Blazer restoration

[blazerbrad]

Since December '08 I've been in the process of installing new body panels on the Blazer. Still working on it as time allows (work + 2 young kids + pitiful garage at home = slow progress).

I was really planning on taking some pictures when it was still clean but decided at the last minute to run it in the Mud Run Obstacle Course at the fair on Wednesday and was rushing around buttoning a few things up instead. In any case, the mud hides any mediocre fab work!

Complete rear 1/4 panels replaced with parts cut off an old Blazer from Jet455. Also dovetained (tapered) the rear about 6" on each side. This was a lot of work (much more than I expected...replacing them in general, the dovetail part only added a couple more hours). Also sectioned in a new piece on the B-pillar where the door latch was that got creamed by that tree on Last Chanice last fall while in Slade.

Front fenders replaced. These cost me $40 to pull off an old Suburban in the junkyard and didn't take more than a couple hours start to finish including cutting them to fit.

As a side note, all of the body panels were OEM GM parts vs. the cheaper foreign crap. Both trucks the parts were pulled off of had been Ziebarted at some point in their life and thus they were relatively rust free considering they were 20 years old and sitting in Ohio.

Here is the overview. It went from completely clean to this in 31 seconds.



Here is the dovetail/taper of the rear body. Again, about 6" was cut out right at the rear of the floor. I probably would of gone a little further but that would have required completely cutting out the rear cage and redoing it. The top of the bed rails sit right against the down bars on the cage.


Kinda' hard to notice it from this picture. For reference the rear bumper was cut down about 4.5" on each side (intinially wanted it to stick out further from the body then before).
These give a better idea. For reference the outside of the bumper used to stick out just a slight amout more than the outside of the tire, and the bumper was pretty tight to the fender.


Did a few other odds and ends, like extended out the rocker guards and added some gussets to the rear portion of the cage.


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