Hi all. I'm fairly new to this forum, I found it when I started pulling my Blazer out of the mothballs a few weeks ago, and found myself uncontrollably answering posts with issues I've run into myself in the past . I've had an interesting time getting this thing going again, and I'm quite happy with the results thus far considering It's only been about a week and a half since I've been working on it, and I decided I might as well document what all has been going on in case the issues I've run into might help someone else down the road Also, I'm not sure if this is the best forum to post this to, I looked at all the other categories on the main page though and this seemed to be pretty applicable, but by all means move it to a more appropriate forum if need be.

First off, I stopped driving it a number of years ago, it's basically sat up since mid-late 2003. The reason I stopped driving it was due to a few reasons, a lot of it at the time was money-related. I needed to do a few things to it like get the rear oil seal leak fixed, which I couldn't afford at the time, and also needed to change out the water pump (which, at the time was one of those mysterious and "daunting" tasks for an inexperienced me :P). I ended up buying a little 94 Isuzu pickup 2wd from a friend for about $1500 (with a cheap monthly note on my loan), which has been an excellent little truck for me over the years, and my Blazer was pushed to the wayside. Glad I never got rid of it though. What I would do while it was sitting up was, initially, to go out and just run it every few months to keep it all exercised, and every time (up until the last few) it ran great, engine purring like a kitten. Of course I slacked off on that, and every few months turned into every 6 months, which turned into once a year, which turned into .. well you get the picture. I started it up in May of 2007 so I could prep it up to move to our new house, and I think it had been well over a year since I'd started it up before. Of course I started it up and it was running like hell.. Had old gas in it from the last time I'd started it, and it had gummed up my injectors and whatever else it could. In fact, as I recall, it wouldn't start at all, and I found that the injectors on the throttle body weren't spraying any fuel. So I had my wife come out and turn it over while I tapped lightly on the injectors. That freed them up.. a little too well. They started spraying uncontrollably, so I kept tapping and they sort of leveled out. The vehicle didn't quite run right at all though, it ran very rough, and would want to putt and die when I gave it gas. It was running much too rich and I played with it for a day or so, but it came time to move, so off we went. It was still running rough, but I was able to putt it across town to my new house, though it didn't go above 25mph or so.

About a week or so later, still getting settled into the new house, I went outside to play around with the Blazer again and try to get it running right. I started it up, it was running rough as expected. I monitored the fuel injectors and they both, with one in particular, seemed like they were opening a bit wide, and the engine was running like hell (not surprising since it was running so rich), barely able to idle on its own. I figured I'd let it get up to temperature and go from there. I went across the street to chat with my father in law for a few minutes, and while I was gone was when trouble happened. I was there for about 20 minutes and when I got back to the truck, I found that it'd died. I tried to start it back up.. but nothing happened. Wouldn't even turn over. I knew the battery was good, and it turned over with no problem before. I had my father in law come over and try to start it while I watched the engine, and when he engaged the key I could see the belts and pulley's move evvvver so slightly, but that was it.. and I mean sliiiightly, almost couldn't even tell, but they were buckling. When he'd let off the key they would move back ever so slightly. Basically the engine was locked up. So at this point I'm trying to figure out what in the heck has happened. I checked the oil and to my surprise it looked very thin and smelled richly of.. GASOLINE. So I started forming this picture in my head of what might possibly could have happened. As best as I could hypothesize at the time, I thought maybe those injectors stuck open too far and flooded too much gas into the engine, sinking down into the oil, and thinning it out, causing it to allow the engine to overheat and lock up. I ran it by a few people and couldn't really come up with anything better, though it bugged me that it locked up like this without any fanfare. No loud noise, no audible knocking before it locked (I wasn't THAT far away from it), no loud sound of a rod being thrown and tearing up the engine. I went outside once or twice a week for about 2 months to try and start it. Every single time it did the same thing. Turn the key over, wouldn't spin, and I could see the belts buckle ever so slightly like the engine just couldn't turn over. I knew the battery was good, because it was the battery I used daily in my Isuzu, and I would take it out of the Isuzu and stick it in the Blazer for testing. I even cleaned all the battery terminals, etc, just to be on the safe side. Finally I gave up and just left the truck there, with no money to go any further, I figured I'd just worry about it down the road, maybe put in a new engine if I could save up or something.

Cut to a week and a half ago. Me and a friend were talking about possibly replacing the engine in the Blazer and getting it going again. He knew where we could get a refurb long block for the thing for about $900 or so from a Napa store with a mechanic shop attached to it (He bought a 350 from them for his Chevy 1500 about a year before and had excellent luck with it), and seeing as I've finally got a decent paying job these days, I thought I could probably save it up in a few months and get the ol girl running again. I explained to him what happened a year before, and just like with me, it didn't sit well with him at all that the engine locked up like that so quietly. He kept saying he thought we might be able to free it up and get it spinning again. I was certainly game for anything at this point, and at worst I wanted to go out and inspect it all to see what it would take to stick a new engine in there. We went outside that Saturday, I fought my way into the hood (my hood release broke years ago and I have to do the ol' flathead screwdriver trick to get it open) and hooked up the battery. I hopped in the cab, stuck in the key and.... it turned! So I'm thinking, ok, this thing isn't as dead as I thought. I checked the oil, and sure enough it still smelled like gas. Luckily it still smelled like gasoline and not varnish, so I knew not only was this possibly repairable, but the engine must still be pretty airtight in there since there wasn't enough oxygen to degrade the gas in the last year or so. No blown seals or gaskets or anything. By now I'm forming another hypothesis about what happened a year before.

One thing to note here is that my fuel pump is on a manual toggle switch. This was due to a problem I had years before, before I stopped driving it originally, probably early 2003, that completely stumped me at the time. Without going into too much detail (I'm saving it for a separate post), I had an issue with the system not priming up the fuel system when it was warm causing it to die when coming to a stop and not start in certain situations and the best bandaid I could come up with after a month of fighting it (act of congress, lemme tell ya) was to bypass the fuel pump relay and control it manually with a toggle, which seemed to solve the problem for the time being. I've since gotten a much better understanding of my vehicle and plan on tackling that again soon so I can have the system run the way its supposed to, but needless to say this is a critical piece of information in trying to figure out what happened to lock my engine up a year ago. As best as I can gather, what I believe happened was this: When I started the truck up that day last year, as I'd said, it was running very rough, and had a hard time even idling. What I believe happened was that the engine died from the rough idle, however my fuel pump was still engaged due to it being controlled by the manual toggle switch in the cab. This was complicated by the fact that my injectors were not operating properly and were sticking open. I believe that the engine died, the fuel pump continued to run, and the injector(s) that were stuck open continued to pour gas down into the throttle body until it ran the tank empty, which leaked down into the oil, and completely filled up a few, if not all, of my cylinders, essentially causing, basically, a hydrolock situation. The engine couldn't physically press the piston down since it was completely filled with liquid and of course couldn't compress it. This was pretty much confirmed also once I pushed the Blazer up onto the driveway and started working on it. I found that the gas tank was completely empty, and even disconnected the fuel lines at the tank and turned on the pump to see if it would start pumping gas onto the ground... there was just nothing there. Also it was confirmed when I did finally put gas into the tank (after I got the engine stuff sorted out). I turned on the fuel pump, and gas dumped onto the ground telling me my pump was good and the tank was in fact empty before. I reconnected my fuel lines, again turned on the pump (with the vehicle still off, mind you), and guess what... Gas started flooding out of one of the injectors like mad. It was stuck open.

So I'd started doing some standard tune-up stuff here once I pushed the truck over to the driveway. I drained out all the oil (which was very thin, it came rushing out with the consistency of a soft drink), and I let it drain for a good 2 hours just to be on the safe side. I will say that having gas sitting in my engine for a year sure cleaned it out nicely :P. I pulled the filter off, replaced that. When I put new oil in, I'd gotten a canister of some good engine restore stuff that you're supposed to put in with an oil change (can't remember exactly which kind, my buddy recommended it, and I can find out if anyone is interested). I also removed all of the spark plugs and tested turning the engine over with no compression, which went very well. The spark plugs looked like hell, every one of them was black on the ends, extremely carbonized, not surprising considering how rich it was running the last few times I'd ran the engine. I replaced all of the plugs, checked the wires and distributor/rotor, which were in decent enough shape, though I'll likely replace them soon anyway. Now it was time to try and start the motor. I put some fresh gas in with some fuel system cleaner for good measure, gave the injectors a few good taps, though I figured it was in vain given the injector situation from before, and tried to start it up. It tried, but putted, and wouldn't stay on. Time to work on the injector system.

I began tearing down the throttle body, just enough to get the injectors and everything out. Once I had it all apart and sat down to play with them, I realized pretty quickly that they were shot. One was maybe, possibly, slightly, sort of usable, but the other was completely frozen open. I decided to replace them both. I started looking around online at the standard auto parts stores, and wasn't having much luck. Almost everyone didn't have them in stock here in town, and they were looking at about $120 a piece, or more :|. More $$ than I had available to me at that moment. I finally found some in stock, but it was from Autozone and they were only $65/each. Right there I was wondering why these lone injectors were half as much as every single other injector from every other vendor, but they were the only in stock and in my price range, so I figured I'd grab them up and hope for the best. They had a year warranty on them, and so far they've worked fine. The injectors can be found here:

http://www.autozone.com/R,1821247/ve...ductDetail.htm

If anyone has any experience, good or bad, with these, I'd appreciate any info you can give me. As I said, so far so good on this end. I bought 2 of these, plus a TBI rebuild kit and went to work putting it all back together. Replaced every gasket on the topside of the throttle body (since I didn't tear the whole throttle body out, I haven't replaced the gaskets on the bottom side yet). Got it all back on, got in the truck and turned on the fuel pump. No fuel was coming out of the injectors, a good sign so far hehe. I turned the engine over, and that **** cranked up in less than 2 turns. I couldn't believe how great and smooth it sounded. In about 7 hours time I went from thinking my engine was locked up and possibly FUBAR, to it purring smoothly!

So I let it idle for a bit, wanted it to get up to temperature. I noticed the water was low, so I opened the radiator and started pouring it in. A minute or 2 later I noticed water leaking from the weep hole on the water pump, and then I remembered that this was one of the reasons I stopped driving it. I'm laughing at myself at this point for brushing off such an easy task as replacing the water pump, especially on this engine, so I stuck it on my todo list. I started checking all of my other fluids, transmission was a half quart low, so I topped it off, brake fluid was good, power steering was good, etc. I think that was about it for day one, it was basically almost dark by the time I got the injector system back together and got it officially running.

Next day I went and bought a new water pump for $30 bucks, new thermostat and gasket for good measure, and got all that installed in right about an hour or so. Wasn't much to that operation, removed the belts, unbolted the fan and slid off the pulleys. There were a crapload of bolts on the water pump, as expected, but it didn't give me too much trouble. It took the water pump gasket about a day to settle I guess, it leaked mildly for about a day, and not a drop since. Swapped in the new thermostat and gasket for it, and filled my system up with regular filtered water (have a filter on my sink) for the time being (since it's still quite warm here) and it's all been running with no problems. I had to sort out some issues with my lighting system. When I started running through the steps of a typical state inspection to prepare for that, I found that my exterior lighting system wasn't operation properly. My brake lights wouldn't work (tail lights worked though), blinkers wouldn't work, things like that. I found a bad fuse on the lighting system and changed it, which got my brake lights working, but the blinkers still didn't work on the front driver/passeger, and the rear driver side blinker didn't work either. I pulled the lights from the front and both the blinker lights were black and fried out. I replaced them both, but one bulb was bad and twisted apart while I was installing it. The passenger side front blinker started working, and when I disconnected the drivers side blinker, the one in the rear started working. The socket for the front drivers side blinker was very very gunked up with green corrosion, so I assume that was my problem. I got another good bulb for it, but its still a little screwy and I still need to clean the socket properly. I couldn't pass inspection that evening for a few reasons (wiper motor, side glass busted, blinker issue), but I at least was able to get a 30-day temporary so I can still drive the thing around. I'd gotten all my license place and insurance stuff taken care of earlier that day during lunch.

Of the other major things I need to get done are, my wipers aren't working. When I turn them on I can hear the wiper motor sort of grinding, and the wipers don't even try to move. As of yesterday the motor doesn't do anything. I removed the motor and plugged it in to see if it could get it to do anything, but its dead, so I need to replace that now to get the truck inspected, looks like it'll run about $60-$70 or so. My side glass was shattered from the period when the truck was still sitting up. I shot a rock through the passenger side rear glass (the long one on the side) when mowing the lawn one day, but I managed to find a replacement for about $75 at a junk yard, and I had a buddy of mine install it a few days ago. He did auto glass repair for years, and was quite good at it, and he did it for me for a cup of coffee and some lunch :P, so that worked out nicely.

The other major thing I have on my list is the front end needs work badly, a few of the steering arms are loose in the ball joints, and its causing very loose steering while driving, and its driving me crazy. Hope to get that done the end of this week when I get paid, or next week. There is an excellent front-end shop here in town with a great reputation, but they charge accordingly. I'm looking into trying to replace as many of the arms as possible myself to save some cash, then bringing it to them to change the more difficult ones and adjust everything, and then do an alignment, but I've never done that and am not sure what I'm getting into. I'll create a separate thread about that and see what advice you guys can give me regarding front end work. I also have this nagging issue with the vehicle not wanting to start after its been warmed up real well, then sitting for a few minutes (it's a very specific problem, but consistent), but I'm saving that for another thread as well since I'm definitely going to need input regarding that if my next few ideas don't pan out. I think it may possibly be related to the issue that had me putting my fuel pump on a manual switch years ago since the symptoms are very similar in some ways, but I've not determined that as of yet. I'd stopped driving the truck very shortly after that bandaid and was never able to properly smoke test it. I also need to get this rear oil seal leak sorted out, and I'm not sure if I want to tackle that one on my own since it would involve dropping the transmission and I've never done anything quite like that before. Once again, will post another thread about that issue.

That's about it for my write-up, I'll be slowly getting this truck fixed up over the course of the following months and plan on posting my progress either as an FYI, or if I need help with stuff. I plan to get all of the mechanical workings of it fixed up so its running right, and once I'm satisfied with that I'm going to begin working on the interior and other little things like weatherstripping replacements, and other interior stuff. Eventually I'd like to get the exterior looking nicer as well, but frankly thats at the bottom of my list. I just want the thing running nicely and it to be comfortable on the inside to ride around in. And the exterior doesn't look half-bad now that I've given it a good wash hehe. Once again, I'm not sure if this was the right forum to post in, so please move it if necessary, and anyone feel free to respond with your thoughts or comments on my Blazer resurrection!

-Daniel

P.S. Edit: Wow this was a lot more long-winded than I anticipated!

 

Hmmm I think thats been the longest post yet since i became a member here LOL

 

Man that was time consuming and a bit painful... LOL Glad you got it semi-working... Keep at it.

Cliff Notes: [ul][*]Truck broke in 2003[*]Truck sat since with random manipulation[][:-][&o][*]Fuel pump electrical supply broke so a manual switch was installed[*]TBI injector failure coupled with manual switch filled engine with fuel[*]Thought engine was locked up[*]Was surprised to find out it was not[*]New injectors (cheap'ese from Autozone) and a rebuild kit for the TBI and it was running again[*]Leaking water pump[*]Replaced water pump[*]Somewhere along the way, busted long rear window with rock thrown from lawn mower[:@][*]Paid a buddy to put in a junkyard window paid for with coffee and lunch[/ul]
Lingering problems: [ul][*]Front end needs to be rebuilt[*]Fuel pump electrical circuits[*]Hard start when warmed up[*]Rear main seal [/ul]

 

GOO!

 

Thank god for kyle's Cliff notes haha. I started to read and got dizzy, geez what a long post.

 

LOL sorry guys, read it if you will, but swartlkk's Cliff notes cover the major points. It's been a long week or 2 with this thing and I think the details are still too vivid in my head hehe. Plus I tend to get awfully detailed with stuff from time to time when troubleshooting. Comes from years and years of troubleshooting computers and networks I think :P. It's on its way though, will be nice when I fix up these last few things.

 

Replacing the front end components is easy with the right tools which you can probably rent from the local rent-it store or even borrow them from Canadian tire if you buy the new parts there. If the ball joints are stock you will have to drill out the rivets and bolt the new ones in...easier than it sounds, and to replace the tie rod ends you need a fork to break them loose from the tapered seat and then they just unscrew from the rod. Nothing you can do in the way of set-up when you replace the ball joints...they will do it at the alignment shop but when you unscrew the tie-rod ends, make sure you mark or measure how far they screw onto the shaft and try and get them as close as you can to the old ones. Any other parts you need to replace are simply a bolt-on. Good luck.