An Old Chevy Blazer Is SUPER Cheap, But Is It SUPER BAD? Let's Find Out!

howdy folks nathan here with a 1996 chevrolet blazer technically a chevrolet s10 blazer and i'm here to tell you that this vehicle could be for the right person with the right vehicle a huge off-road bargain you see right now a lot of people are spending thirty forty fifty thousand dollars to get themselves a basic off-roader but the problem with that is of course money we'd all have it and then used vehicles used jeeps hell even used full-size blazers very expensive right now but these things are a dime a dozen and a lot of people would say well that's because the quality was crap and i would agree to a certain extent let's quickly talk about the history of this so this is a 1996 it's sort of an in-between year you see before that the s-10 blazer was very square essentially the same running gear and they changed the body to look a little bit more eco-friendly i'm quite serious about that that was one of the things that chevrolet said they wanted it to look a little bit more crossover-like a little bit more eco-friendly a little bit more friendly towards people who are looking for a family vehicle and they built this this is a weird year in 1996 because it's sort of in between when they actually were making proper improvements and this so i've had a couple minor issues but none of them have really dealt with the main thing about this vehicle that i was worried about and that's the engine and transmission let me show you what i'm talking about so it comes with a 4.3 liter vortec v6 oh sorry observe there sometimes you have to get a little extra nudge to make it pop this powertrain it does leak a little tiny bit of oil but just seriously just a little bit which you would expect out of an ancient vehicle but the powertrain has been super solid we recently did a bunch of off-roading with it and a bunch of highway driving with it and a bunch of traffic with it and it's been super solid on top of that this has the 4 speed automatic transmission which isn't by choice i wanted the 5 speed manual which you could get as an option unfortunately couldn't find one so the four speed well a lot of people complain that the four speed is unreliable now this one has what i believe is a rebuilt four speed but rebuilt many many years ago why do i think that because it has 225 000 miles on it so there are a lot of replacement parts fortunately it runs good it shifts well and off-road this thing was stunning for what it is it has a bigger brother they built a zr2 version of this and the zr2 version had different rear axle it was wider like three inches wider taller had skid plates like real heavy duty ones much more capable off-road and you may have noticed this is the two-door model there is a four-door and the four-door is much more practical however the four-door doesn't have the piece the resistance and that's right back here by the way i really like the way these two doors look they're really cool unfortunately this doesn't roll down it just pops out but come on back here oh yeah you're not an off-roader unless you have one of these right spare tire hanging out the back um loud as hell this thing when you drive shakes and there's a bunch of vibrations that transmit into the interior now i'm pretty sure when this was new it wasn't as bad i've recently tightened all the bolts repainted a few things did my best to kind of eliminate the squeaks didn't work but it's a trip how this thing works first of all there's a handle in here and you open the up by the way you may have noticed van halen sticker there's a reason i've actually named this eddie van blazer there's a series coming out not going to say too much about it but it is an off-road series and eddie van blazer is one of the stars okay let's open her up yes these actually work you'll find that a lot of vehicles in this with this vintage the shocks tend to be um weak and or not working at all okay here we go now it's pretty cool that you can actually get stuff in here and it has a little tailgate it's even capable of holding my massive ass these seats fold down almost completely flat and there's actually really good cargo in here now mind you i have it set up for fishing it's a whole different thing but mind you this vehicle is small and it's very narrow so you when you sit in there it's kind of like sitting in a modern jeep wrangler you're touching shoulders if you have a large person next to you and you're a large person two people can fit in the back relatively comfortably as long as the front people in the front are willing to move forward a couple inches i'll show you the interior in a moment so why is this such a great off-roader that's a 100-inch wheelbase you just saw and i'm 6-1 my arms can reach around this thing easily it's super narrow that's not exactly ideal if you're going down mulholland canyon trying to go around traffic really fast or if you take a corner and accelerate really hard not a great thing for a narrow wheelbase vehicle which by the way is one of the reasons why these went away but off-road this thing has the ability to scamper around obstacles that most pickup trucks even mid-size trucks modern ones can't when this was off-road and i won't go into the details about the video once again it's kind of a secret but it shined because it scampered over things i am what you call a big galoot large man but actually relatively comfortable here this seat does have a tear right here but here's the crazy part about this vehicle i paid 2200 bucks for it now it didn't have these tires and it wasn't in this condition i actually had to do quite a bit of work to get it up to this point but the owner sold me this vehicle with the engine transmission setup that we have here it did have a real problem with the four wheel drive system but i fixed it for a hundred bucks wow so all together full investment now it's not counting the tires these are bfg ko2s and they're brand new from our sponsor and i like ko2s i've used them on my own personal vehicles for years they are extremely good off-road and if you can get really good tires on a four-wheel drive vehicle you're halfway there but the approach and departure angles are fantastic just look at this thing the breakover angle is fantastic i can easily keep up with modern jeeps in terms of that so if you look down here sorry my phone is in the way yep they even have a holder for cell phones no they don't it's terrible for that but i am able to lock it into four high and four low um the system works i made it work it wasn't working at one point and i actually was just stuck in two-wheel drive and then when i tried to fix it it was stuck in four-wheel drive but i finally got it all fixed and once again didn't cost much so all in everything that i've done here has been about 350 to 400 bucks worth of work i had to replace some door panels this is a new door panel well from the wrecking yard uh there's some switch gear this had to replace at a wrecking yard i mean just little things like that just to make it look half decent uh under 2 500 bucks under 2 500 bucks and this thing runs like a champ it's really good off road it's actually been really economical i've been averaging on the highway around 24 miles per gallon it's done everything i've asked it to do oh and the owner actually put the stereo in but forgot to put it in like really put it in so i actually had to mount this little thing around there to make sure it didn't fall to pieces as i was driving okay no big deal there final thing about this vehicle and come on out why is it such a bargain why is this vehicle something that i think you should really look at if you are on a super tight budget well there is another vehicle out there called the ford bronco 2 and it's also really good off-road has that tiny wheelbase like this one i think it's even narrower those vehicles this one and the ford bronco 2 right now are relatively cheap to acquire as i said 200 bucks 2500 2400 all in i highly recommend for those of you who are on a tight budget but want a builder jeeps are expensive pickup trucks are expensive why not think about something like this now i know in the comments below you guys are going to tell me about the transmission issues and there's been some engine issues with the 4.3 liter i get it and i would agree with you and i want to hear about your experiences but what if you could find a jewel like this they're out there guys take a look for the fastlane classics this is nathan i'll see you next time

Channel: TFLclassics

Views: 139,821

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Id: oWJBtdfLh18

Length: 9min 36sec (576 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021