Well, I'm back. After what happened with my last Blazer I have had a few different vehicles. For the last two years I have been enjoying my 1985 Mustang. A few weeks ago a friend got ahold of me asking if I would be interested in their Blazer because they had gotten tired of messing with it and had gotten a new car. It has 400,000 miles and needs a timing cover gasket and I picked it up for $300. It is pretty clean for such a high mileage vehicle and I have some big plans for it. As of right now I'm thinking,

Cragar soft 8s
A/T tires
Small lift
Complete stereo
Custom bumpers/rock sliders
Bed line the lower half of body and frame
Winch
Roof rack
Off-road lights
Tint front windows
Etc.

Anyway, here are a few pics of it!

 

looks pretty good for 400k.

 

Thanks! Definitely a better starting point than what I had last time. Should be fun to see what I can do with it now that I make more money and know more about cars than the last time I had a Blazer.

 

For 400,000 miles of wear, those leather seats look in decent shape. Hope you have fun with it.

 

Well what I thought was a timing cover leak (I'm used to fords) was a water pump, got it all tore apart and the new water pump on. The fiancé is in the hospital so that's all I could manage to get done tonight and that will give time for the rtv to set up anyway. Should have it running tomorrow!

 

So pretty sure I have a blown headgasket.... Fixed the water pump leak, then couldn't get the cooling system to bleed. Upper rad hose was cold so I figured when it overheated the thermostat got stuck. So I replaced the thermostat... Bled the system and had to buy a scangauge to monitor the temp because most of the dash gauges are bunk... Got it to bleed and it was sitting at 193... **** it off and it wouldn't start up, went out there today and it started(it's incredibly hard to start). Drove around for a few and no leaks that I can see but the temperature slowly started climbing and at one point was at 240. Shut it off and let it sit. When I got back in and started it the tailpipe puffed white smoke... Also when it idles it sits at 600RPM. Since the gauges don't work the previous owners don't know exactly how hot it got. Not too happy right now...

 

Do you have a block test kit handy? They aren't too spendy if you don't... Then you know if the head gasket is bad and you decide where to go from there. How are the oil and coolant looking?

 

Sad to hear about the motor,but the bright side is you have a great base to build from. Even with a salvage yard motor transplant you will still be sittin' pretty ! Good luck with your "project". Get the heads reworked and swap them onto the next motor.

 

No I'm going to have to find some test kits and figure out what's going on with it. The oil however looks fine.

 

Well looked at it a little more today and found that the intake manifold gasket is leaking... Haven't checked compression or anything so I can't rule out the headgaskets completely... What concerns me is the white smoke from the exhaust and what looks to be water coming out of the tailpipe... Could a blown intake manifold gasket cause it to smoke and blow out liquid from the exhaust?