Hey everyone, I've been lurking around the forums for a while now after getting my 96 Blazer LS last summer. I've been reading through a bunch of the build threads and looking up fixes and decided to start my own build thread to kind of keep track of my progress and kick around ideas.

I'm learning as I go and working on fixing things as I find them. Focusing mainly on getting her running right and then moving on to making her pretty

 

One of the first things I knew I needed to work on is the front end. All of my tie rods, pitman arm, idler arm, ball joints, etc need replacing. I also found that my sway bar bushings were toast and my shocks were still the original stock shocks. After a good 256K miles on her I figured new shocks would help the wobble.

I didn't take any pictures of my shock replacement that I did a couple of weeks ago. This past weekend however I replaced my sway bar bushings and end links and figured I would take pictures as I went.

Jacked her up and removed both front wheels.


Old end links. Sprayed with PB to get them loosened up a bit.


Removed the plastic skid plate and found where my oil leak is. Seems to be a fairly common problem in these beasts. I'll be looking into a fix for that soon.


End links were pretty bad, the sway bar bushings weren't horrible, but cracking none the less.



Sway bar out and ready to be cleaned up and bushings replaced


All prettied up. Started painting it red to (mostly) match the body color and the red Gabriel shocks I put it, then ran out of paint half way through. Decided I didn't want to waste time and money going to the store so I found a fresh can of paint in the garage..


Didn't get a picture of the final install since it was after dark by the time I got it all back together but it all looks good and the ride is much nicer now.

Left my skid plate off for the time being, didn't see any reason it needs to go back on just yet unless anyone else knows of a good reason?

Like I said, learning as I go so any feedback and suggestions are more than appreciated

 

Welcome to the forum. Sway bar bushings and end links are a very common and easy to fix issue on these. The same with those oil cooler lines. Is that sway bar purple or blue?

 

Thanks!

It's purple. Not even sure why I had it, but it was better than nothing and I couldn't leave it out any longer since this is my daily driver.

It kind of goes with the red, I might make it a thing if it grows on me

 

Nice truck! It is strange seeing one in stock form that mine used to look identical to lol. Glad to see you are fixing all the important things first to make it safe and then moving on to the modification stage (because you will at some point)! Please don't make a thing of the purple it is as bad as the green everyone uses that looks so terrible lol! I like using it out of necessity but not as a style

 

Thanks Rex, I just recently finished reading your entire build thread. Great work on your truck!

I liked your manual solution for the tcase, luckily mine came with the manual floor shifter so I don't have to bother.

The purple really was just to have it painted before I put it back in, probably won't keep it that way. We don't have much trouble with rust in central Oregon but I decided to clean up and paint things as I go. Eventually I'll be doing a bed liner job in the underside and the lower half like yours. I think it looks really good that way