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The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2021 11:03 pm
by woody90gtz
Brought this rusty hunk of garbage home...but I like it! It's a 2000 Blazer 4.3/5spd 4x4 83k mi for $500...pretty nice score for an offroad beater. There's zero chance it would pass inspection to be road legal, but I'm just gonna pound on it until the frame breaks beyond repair and then keep the parts I want and sell the rest. Probably do the Gambler 500 too. I figure a Z71-2 cylinders is a Z69. haha
Needs front leaf spring brackets to really even be functional...and I'm gonna crank the torsion bars and put lift shackles in the rear to fit some 31s. It's rusty enough I won't even have to cut clearance for the tires, I can just bash it with a sledge. A mini spool for the rear is $45 so it's getting one of those, and I looked at welding the front diff, but the people who have tried it on the Blazer group say the steering flexes too much and binds. I am going to mount a 2" receiver tube for my hitch winch and build something in the back to gain some departure angle.
Once it's dead, the 8.5" rear end will be going in the Beretta for my RWD drift conversion project. Maybe the NV3500 too, gotta see how involved it is to swap 4WD to 2WD.
We got some more snow the day after I got it home so I took it for a rip as-is and it surprised me. Not too bad! Gonna be a lot of fun with tires and a locked rear.
https://youtu.be/Q6MMFaFaR8Q
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2021 12:09 am
by woody90gtz
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2021 11:08 am
by Rettax3
Nice! Looks like you at least get to have some fun. Actually pretty clean inside too. I am a little on the jealous side that you keep finding these GMs with stick transmissions... Almost everything I run across that could be a good deal is crippled with a slush-box. I am tired of converting to a 'real' transmission.
As I recall, to reconfigure the NV3500 to 2WD, you obviously need the tail-housing, but I think there is an output shaft that needs to go too... I am surprised that is what it has though -are you sure it isn't an NV2500?
I've got a Mopar version of that still waiting to go into my 'oldish' Plymouth ('73, not the 'old' Plymouth) behind the 5.9 it runs, and I still need a 2WD NV4500 for the 8.0 V-10 I would like to shoe-horn into it's sibling (Road Runner parts-car that was actually in overall better shape than mine -quite a shocker for $500!). But the V-10 uses the same bellhousing as the Cummins, NOT the SBM as I had been told, so that transmission is very hard to get. The ratios are more favorable than the six-speed that came behind the Cummins, and it is more reliable. With a 2.76 in the rear, I should be loping along near idle anywhere I want to go.
The Gambler 500 sounds like a blast! I almost bought a six-speed Camaro someone had chopped-up to run that, but by the time I got off my back-side, someone had beaten me to it. Would have been a good transmission for $1k...
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2021 10:08 pm
by woody90gtz
From what I read, the 4.3s came with the nv3500 (just like half tons) and the 2.2 got the nv2500. I put the nv4500 in my old Z71 and it was great.
And yeah. I read the output shaft needs to be changed to swap to 4wd. So I'll just patiently wait for a rusty 2wd 4.8/5spd Silverado to come around for the Beretta swap. Or just snag any old 4.8 and spend the money on another T56. That way I can sell a blazer 5spd swap kit with pedals, trans, tcase...
I apparently got almost the ultimate blazer. Only the 4.3 manuals got the iron front diff, and only 4.3 manuals and ZR2s got the 8.5 rear. Manual ZR2 would be the only thing better. So the iron front diff goes for some money too.
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2021 12:22 am
by woody90gtz
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2021 12:22 am
by woody90gtz
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2021 11:51 pm
by woody90gtz
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2021 9:40 am
by woody90gtz
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2021 8:08 pm
by Godlike
Looks fun! Are manual Blazers rare? I don't think ive ever seen one.
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2021 10:02 pm
by woody90gtz
I would guess they're rare. They're super popular on the Blazer group, but I didn't know they existed until this one popped up on my marketplace. My high school gf had a 2dr 2000 in 2003 when we graduated, but it was a slow auto turd.
So last weekend there was a snow drag race only 1.5hrs from home. It didn't get shared on my Gambler 500 group until Saturday and the race was Sunday. I had loaded it up and spent all day Saturday trying to get a babysitter, but no luck. I actually already had it loaded to bring home when I saw the post...cause it had no front brakes. Blew the steel line going to the pass front the weekend before, but in snow offroad it was pretty driveable anyway. Little sketchy loading/unloading on the trailer, but it worked. haha
So I ordered hoses (no way any of them were coming apart) and replaced all the steel lines except the 2 that were obviously already new. Broke one bleeder, rounded two and got one to work, but the other three I just bled right at the banjo bolt for the hose. Bled pretty well considering. Might still have a hair of air in there somewhere, but it feels good enough. Whole repair $70. I gotta be close to the $1200 in the for sale sign by now. haha
Also found it was cheaper to buy a $22 glasspack than a piece of pipe and an adapter (the blazer pipe is 2-3/4 before the muffler and 2-1/4 after...kinda weird. So I'm gonna just jam the glasspack in the 2-3/4 pipe, mark it and cut it back to where the 2-3/4 meets up to the bulge in the glasspack and weld. The fumes were pretty strong with the muffler dumping under the body and the tailpipe rotted off. Also should be easier to hear it with the windows up and the heater blowing. I'm sure the glasspack will sound amazing too. haha
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2021 8:57 am
by EPfiffner
Awesome, you're always up to some mischief, looks fun!
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:43 am
by woody90gtz
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2021 9:57 pm
by woody90gtz
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2021 12:03 am
by woody90gtz
Wow, this is way behind!
So I finished the junkyard "build" and registered it for the street:
https://youtu.be/vkDY9X0JNpg
Took it to the Adirondacks for the Gambler 500 and test ripped it day 1:
https://youtu.be/rOLhdmUmeVc
Put 188 miles on between breakdowns on day 2:
https://youtu.be/7nbk3NewQaw
Got bogged so bad the winch wouldn't get it out day 3:
https://youtu.be/50Yaosz9UlY
Dragged it home and had a sketchy surprise falling off the trailer!
https://youtu.be/TUbOCiEYlv4
Fixed all that damage and now found even more...haha
https://youtu.be/-cq5zcVIo1o
But I just got that fixed and it lives again! It's too much fun to send off yet. Even though it's definitely the "Danger Blazer" now...
Re: The $500 beater Blazer Z69 offroader
Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2021 3:30 am
by Rettax3
Umm, SAFETY CHAINS, across front and rear axles...
At least it didn't hurt the truck. "Cheap lesson learned" maybe?