So I was cleaning the garage today and once I could see my whole Blazer again got sidetracked. lol
While waiting on funds for tube decided to start planning the bodywork I am going to need to do for everything to fit.

Started by putting my rear wheels on the front since they will be my new front wheels. They are 18x10 and right now have 275/35 18 tires on them but plan on running a 285 or 295 on the front. Then I decided to see how wide I am going to have to widen the fenders.

Wheels barely clear the brakes but they will work thankfully.

Now that is going to be wide! I am going to have to re arch the front and rear because I want it 2-3 inches lower.

 

Oh man that's wide... very nice tho... it's very workable... this is going to be a sweat race truck....

 

It is going to be wide but not as wide as I thought it was going to be. So glad I decided to go with the matching rear end also. I have been really researching tube chassis lately and getting excited to start on that part but going to be a while due to funds. Almost ready to sell my old front and rear suspension and that should hopefully fund all my tube and a few other odds and ends.

 

HI jaymizz ,
Glad to see another of your posts , looking forward to further updates & photos !!

 

Thank you. Hopefully I will have more updates soon as some of my old/new parts are starting to sell. If not might start cutting the body up to start widening the body.

 

Quite a fun read going thru all this. Your way more motivated and gifted than I. Chuckled to myself when you talk to yourself like I find myself doing. I was doing “x” then thought while I’m at it I can do “y” then oh dang, just rip it up and change the whole thing and never gets done. Yea, been there more than I care to recall. (Glares at fishing boat) You ever get your picture posting woes resolved? One tech question, is tubular as strong and rigid as say the standard beam frame? When you posted the pics of joining the heavier framing to the thinner existing frame my first thought was weight distribution got to be wonky. Once this is completed how do you judge success or failure?

 

Never did figure out why the pictures were posting double, but it stopped thank goodness.
If built correctly tube chassis can be very strong and have been doing a mass amount of research on chassis design the last few months. I did get a program called bend tech that I will be using to design my chassis but needed to get my garage cleaned up so I could get back to my Blazer to start doing measurements. Once I have it designed a couple people that I know want to check it over to see if I will need to add more bars in stressed locations. Typically I have a bad habit of over building things so hopefully it will be fine. Down the road there is a program I can get that will help stress test my designs and been talking to a friend about it. Problem is that I am a hands on guy so computer programs can really confuse me sometimes. I was looking at cnc machines and almost bought one until I started looking into the program to use with it and said forget that ****! For the first few months of this chassis being on the road I will be putting it on the lift a lot to check for stressed spots and thinking about priming everything to get the bugs worked out first and change whatever needs changed before final paint.

 

There was a very inspirational post I saw the other day on a forum I go to everyday. I have psoriatic arthritis and have some ok days and some very bad days. I call it a work yourself to death disease because while I am working and staying very active my body doesn't hurt as bad. The problem is when you work on cars at work for 12-14 hours a day it is hard to come home and do the same thing at night and weekends mentally. This post I read really lifted my spirits and got me thinking....ALOT I have been a little down lately because of the pain and also having spent all my extra money on my TBSS so couldn't buy what I wanted to for my s10. I am not the one to announce my health to people because I hate sympathy but that one comment on a thread just lifted my spirits big time. So from that I have a middle of the week update.

I put the front end together tonight to get an accurate measurement of how wide I need to go with the fenders. So after getting the front end together and getting the front suspension lined up where it will be the survey says I need to widen it 5 inches. The question is that I am thinking about bringing the front suspension forward a couple inches to gain a little more wheelbase. I am already cutting the fenders up to widen them so moving the wheel arch forward a little wont be much more work and also it won't be enough to make it look any different than a stock s10 length wise. In my head it is telling me that I will have a little better high speed stability but not entirely sure.

 

Started on my fenders today for the widebody. Also went and picked up the rear diff for the C5 running gear and that was spendy.
Also took off the rest of the mouldings and stainless this morning. I have been putting that off because I really worried about rust underneath the stainless. Great news is no rust at all!!!

It took a couple hours of thinking, measuring and a pot of coffee this morning but I finally got a game plan on how I want my widebody. (I thought)

Once I got it figured out it was time to get to work! I can now say anywhere you look in my shop there are notes about some part of my Blazer. lol

After cutting the fenders up I needed to brace them up and got to finally play with my new tube bender. (There are now notes starting in my new fab room on tube bender don't do's also) Glad I started learning on something hidden. They did turn out good though once I learned how to use the bender correctly. lol

Made the braces so they welded the whole length of the fender from the front core support mount to the rear upper and lower fender to a pillar bolts. I did put a bend in the middle incase I ever wreck so the fender will bend in the middle instead of turning into a pike headed my way.

So now my dilemma. Originally I wanted to keep the bodyline that goes around the body and that's why I cut it the way I did. But after lowering it down to my desired ride height the widebody in the front needs to be a lot higher. As it sits in this picture the highest part of the Blazer is 56 inches and the lowest is 5 inches of ground clearance. Thinking about raising it back up to 7 inches so I can continue on with my original plans of a widebody. I thought maybe I could make a bulge for tire clearance in the front but then my ocd would kick in and I would have to do it on the back also which I don't like. Also the front suspension has been moved 1 3/4 forward for a little more wheelbase. Anymore than that would look out of place to me.

 

HI Jaymzz , thanks for another enlightening & entertaining posts . I really look forward to seeing the photos & reading the latest developments in them , keep us informed of all the possibilities 😎