partial to that color scheme but I think I want to go different with this one. My dad had a 1973 Suburban for the longest time and it was orange with white 2 tone. I learned a lot from that truck (even smacked it up when I yanked it into drive on the beach when I was a lil kid) and it'll always have a place in my heart. This Blazer kind of reminds me of it and maybe one day I'll have a kid that will look at dad's truck the same way I did but hopefully without wrecking it or anything else.

[hopelessredneck]

id say orange or blue

[Berg]

Here is a shot of it after I cleaned it. I didn't see much of a difference either... I did install the camshaft straight up. I was able to back off the rocker arms and unbolt the cam gear, move it on the chain to get the dots to line up with #1 cylinder at TDC. I adjusted the Edelbrock carburetor I put on it and it is running a lot better but it doesn't start making power until somewhere around 1,500rpm. I got a set of 882 heads with a stock camshaft I might swap into it to see if it puts this truck where I want it. I set base timing at 6* BTDC and it seemed like too much so I backed it off to see if it would run any better. I couldn't hear any detonation and I hooked up the vacuum advance the PO had capped off. It is running a lot better and holds around 160 degrees on the aftermarket coolant temp sender I stuck by the thermostat housing. The original gauge works but reads a little on the low side and seems like it takes a while to get where it needs to be. I'd rather go off the cylinder head temp so I'm going to eventually replace the sender and check out the gauge and see if it is working with the correct resistance. The factory oil pressure gauge checks out to be pretty accurate

[Berg]

Fire Prevention week at my job and also my volunteer fire department. The local auto recycler lets us borrow cars to crush, cut up, and burn for demonstrations. Truck is running much better now but I'm still wanting to drop in the Vortec 454 in the future.

[Berg]

So one of my friends busted the manual window crank handle and I thought I had a good replacement but upon taking it apart I found out the replacement was worse off than the original. I have yet to decide if I'm going to go electric with the back window since I have a power tailgate but I think I might stick with the manual setup simply to have less things that could possibly go wrong. In a pinch, I made a new socket to facilitate rolling the back window up and down. I took a used window crank clutch and pressed an old socket I had laying around into it. It held pretty nice for the most part but I noticed when I got the window nearly all the way closed it slipped. My solution was to just take my Mig welder and put 2 tacks on the top of the socket to keep it from rotating. In the future I can just whack them with a punch and clean up the socket. I thought I'd share for you guys with window troubles