Hi all!

Decided to start a thread on the refreshing (not restoration) of my Blazer ZR2 I picked up recently. I want to get this Blazer in good condition as a weekend warrior; Off-roading, weekend trips out of town, some driving for photography sessions in nature. I have a lot of options for off-roading and exploring so those are my goals.

Anyway I'm going to break this down in four phases: Interior, Suspension, Motor and Paint at the end.

Interior is worn and dirty, ask me what it takes to clean 20 year old carpet.
Suspension is worn out. Previous owner changed out the shocks front and back so it's okay in that regard. Ball joints, tie rods and bushing are gonna have to get replaced before I do any serious driving.
The engine is solid, a few leaks but nothing major. Starts right up, oil pressure and temperature are consistent. Shifts in 4HI, 4 LOW and back to 2HI.
Paint and rubber on outside have gotten beat by the sun and age so I want to repaint it and treat/replace the rubber portions that I can.

So this thread is gonna be a journal of my progress. I will show you the little nuances of fixing up a worn out vehicle but in no way is this professional.

 

So this first step I took after I closely examined it was deciding to replace the interior. I hit the local junkyards with my dad looking for interior pieces. I needed a lot, almost the entire inside. So I tracked down some better condition seats and found some dark grey ones. I think you need a 15mm deep socket for the front seats and if I remember its a 17 or 18mm deep socket for the rear seats along with a T50 torx. The T50 is also for the seatbelts.

If the front drivers seat is powered and you need to push it back to expose the front bolts then you need to take off the plastic guard (takes a small torx) under the front bottom of the seat and there you can find some way to move the seat back using a power drill and come bits.

In that run, I grabbed all four seats, the four seatbelts and visors.
I'll come back and clarify the specifics, like socket sizes.

 

So we went back the next day to the same donor vehicle that gave me the first run supplies and grabbed the lower portion of the rear panels. The ones with the arm rest and small storage cubby. My ZR2S was missing the arm rests and the cubby latches were broken off. These were solid but dark gray. (I will deal with that very soon).

I also needed a new steering wheel. Mine was also rough and almost worn completely through. So in order to get a steering wheel you need to rent a steering wheel puller from you local autoparts store. I recommend Autozone for that, $20 and 90 days to return it. O'reilly was charging me $70 and 2 days to return it. So to pull the steering wheel you need to remove some small bolts from the underside of the steering wheel cover. It's better if you have the key for it or if you are at the junk yard one that the has the steering wheel moving freely.

If you are doing this on your own vehicle, unplug the battery!

Remove those pieces and set them aside. Then turn the wheel half a turn so the logo is now sideways (on the airbag). Get yourself a screwdriver and small mirror. I put the mirror behind the steering wheel on the cluster to reflect back you an opening. Inside there is a small wire, like a thick paper clip. Also there is a white plastic piece in there too. Don't be tempted to push on it that's not it. Push on metal clip and the airbag will click open on one side. You can't miss it. Turn the wheel the opposite direction so the logo is sideways facing the opposite way and repeat. Now the airbag will be loose.

Take care on these next parts. Slowly lift the airbag and with a small flat screwdriver disconnect the airbag and put it aside. Afterwards you have to disconnect the horn wiring. You will see some Torx screws with springs in them with red wires leading to a small plastic piece with a spring into the steering wheel frame. Carefully push and turn counterclockwise to release the white plastic connector. You will see it has some small plastic hooks on each side (careful with these and the wires connect to it.) and carefully let it hang out of the way.

Take your tool rental and pull the steering wheel and there you go. You don't need the wheel puller to put the steering wheel back.

All this stuff I learned on the fly. More next time.

 

Be sure to post pics!

Sounds like you are off to a good start!

 

Definitely sounds good... waitting for pics!

 

Yeah I'm getting in the mindset to document more. These two steps are after the fact and are good for forcing me to remember how it work to take it apart and put it back together. I realized that by now that there are a lot of little fixes that are gonna need attention. Like a cut speaker wire, broken speaker mounts, cleanup of old spilled liquids long since petrified like an ancient dinosaur, dust in every nook and cranny. Stuff like that.

GM used a lot of plastic support pieces and those are all broken or are ready to break.

 

Here is how it looked right before I put the headliner back in. Which I replace the material.

Bare bones interior

 

Carpet!

Oh the fun. So I can imagine in its 20 years of existence not much attention was paid to the carpet. There were no floor mats so there is a hole in the driver side where the heel of the past owners dug into it and made a neat "heel hole". My old ford focus had one of those so I know where it came from (not from digging for gold). Drinks were spilled in the passenger side and the back seats, for a second I thought some were rust but it was just petrified cola or coffee. And now my favorite... pet hair. There was dog hair everywhere in the carpet, I would pull a screw and it came with hair. Plus the last owner was a smoker so there were cigarette butts hidden too.

So my options were to order replacement carpet from Rockauto for $350, have a local auto upholstery do it for $500, take it south of the border into Mexico and get it done for about $200 or clean it with a carpet cleaner a carpet vacuum and a lot of scrubbing. I decided for now I would clean it. Since I could use the vacuum to keep my Buick and my dads truck from looking like this in the future.

So I did. Since the seats were out of it and I knew how to remove the inside panels, I moved ahead. I could always take the carpet out and have it sent to get a new one made in the future. I didn't worry too much about the places that would be hidden by the seats, but it all got scrubbed and cleaned.

So that's about it. Nothing spectacular about cleaning out old carpet. The removal was pretty easy just take it slow so you don't catch any wires or connections running underneath.

Before

After

 

That cleaned up really good! It's going to look good cleaned up!

 

Nice job on the carpet. Last week I was able to score a really nice rear carpet from a wrecking yard for less than $25.

What you can do is make a list of parts and now and then go to the u-pull yards and slowly accumulate what you need.

I posted about how I was able to use the VINs of the Blazers in the yard to find which had the interior colors I wanted. This would work for others too to find ZR2 specific parts.
https://blazerforum.com/forum/builds...e4/#post724203