Ah yes... Isn't the Edmonton winter wonderful?

 

I'm an Alberta boy, born & raised, so I'm used to the winters but it sure does make things hard if you don't have a garage to work in. Where I used to live down south one of my good friends owned a mechanic shop and would let me use his shop and hoist any time. I really miss that right now.

On another note I realised that I forgot to post pictures with my full size spare on the truck, although I did use one for my Ride of the Month nomination in November. Here's a pic for this thread:

 

Well, I just picked up a used brush guard off Kijiji. Needs some cleaning up and a new coat of bedliner but its gonna look awesome on the Blazer. It'll probably be a couple of months before I'm able to get it mounted up (no garage to work in), but I wanted to share the find.

 

Nice build! The guard is going to look slick on that.

 

best ever!
no sarcasm

and nice brush guard looks the same as mine. Do you plan on repainting it?

 

That's a wrap around brush guard right? Looks like it in the pic. It'll look good on your truck! Can't wait to see the pics!

 

Ah the WAAG guard... Saw that last week. Sent the guy a message like 15min after he posted to no reply. Oh well glad to see you ended up getting it!

 

Yeah, I'm going to clean up all the rust and worn paint, and cover it with bedliner before I mount it on my Blazer. Its probably going to be a couple months though. The winter here has been pretty warm and sucky, but its still too cold to be painting outside.

I replied right after he posted it too. When I talked to him he said that he had 3 other people contact him about it, but I was the first one who was able to come that day. His ZR2 looked really familiar too, but I forgot to ask him if he participates on the boards here.

 

Well things have been crazy busy, and I haven't gotten much done with the Blazer. I'm hoping to get a few things done here in the next few weeks. I will show you one more acquisition that I made for the Blazer. I picked these babies up over the weekend:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/preteygoodpics/7785993978/http://www.flickr.com/photos/preteygoodpics/7785992072/
They're the same Camaro SS rims that TripleBlackBlazer is running. The rims are 17x9, but the real challenge is that they have 6.8" of backspacing. I'm hoping that since I'm running on a ZR2 axle and I have 1.25" spacers on the front that I won't have any rubbing issues on the frame or sway bar. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have to do some more with the rear of the front fender. Right now I clear my 31x10's fine, even when wheeling, but we'll see what happens when I get these new wheels on.

I also picked up a used set of Nitto Terra Grapplers in a P265/70/17 to wrap around them. The 265/70/17's are a fair bit taller (although the 31's are aired down a bit) so I'm expecting to rub on the back of the front fender at first until I can do some more surgery. The other nice thing about these tires is that they're P rated, so hopefully they'll give me a nicer ride.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/preteygoodpics/7785990134/
They're worn, but they only cost me $50 for the set.

 

To start, I'm not the first to attempt to use these rims from a '01 or '02 Camaro SS.
TripleBlackBlazer has them on his truck, and Tibby made an attempt with them but had problems. There may be others but I don't know for sure. The rims look awesome at 17"x9" but the real difficulty comes in the backspacing. They have 6.8" of backspacing. That's almost an inch deeper than factory. Since I'd seen several other S-series trucks running them online, when I fould a decent deal I decided to pull the trigger and give it a shot.

To recap where my '96 Blazer sits now, I have turned the T-bars 1.5", a 2" AAL in the rear, and have a PA Body Lift. I also swapped in a ZR2 rear axle and front diff. With the ZR2 axle I found that the rear ended up about 2" wider than the front so I put my old 1.25" spacers on the front to even it out. This helps with the backspacing of the new rims at ends up at about 5.6".


So here's a few pics!

First, the 265/70/17's beside my 31x10.5s on stock rims.



I believe in child labor, so here's my junior mechanic taking the 31's off.


And installing the 265/70/17's.


And here's how it sits now:



Things are not perfect. 265/70/17 is not the same size as 31x10.5, no matter what the tire calculators tell you. You can see from the pics that it's a good inch taller. If I had a new tire with full tread it'd probably be closer to 2" taller. I've already massaged the back of the front fender about 1", and I need at least 1" more to be comfortable. I haven't cut anything yet but I did massage it with a BFH (Big Friggin' Hammer) and will try to get some more before I break out the sawzall. The fender area is already rusty on my truck and doesn't have any paint so I have nothing to lose by going this route. I've only driven on it breifly so I'll post up more results as I go.

It looks like less, but I have about 3/4" space behind the tire right now at the narrowest point when turning.