Hey i'm Veggie and i'm an Alcoho,,, ehm... Blazer Fan!

I'm actually a dutch guy but a few years ago i moved to Indonesia to the hometown of my wife.
I really hope you won't consider me some sort of heretic, but i own a Opel Blazer 16v 2.2l DOHC 2wd from 1996.

These kinds of cars i always liked but would never have bought while back in the Netherlands because the yearly roadtax and cost of gasoline alone might buy me a small castle in southern France.
But now i moved to Indonesia, found these cars here in abundance, and lacking a hobby i thought why the hell not?

I scoured the market looking for something really cheap, but otherwise not in a totally wrecked shape and a decent running engine.
I have basically NO mechanic experience beside tightening a nut or bolt occasionally but i am what you might consider a handy guy and after looking over a bunch of youtube videos i thought there must be a lot i could actually learn and do myself.

This is also where i found the first hurdles i had to overcome: language barriers
My current skills in Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) are basic at best and certainly not technical, and my english is i guess decent enough to not come across as a total idiot to some UK/USA folks.

So went it comes to technical things such as part-names and such, i might know what's the name of what i'm looking at and can sometimes through trial and error translate it to the correct language to find replacements here or online.
But sadly often i can only identify a part as a "thingy" which makes things a lot harder.

My ultimate endgoal is fixing up everything, getting a paint job (my neighbour does this for a living), raising the suspension and overall make it look really nice while still being reliable.
Another hobby of mine is computers, so on the inside eventually i want to make a raspberry pie-powered entertainment system and connect it up to the OBD2 too.

Anyway like i said, eager to learn, willing to get my hands dirty, and hoping to lean on the expertise of other forum visitors here.

Hope to see you all around the boards!

 

Welcome to the Forum.

 

Welcome to the forum! Glad to have you hear. We have members from all over. Off the top of my head I know of members from Spain, the UK, Finland, Russia, and Poland. I'm sure there are others.

And no worries about the technical names. People will be glad to help. And who are we to judge? I'm sure you English is much better than my Dutch!

And you can always fall back on posting a picture of something and people will tell you the common and/or technical name for it so you can find parts.

One thing to which you definitely have access that people in North America would love to have are the bolt-on fender flares we've seen on Blazers from down there.

Don't be shy about asking questions!

 

Welcome!

Always good to have members on the other side of the pond!

I was looking into Opel Blazers a while back, specifically about trying to get some parts for one here in the states. That started after seeing a photo of one and noticing that some had 6 lug wheels. I gave up that search though when I had read that it's just the 2wd that have the 6 lug pattern while the 4x4 still use the 5x4.75 lug pattern. Not sure if that's true or not, but I couldn't find anything to disprove it, nor could I find a source for parts to get them to the US.

 

Those things are indeed very common and easy to come by over here and i do like to have some myself eventually.
Indonesians just love to modify their cars and motorcycles(especially with flashing ledlights) and i don't know if there are any laws to what's allowed but if there are they sure ain't enforced.
You can come across the weirdest things here and don't be surprised if all the mods on a vehicle are worth more than the vehicle itself.
Very different to the Netherlands where little is allowed.

Didn't realize that's a thing?
I didn't really look at mine but i think it has 6 lugs although that's a 2wd.

I did a quick search on the local online marketplace and found this Opel Blazer Montera 4x4 from 2000 listed:
https://www.olx.co.id/item/opel-blaz...-iid-780161004

Is that what you meant?

 

Welcome! Looking foward to seeing your ride! We are all here to help, and dont worry about names, we can usually help out with that if you post a pic. I love the opel blazers. And honestly if I ever win the lotto, might even look into getting one shipped! (Big dreamer!)

but welcome again!

 

Ah yes, okay cool so the 4x4 did come in 6 lug in your market. I've always thought it would be awesome to try and get a set of front hub bearings for the front and convert it over to 6 lug, and just use spacer/adapters for the rear conversion.

 

Is there a big difference that makes you prefer the Opel?
I thought they were mostly rebadged Chevrolets and in fact over here people do anything to make them appear as Chevrolets.

Currently this is my daily driver and my first car owned in Indonesia.
We do most on motorcycles but during the wet season of course i prefer a car.

Many roads here are not in a great shape and our speedbumps are killer, so i thought this model would suit the needs perfectly.
Also i needed something that would go uphill comfortably since we do like touring a lot going up mountains and volcanoes (I live very close to Bromo and Kawa Ijen)
Not really offroading, although some roads here can might be considered offroad.

I bought this cheap, with some user marks, horribly faded paint but otherwise reasonable condition.
It has a small beginning rust spot near a window on the back, but that's about it.
It has 13 year old goodyear tires, so i'll be replacing those soon.
Battery turned out to be bad, my guess is from bad charging and disconnects because the terminals were in horrible shape (which i replaced already)
The negative pole on the battery had a +-size terminal on it with a bend washer jammed in it vertically to make it somehow fit, everything was kind of loose and there is nothing to secure the battery too.
Anyway i'll be looking for a new one today.
I hope the alternator will be useable for a while since i measured it at 13.6 volts (with my el-cheapo multimeter) but it already has a spot down on my to-do list.

Then my gauges for fuel, oil pressure and temp didn't work.
I fixed the oil gauge by replace the oil pressure switch and my guess the temp is the sensor and they bypassed it so the fan on the radiator blows all the time.
Some electrical issue caused by the back wiper (which would turn ON at random, even without key) heated up a wire which in turn melted a hole in my coolant tank.
I bodge-fixed that and will be replacing it soon.
The fuel gauge i have been told here is probably something to do with the fuelpump assembly so i'll be dropping the tank someday and replace the whole thing with a new one.

Engine runs smooth and quiet though.

Anyway i guess i should stop here and start making a "build" thread where i can add some pictures of the WIP although i doubt it will be as exciting as some of the awesome builds here.

Everyone thanks for the warm welcome, and see you all around the boards!

 

Not much difference, body molds and badges... 6 lug..


but sleek

 

Welcome to the forum