Well, it has been a hard spring for my Blazer!

It seems that all at once I have a possible vacuum problem, my muffler gave out, I have a rubbing sound from my left/rear brakes, my driver side door lock is only intermittently working with the lock fob, a rattle in the driver's sunshade, and another noise under the instrument panel!

The exhaust system was a Walker Dynomax cat-back kit. I looked it up and installed it in Sept of 2017 at about 24k miles ago. I have a new replacement kit on order (the last one in stock at Rock Auto last weekend). For the replacement I'll experiment by painting the muffler and tailpipe with some leftover galvanizing spray paint. The muffler gave out at the exit pipe. At the moment the exit pipe is kind of loosely moving around a rusted out hole on the rear face of the muffler. Since I need the truck for an upcoming trip, I'll be trying a temporary fix with some JB weld product.

Then I noticed that now and then that the airflow in the HVAC system would suddenly shift to coming out of the instrument panel vents. To diagnose the problem I set the readout of my Ultragauge I use to monitor the transmission temperature to report the MAP (inlet air) pressure. Sure enough, the shift of the HVAC air ducting shifts to the IP vents when the engine is under load and there is not much vacuum. I hope it is not the vacuum reservoir that has started to leak as that looks near impossible to replace. Perhaps it is the vacuum check valve. I hope it is not in the HVAC control itself.

I'll keep you all posted.

BTW, what do you all think of how long my muffler lasted? The roads here in North Idaho are salted a bit in the winter, but not nearly like they do back in the East.

 

If the problem is the control unit, I have a spare one out in the garage. That is the good news. The bad news is my garage is a mess and I have no idea where it is, but I'm sure I can find it. I also hope you don't go with the same brand muffler. 24k is way too soon for that to happen with lightly salted roads.

 

Thanks for the input.

We had one of our warmest days of the year here today but tomorrow it is suppose to drop by over 20 degrees and rain. So I took advantage and worked on the muffler before dinner.

What I found was that the weld of the exit pipe to the rear face of the muffler broke. So I took a wire brush to it and put on some JB Weld Steelstick. I then found that there was some other rust under the strap that went around the muffler to support the muffler. I suspect that it must have trapped some salt there. I didn't have enough of the putty filler to fill in all of the holes on top of the muffler so I did a hack job and used some steel wire to tie on a piece of aluminum sheet. It wasn't perfect but only has to last a couple weeks.

The putty is suppose to cure in one hour but I'll let it cure overnight. Hopefully it'll work. Otherwise I have to play musical chairs with the Blazer and the old Mustang in the garage so to bring the Blazer in out of the rain to work on it tomorrow.

I'll try to take my vacuum pump/gauge to the vacuum system tomorrow to see what is up with it. I tried testing the isolation valve by sucking on it. It seemed to work but I'm not confident in it.


The pipe has been pulled out a bit to show the broken weld.


This is where the original strap was located. I might install the replacement muffler with stainless steel hose clamps again so that salt cannot get trapped under the original style strap.


Exit pip reinserted and the steel epoxy putty in place.


More epoxy putty in place.


The hack job of extra aluminum on the top of the muffler.


The stone I found in my rotor. You can see where it was rubbing on the inside of the caliper.

 

I've found stones in some odd places over the years, including the rotor. I still can't figure how of the got where they did. Then again, living on dirt roads and going offroad I'm not surprised.

 

Preliminary tests indicated that the stone in the rotor was the source of the noise and that the vacuum hose connection to the vacuum reservoir was the source of the vacuum leak.

I just hope the muffler survives the next week or so.

 

It has been a long winter and spring but I'm finally getting back to getting some stuff done to my Blazer.

I've been wanting to replace my headlamps for awhile now due to them not only being yellowed but also pitted. So I found what I could on Rock Auto, a pair made in Taiwan. When I first unpacked them I noticed they were really well packed and looked fine. However, I soon started to notice a couple things.

First, the adjustment mechanisms were different. The heads of the adjustment screws were not the torx fitting that were on the original ones and the one for the horizontal adjustment was not as tall. Furthermore of the new ones, the heads for the vertical and horizontal adjustments were not the same as each other.

Looking more closely, I noticed that the metal rings that hold the bulbs in place looked wimpy. One was even buckled so that the bulb was a bit loose. Another was off-center so that it was near impossible to get the bulb out.

So what I did was swap the adjustment mechanisms and the bulb retaining rings form the old headlamp assemblies to the new ones. For the retaining ring that was warped, I found the screw holes were not positioned correctly. For that one, I filled the original screw mounting holes with scrap ABS and acetone and re-drilled them.

The result is that the beams I think are a bit brighter. I did a comparison by only installing one of the new headlamps using the original bulbs (the new ones came with new bulbs). It is not obvious in the pictures but I could tell the new headlamp was a bit brighter. A nice thing was that swapping the adjustment mechanisms as they were did not require new aiming of the headlights.

But before I installed them, I also installed Lamin-x film protectors. Since I do sometimes go off-pavement, I thought it might be good to have. The films fit pretty well. They come as a kit for the headlamps and the indicator lights. It is worth taking the headlamp assembly off the vehicle to install them correctly. I did have to widen one of the holes for the small protrusions on the face of the lens. If you install these, I'd suggest starting at the top or bottom of the lens and roll it on. This will minimize the number of small bubbles with trapped water.


New vertical adjustment screw head.


New horizontal adjustment screw head. You can also see the buckled metal bulb retaining ring on the left.


The original vent mechanism cap.


Original vent mechanism cap removed.


New vent location. It came with what looked like a semi-permeable patch with adhesive to hold it in place (not pictured) I like the old ones better but I could not get the caps to fit.


Original vertical adjustment mechanism.


Original horizontal adjustment mechanism with taller screw.


Comparison of new and old headlamps. The new is the one on the left.


New headlamp lens.


I took the chrome bezel off to see how the headlamp was assembled. (top view)


I took the chrome bezel off to see how the headlamp was assembled. (bottom view)


Close of of lens attachment to headlamp body. There are four metal clips in total with the lens also sealed with some sort of adhesive.


Lens clip removed.

 

Radiator Repair Update:

It has been 11 months and the repairs on the radiator (post #95) using the slightly thinned JB Weld have been holding up. I've been monitoring the coolant level throughout the last year(almost) and have had to add maybe a pint of water. I suspect that using the thinning the JB Weld helped it flow well enough to get into the little nooks and crannies.

 

I was looking for something else on the forum today, but have to say that this post has me excited.
Somebody parked a tricked out old (late '90s) Toyota 4 Runner out in front of my house last week and it was a nice rig.
Not that I was jealous, but I really want to trick out our 2001 Blazer to be a bit more off-road hardy with a bit of a lift and everything else...
This post just inspired me! Thanks!

 

Oh wow, thanks! That is really nice of you to say.

I was inspired by many of the other members here myself. Be sure to check out what they did too to get ideas and learn how to do the mods you want to do.

I still have several things I want to do to my Blazer. Because the suspension has sagged, even though tried to do a lift the truck is now riding just a hair above stock. I have new torsion bars and rear springs to install to fix that. I also have a 1-ton idler arm upgrade to install. Some day I want to get my swing-away rear tire carrier installed too.

Don't be shy about asking advice of the members!

 

This is not so much a mod for my truck, but a review of a lesson learned.

I had posted elsewhere with a frustration with a very intermittent Crank but No Run condition. I am pretty sure it was due to a worn out relay for the fuel pump.

One of the things I learned is that after years of arcing, the contacts can start to go bad. I also realized that after 24 years, the fuel pump relay is one of the relays used the most and under the most extreme conditions.

It is obviously used every time the vehicle is started. However, it is actually used twice for each start as it is activated by turning the key to run to prime the system but is turned off again until the engine is started. Then I learned that the current pulse due to inductive loads like motors, e.g., a pump, can be quite large.

Below are pictures of what I am sure are the original relays from the under-hood fuse/relay box. Note the different amount of pitting on the contacts.


AC relay, definitely some pitting.



Liftgate relay, actually looks almost new!



Fuel Pump