[Big Dave]

S-10s and the little Blazers are the grist for a huge after market. The variety of stuff you can get for them - no fabrication needed - is staggering.

Off the shelf you can get at least four suspension "slam" kits for lowering the ride height. I prefer the 3" front, 5" rear but you can put these things right down on the deck if your road is smooth enough.

Yup, the S-10 is a brick just like all pickups. Just like Phil Knox' (Aerohead) T100 was when he started. But with either a 66" or 84" bed you have a long way to taper down your wake area and still retain the boundary layer all the way down. A 10 degree angle is about a 1-in-6 slope, so that 66" bed will allow you to lower the wake area by 11" and still have good layer adhesion all the way down. With short little imports you are caught on the horns of a dilemma. Do you use a shallow angle to keep layer adhesion and accept a big wake area or do you try to reduce the area with a steeper slope and risk losing the boundary layer? With length (66 or 84" bed) you can do quite a bit of both. so, although it does start out a brick, it can be drastically improved.

All GM vehicles tend to have big engine compartments so you can stuff anything from a Briggs & Stratton one-lunger to a 454 in one. I've seen the 454 versions, they are hideously nose heavy but they do sorta work. there are many small-block conversion kits for the S-10. So literally anything you want short of a locomotive engine can be used. Myself I would favor one of three engines. I believe you can get adapters for VW TDI engines and Advance Adapter can (for a premium) make an adapter for a five cylinder Benz engine out of a 300D or the 4 cylinder from a 240D. There are a few old 4.3 V-6 diesels left over from the mid-80s. These would need a set of cylinder head studs (the weakness on 4.3 and 350 GM diesels of that time period. They can be had...just add money. The old 4.3 made 85 HP at a very low RPM. Its Roosa-Master injection can handle almost any alternative fuel that is somewhat oily and can flow.

Likewise you have a bunch of transmissions that will work in a S-10. You could keep the throwaway T-5 five speed. You could use a Richmond Gear 4+1 which is a close-ration T-10 with a long jump to a straight-through top gear. This setup would let you use a very low (numerically) rear end and have a drive train with no gear friction loss (except in the rear axle.) You could put a T-56 six-speed (actually fairly easy to find). The T-56 has a huge second overdrive and that would let you use a numerically higher rear end for acceleration and really slow that engine down in a cruise.

The list of axle ratios you can get for S-10s is bewildering. You can get them as low as 2.47:1 (fairly rare) or as high as 4.88:1. The stops I know about are 2.47, 2.73 (very common), 3.08 (very common), 3.23, 3.31, 3.55, 3.73 (very common), 4.10 (common), 4.56, and 4.88.

So, I have enumerated three engines, three transmissions, and ten axle ratios and haven't even touched gas engines or automatic transmissions (ptui!).

There are hundreds of thousands of these truck in junkyards if you want parts. My advice is get body parts from the Phoenix or Denver area (nothing rusts there although the paint is faded) and mechanical parts from the Pittsburgh area. In PA, cars rust like mad so their mechanicals still have useful service life left.

You walk into any garage, transmission shop, or body shop in America and you'll find somebody who has worked on a S-10. Remanufacturers like Jasper will sell you nice fresh remanned engines and trannies off the shelf.

S-10s use either 14 or 15 inch wheels so your rubber can be very low rolling resistance and as narrow as you like.

On top of the fact there are zillions of them out there, they were always considered a bit of a throwaway vehicle, so you can get one cheap - like three digit cheap.

S-10s are not favorites of hot-rodders and low-riders by accident. They are a very flexible "canvas" on which to work your "art."