Chassis Build Up & Design

Lots to update and more to come as I'm off of work this entire week, but after I went to disassemble my rear calipers and found the pins and pistons seized last weekend I spent some time in front of the computer.

So this is happening now...





I'll get more progress and pictures up at some time this week, but time to get back to the workshop.

Previously invisible pics magically appeared for me - man those tires look amazing! I race with a guy who has a C5 ZO6 and last year I was managing to stay even or just behind him when we were both on 275's. He moved to 315 R-comps this year and now he's in another league. Fat tires all around FTW (literally).

Started out the week by trying to complete my pile of parts for powder coat.

First up was control arms.

More picture porn and details in my Control Arm Modification Thread



Next up was my fabricated lower rad support. Decided it didn't have enough holes. Peanut butter is a great lube. Yum yum.





And then dimple die the everything.





Result is fancy. If only I was going for the rat rod look this would be perfect as is.





Threw it all in a pile and dropped off to the powdercoater Thursday morning.



I'm really excited to get those parts back. Will be able to start reassembly of some of the major components.

I whipped up a basic bracket to mount a 1st gen washer bottle to the fender using the ABS module mounting points.



Fit really nice at first.... let's see if anyone can figure out where I went wrong before I post the obvious pictures.









Round 2 took some height out of the bracket. Not quite as stiff, but everything fits with clearance now.  And as often is the case the second attempt looks even better.



Dimple die the everything.



There we go. Everything can fit again.





If anyone with an automatic 2nd gen would like a mounting bracket for a 1st gen washer reservoir that mounts in place of your ABS module let me know. I'll send it your way for only the cost of shipping. I added 2 more holes to try mounting the reservoir further forward in the hopes of clearing the clutch master cylinder, but that didn't work either. It also went under the dimple die knife and I will powdercoat it for you too.

You can also see the tidied up body harness underhood in those installation pictures. Body harness is 100% done! No exceptions left undone.

Started on reassembling the interior. Doors are ready for door panels. Firewall is ready for the HVAC box after I route and tape the engine harness into the cab permanently. That's all that needs to be done before I can install the dash even though that needs some wiring work too, but nowhere near as crazy as the body or engine harness.



Pedals are all in and hooked up. I've got all the components to build my steering shaft. I coated the areas of the frame I had previously cut and/or modifed and also dropped off the driveshaft to get shortened. They said it could be done today! I'm starting to hit that point of visible progress and with the driveshaft a test drive is not far away.

I lined myself up with a 4 day weekend this week. Will be back at the fun soon enough.

I could use one of the brackets but ideally it would need to clear a clutch master when I do the manual swap. That's pretty slick though - love the dimple dies!

I definitely thought of you and Ryo when I realized I had an extra for someone, but quickly remembered you're both running manuals. I'd offer to make you one for the manual because I know how to do it easily enough, but won't be sparing the couple hours it would take until the Blazer is on the road.

The only drawback to the second design is neither the master nor the washer reservoir can be installed/removed without pulling the fender. The studs make it impossible to pull off the bottle and there isn't enough room for the master to rotate the 45° for removal haha Both of those rarely fail, so I'm not worried about it and I'm not afraid to pull fenders or most front sheet metal on these trucks. Much less under my Blazer hood too.

And almost forgot the most exciting part. EURO STYLE TAIL LAMPS!! Put together the harness for each side and bolted up the housings. Bulbs are on the way to finish that up permanently.

haha oops.

looks good!

I may steal that concept when i decide to go solid front axle and remove ABS

Feel free to steal it. I've proven it works and it can only improve from here.

Ive got to point out that the taillights arent just euro style, theyre the elusive export oem lights. Cool to finally see them mounted on a truck.

Also cool to keep seeing progress.

This happens about once a day or more in the workshop.

I dig it!  All the way!  I just picked up a 04 Extreme Blazer and I debating on if I should pro-tour it or drag race it.  What are you going to do with those all clear taillights?

Thanks!

Made some good progress last weekend, but haven't taken the time to upload pictures again. Targeting next Wednesday to have it on the road, so focusing on that for now.

Clear tails are up for sale. I actually have 2 sets. If you want them let me know.

http://www.s10forum.com/forum/f293/2nd-gen-blazer-all-clear-tails-801777/

I'll shoot you a PM.  How are you planning to use the Vette brakes?  Kore3 components?

I designed my own bracket. I won't have to modify the spindles and can use a standard hex bolt instead of the allen heads needed for the Kore3.

I haven't made up my bolt spacer, which is what allows it all to clear the spindle, but this should give you an idea. It's quite similar to the Kore3 brackets I'm sure as there really isn't much wiggle room to package the parts in the space available.

I spent the last two weekends trying to push hard to get the truck back together for this week. Didn't happen, but after letting the dust settle a bit I made some real good progress. I can count the fabrication projects left on one hand and those are always the big hurdles for me.

The calipers showed up after a bit of worry due to shady eBay practices. Shady, but expensive for the seller. I won't complain at length because they did show up brand new in box as advertised. 20" monitor is for size reference. Tese beauties are monstrous.





Dropped off the driveshaft with the requested measurements on a Friday and they had it ready well before Monday was over. Fits great, only charged me $180 to shorten the aluminum and replace the U Joints with $80 in spicer parts.  I'll throw a shout out to CCI Driveline in Casco, Michigan for being the easiest part of this project by far.



With a couple U joints and some 1"DD tubing I replaced the factory steering joints and shaft from the bottom of the column to the steering box. The tulip joint had some slop and I wanted to gain as much clearance as possible while maintaining enough collapse in the column in case of an accident.



I opened up the tulip joint, removed the shaft, and cut just the end off of it. It is a solid 3/4" DD, but also has a spring integrated into the other end to keep the joint tight.



I chucked up the 1" DD U Joint in the mill and modified the end to accept the factory bolt. Because the Tulip joint is a bolt through design the set screws have nothing to tighten against and I like this much better than the set screws anyway. It tightens up to the steering column very well.



All that was left was cutting about an 8" section of 1" DD from the factory shaft and a 10" section of new 1"DD shaft. Welded the 3/4" DD into the 8" section before bolting it to the 3/4" 30 spline to 3/4" DD joint and bolted the 10" into the upper 1" DD joint.



The 3/4" section is located as the shaft passes by the manifold for maximum clearance and I have 4-5" of collapsible length.





Parts list is as follows:

• 10" of 1" DD Shaft
• 1" DD to 1" DD U Joint
• 1" DD to 3/4" 30 Spline U Joint

I didn't consider that I already had a length of the factory shaft, so I ended up buying 3ft of the 1" DD Shaft. Cost $50 for just that, but for anyone replicating this in the future they can save some coin by recycling what they already have. I had good luck finding the components on eBay.

Ordered up an oil pressure sensor adapter (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NY4VJL8) to add in a second sensor port, so I can run both the 5.3 sensor for the PCM and an S Truck sensor for the gauge. I originally had my oil temperature sensor in the oil cooler adapter port and was trying to fit the oil pressure sensor into the oil galley right next to it as the oil galley plug and oil pressure sensor use the same thread pattern. There just wasn't enough space for the sensor there, so I had to try something different. I drew up plans for my own adapter block, but Al found this piece for $20 on Amazon.



They have several varieties with different port combinations, but not exactly what I wanted. As shown in the picture it wasn't quite deep enough to take the temperature sensor either, so I modified a pipe fitting as a spacer and had to clearance the adapter block as needed for the extra length. It all fit fine in the end, but I will have to check and make sure it isn't leaking. Pipe fitting should be able to seal though.

The powdercoat was wrapped up last week. They did a good job as well and at $390 for everything I am more than pleased.



Next up on the bridgeport is the front brake brackets. This caused several frustrations with tools and a few other things, but all of my dimensions have been spot on once I read them right. First bracket is scrap due to the drawings printing with 6's that look like 8's.



Fly cut the plates flat and to the required thickness. Ended up having to use the boring head as an impromptu fly cutter as the actual cutter had allen keys that wouldn't clamp the bit after I tried to adjust it wider and cover the entire work piece at once.



On my second attempt after correcting my mislabeled dimension I clamped both brackets together before doing the major drilling and shaping. After aligning them to the mill head I rough measured my first hole as the hole relationship is the only dimension needing extreme accuracy. Used the table markings from there to position and drill the other 3 holes. The two larger clearance holes I had to bore out to size as I don't have any drill bits larger than a 1/2" in the shop and the step bits don't have large enough steps for the depth I was drilling.



I then started the tap using the chuck for the two outer holes for bolting the bracket to the spindle. M14x2 is the factory bolt thread and I was able to reuse the original bolts.



For the rest I cut out my printed drawing, traced it onto the block, and hogged away as needed. The straight cuts I did on the mill and added the blends using the belt sander. Bolting the parts together made it easy to do everything at once.





The bolt spacers I welded together using various tube and sheet I found around the shop. You'll see later that they are not strong enough to take the 130 ft/lbs specified for the caliper bolts, so I'll be cutting some thick washers out of aluminum the next time I'm out at the shop for a quick and easy replacement. Everything bolts up exactly as designed, though.









In between assembling the front suspension and laying out the leaf springs for reassembly I prepped and powdercoated the steering shaft and brake brackets. Considering it is my first shot at it after watching Al take his first shot the week before I'm quite happy with the outcome. Coverage isn't great, but that is more a factor of poor lighting than anything else. I'll just be sure to do it in the daylight in the future.







I assembled all of the steering shaft components, so that they're ready to go in once I install the column.





For some reason I took lots of glamour shots of the steering column.









Passenger front suspension corner got assembled too. I would have done both sides, but couldn't find my second thrust bearing for the coilovers, so had to make an Amazon order that is arriving tonight. It's looking like a true pro-touring truck again.





These brakes look mighty nice.



You can see the bolt spacer deforming in these photos too. Onto the next concept!





Last hurdle of the weekend was the rear leaf spring solid bushing for the sliders. I had read before that it would need to be turned down to fit, but when I stopped by Ryo's to use his lathe we determined that if we removed the old bushing sleeve it would fit fine without getting turned down. And it fit great with a bit of hammering it in. Fast forward to Sunday night while I'm laying out the leaves for reassembly. I go to see how much hammering I'm going to have to do to get the bushing in and the answer is well less than 0. It dropped right in with space to spare. Turns out the rust build up was significant enough that it changed a 1.7" diameter to something more like 1.6" and with the sand blasting done that tight fit had disappeared.

After sleeping on it I took some more measurements. Bushings are supposed to be 1.625 and are measuring around 1.61-1.62. Leaf is measuring around 1.68, so I need to take up an extra .06-.07. Found some sheet metal that was a touch over .03, which when wrapped around the bushing increases the diameter by .06. Circumference with a diameter of 1.6 is about 5.1 and the leaf spring is 2.5 wide, so I cut up two tokens of the sheet I found at 2.5" x 5" and hand bent them around the bushings. Added in some lube and was able to press everything together for a solid fit.

Front bushings got pressed in as well and I bolted everything together with new bolts. The vice did a great job bending the clip back around the top spring with a rag on the jaws to protect the coating.





Leaves are now on the chassis and it is supporting its own weight on 3 of the 4 corners. Threw on the chassis parts I had powdercoated too. After I bolt up the exhaust and route the front brake line the body is ready to be bolted on for good.





This is the current ride height with the 650 lb springs. Once I get the front end back together as well as drive it a bit well settle it more, but I threw my stack of highly calibrated stack of wood under the front cross member and I'm within a 1/4" of what I was aiming for; control arm hard points are just about flat. Definitely interested in swapping in drop spindles, but this will work to get the truck on the road again.

good progress!
parts look good!

how thick is that caliper bracket?
maybe it just looks thin because the caliper is huge but it looks a little light to me.

did you get the OE rotors which mean a left hand rotor on both sides? (vanes are going the wrong way)

Bracket ended up about 11.5mm CAD data said 12mm I ended up a bit short of that after everything, but once bolted up the caliper wants to be a bit more inboard (thinner yet) to be perfectly centered. Kore3 says their bracket is 3/8" thick, which is about 9.5mm, so I'm in the range of what else is out there albeit that doesn't mean what else out there is right. Only way to go thicker would be to space out the rotor.

Is that in the range of thin in your mind?

GM only lists one part number in their catalog for the front rotors and one number for the rear. 2 of my coworkers stopped by on Sunday and we talked about the directional vanes briefly, so I checked to make sure.

Corvette forum seems to agree too

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums/autocrossing-and-roadracing/3118151-directional-vanes-on-stock-c6-z06-rotors.html

yea 1/2" was my 'feel safe' ballpark so you aren't too far off.
quick glance at the pictures made it look like 1/4"ish
3/8" would make me feel a little scared too with zero analysis.

in your case, since you are using a bolt-on spacer, spacing the rotor isn't a big deal if you were to go that route.
you can make a donut and tap it and bolt the rotor to it if you wanted to.

yup, i came up with the same result when i had the c6z51 brakes.
this is why corvettes are cheap.

Great work Harley. Cant wait to see it in person.

I dont think you mentioned our discovery along the way about the budget fixed caliper option this opens up.

Turns out C6 shares a mounting pattern with 2015+ Colorado front brakes. These come with 4pot fixed calipers stock. Rock auto lists them for $75ea new no core. They're rough cast, not polished and not powdercoated, but also 25% the cost of the corvette calipers.

 Also, glad you sprang for the big ones, and in yellow at that. They're monsters 

Looks awesome!