So I bought a 2001 S10 ZR2 that was an MPI writeoff for obvious reasons. It seems to have lost a battle with a pole or something. I brought it home on Apr 1.

I got it for a pretty good price and was planning on just taking the drivetrain from it and parting out the rest. Well ideas started floating around in my head and I figured it would be fun to build a trail only truck. So that's what I'm going to do.

First things first, I have to make sure it will actually run before I start doing anything to it, but assuming it does run, here are my plans for it.
- Dana 44 front axle, stretch the front end out a few inches
- shorten the rear overhang
- 37" tires
- Lockers front and back
- Maybe shorten the wheelbase
- Still plan on swapping the drivetrain to the blazer and blazer to the S10
- Run it without having to worry about breaking stuff on a DD

Here's a couple pics to show what I'm starting with, be warned it's not pretty.





Started tearing it down on Apr 3.



Last week I finished the wiring that needed fixing (hopefully) and this past weekend a buddy and I finished removing everything that was damaged from the front end and moved the box to get at the fuel pump. Now I need to order a few things and make sure it'll actually start. And you can see in the next picture I found a front axle for it, leaf sprung LP Ford D44.

 

Looks like a project man! Good luck!

 

nice man cant wait to see what you have in store for it

 

Thanks guys, ya it should be a fun experience that's for sure.

 

Hey do we have any updates on this thing lately??

 

lol very little. Did some body work, the guy I bought it from hacked up the bedsides getting the flares off so I'm patching it up just for the experience/practice.

Still trying to get it started, got it to the point on the weekend where it *should* be able to start. So we try starting it an absolutely nothing happens, the dash lights up but that's it. Fuel pump doesn't prime, doesn't crank. Then we decide to try and jump the starter to try and get some reaction out of the truck, nothing happens other than a few sparks.

Then we figured we should check to make sure we didn't blow any of the fuses, open up the box and...... all of the relay's are gone, most of the big fuses and some of the small fuses are also gone. Man did I feel stupid for not looking in there earlier.

Planning a trip to the wrecker on Friday to hopefully get replacement fuse box, and if I'm lucky an ignition with key.

 

yeah that **** definitely smashed a pole same thing on my new blazer, but i had parts already. good to see another sas, what year d44 you have and what lockers you plan on running, i suggest with what i have ran and read blah blah that you ditch that stock rear, they can barely hold up to 35s unless you get money in em *depending on what your doing* but so far looks good

 

It's from a 76 F-250, I haven't decided yet what lockers I'm going to run. I'm leaning towards an E-Locker in the front and the rear is really up in the air at this point. I already don't like the way the blazer turns with the rear locked so I would like to maybe use a selectable in the rear but it may not be worth the extra cost.

As for the rear axle, are you taking into account the ZR2's have the larger 8.5/8.6 10 bolt? There are lots of guys on ZR2USA that leave the stock rear end with my planned tire size so I don't think it'll be a problem.

 

hmm yea the rear, didnt think to check the zr2usa, most of the ppl i see build SFA use the 8.8, pretty much the same thing a tad stronger but they come with lsd and 4.10s, however a lot of ppl dont like lsd idk

and idk about the 76, but wasnt that a closed knuckle or is urs open, maybe it was 75, sorry for the rants questions, just love seeing the sfa take charge

 

ya I'm not worried about the stock rear, a lsd isn't good for playing on the rocks which is the primary type of terrain we have around here so that's not selling point for me. I'm likely going to go with 4.88's so I was planning on changing gears anyway.

The axle is open knuckle and has the larger 3" axle tubes, the only negative is that it's low pinion.