1993 CHEVY S-10 - CHEAP TRUCK S-10

Toyota mini trucks are plentiful, popular, easy to build, and relatively inexpensive as a base platform to make into either a rockcrawler or go-fast prerunner. Ford Rangers have a great following and plenty of support to be modified as well, especially if you want to bomb one across the desert on a shoestring budget. However, for Cheap Truck Challenge 2014 I went with a Chevy S-10 mini truck, and here’s why.

When I was a kid my local grocery store was giving away an S-10. I stole a pile of the tickets by the entry box, filled them all out, and waited for the call to get my new truck. It never came. Apparently thievery and gambling doesn’t pay off.

My poor little poor-boy’s truck

So when I had a chance to come home with a $1,400 Chevy 4x4 S-10 with a 4.3L V-6 and automatic transmission I felt like I was finally getting my winning truck. The 4.3 is almost a V-8, the regular cab truck should be light and thus fast, and the 700R4 automatic would give it a good low First gear for crawling. At least I thought it would be a winner.

I cut and chopped and welded and bolted the dime truck into a little off-roader, but would my poor little poor-boy’s truck survive (much less win) Cheap Truck Challenge? Or would I be back next month showing you how I fixed it?

In stock form my S-10 was nothing to write home about. It was a fine commuter truck and great for exploring dirt roads, but the tires were getting bald, the truck was low off the ground, and it really had nothing exciting to brag about.A set of 33x12.50R15 Falken Wild Peak A/T on used 15-inch centerline wheels set me back $875. I realized later that 33s were a bit rambunctious for the little S-10 and it would probably have been wiser to stick to a 31- or 32-inch tire, but bigger always seems better. Body trimming would be required.To clear the bigger little Falkens, I tracked down a suspension kit by Rough Country that offered 21⁄2 inches of lift for just $500. The rear suspension is simple with just a pair of longer shackles and new shocks. Even so, I opted to trim some to clear the 33s.

The Chevrolet Blazer (4WD model T-10) and the similar GMC S-15 Jimmy (4WD model T-15) are mid-size SUVs from Chevrolet and GMC respectively. Production began alongside the larger K5 Blazer and Jimmy in 1982 and lasted through 2005. In the United States retail sales of two-door Blazer models ceased in 2004; all other models were sold until April 20, 2005. In the Canadian market, four-door models of the Blazer and Jimmy were sold until the 2004 model year and until the 2005 model year for the two-door models of both. However, the Blazer continues to be produced.

The S-series SUVs, so named because they were based on the Chevrolet S-10 and GMC S-15 pickup trucks, were produced in Pontiac, Michigan; Linden, New Jersey; Moraine, Ohio; Shreveport, Louisiana; Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Oshawa, Ontario, Canada; and São Paulo, Brazil (the Brazilian version is based on the second-generation S-series; even though production ceased in the U.S., new Blazers are locally produced in Brazil with their own sheetmetal stampings as well as in Canada with the Brazilian, Indonesian and Russian sheetmetal stampings). In North America, the Moraine plant produced only 4-door vehicles, with both 2- and 4-door models being produced at Linden, which was the main assembly plant after the switch (some time after 1995) from Pontiac, Michigan, which became a full-size truck plant.