Hi All!

Looking at buying a 94 small Blazer. Body is only fair but I have a welder for the rockers and front fenders are $80 a side. Heater core is also leaking bad, are they much of a chore to replace in these? My main concern is the fuse prob, every few days it blows the 20a fuse that controlls the guage cluster. it stopps charging and then gets stuck in 3rd gear. I am fairly mechaniclly inclined, so I don't mind most jobs but don't want to get into big ticket items (trans). Has anyone run into this? When I was test driving it blew when I hit a bump so am hoping its just a shafed wire. Also are these trucks any good? I have been reading about trans problems. It has 97k miles 4.3 v-tech. Any help or insite would be great.

Thankyou,
Gabe

 

yea u might just have some frayed wires that are shorting out the fuse. but as far as dependibility, the blazers have never let me down. of course with any older vehicle there will be some problems but i have never come across one with 10 yrs of blazers that i couldn't tackle. i was on I-4 outside of orlando in an 85 4cyl when i blew my timing gear(that composite one), blew out the coolant hose also. all at around midnight, by noon that day i was back in action. my point is even when they give u trouble they are easy enough to work on. and as far as trannies go, im sure all of us here love to beat them up a little and see what they got. you also said you have a welder, so check out the body just above your rear window and on the pillars by the windshield. two spots u dont want to have too much rust, if they are let your buddy see what he can do. yea those damn rocker panels are notorious for rust. but all and all you got urself a reliable strong truck with less then 100,000 miles, cant go wrong

 

Thanks for the reply Rooster. If I keep this, I likely won't abuse it too much on dirt, mostly snow.

 

As for the trany, try relocating the breather on it. I have found that it is in a bad spot. Normally run a line up to the top of the firewall to help keep water from getting in there as much. I have a 95 right now that is just water logged from that breather tube not being relocated.
The other thing is to ensure you change out the filter and fluid as it should be. I have seen tranys with much more miles then most have due to they do this ever 2 to 3 yrs over just letting it go and go and go and gone. I always change mine out when I first get them, then pendin on how much they are driven every 3 yrs on avg. If they have an external trany cooler, this helps with doing a full flush (feed one line, drain from the other). When you do your filter make sure the magnit is there, I normally drop in one or two more. Helps keep the shavings from floating back into the trany. And its easy enough to make a dimple or two to retain the new ones like the orginal has.

If a simple bump blows the fuse, then yea you have a short. Without the wire diagram hard to aid with that. Sorry

The heater core is not as bad if you know what you are doing. It's all mainly within the pass. side. Just a lot of plastic to get out of your way to get to it.