Selling my own 1977 Chevy Blazer Chalet this time

[77blazerchalet]

** July 28, 2010 Update - it is still available**
Many of you have seen my unrelated Craigslist / eBay ads here... well, time to sell my own now. Reasons: lack of patience to fix the remaining worn out original Chevy bits, I really want something a bit more compact, and I'd like to start up a small business, the money would be handy. Firm price, though, I'm under no pressure to sell it.

1977 Chevy Blazer Chalet, 121,000 miles, serial number 1747, built Jan 77. Located in Mesa, AZ, $9,500 or best offer above that, if more than one person wants to fight over it after seeing the results of this Jan '09 $9,350 Barrett-Jackson auction (http://www.barrett-jackson.com/application/onlinesubmission/lotdetails.aspx?ln=37&aid=283&pop=1) and this May 10, 2010 $9,900 eBay auction (http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120563609238). This is an Arizona truck with very little rust, just what seems to be unavoidable in the bottom fender corners in Chevys of this vintage. Passed local emissions with flying colors. I have all the original owners manuals. Previous owner reupholstered interior, rebuilt carb and installed RV cam, replaced alternator, radiator and A/C compressor. Exceptionally good original 1977 metalflake paint, and has the least faded original vinyl camper stripes I've seen. I had the back door rebuilt and repainted, and installed the latest DOT approved horizontal LPG tank. Unlike so many other Chalets I've seen advertised, all of my camper appliances work and I have the photos to prove it. I had $1300 worth of transfer case / axle / differential refurbishment done.

Faults: for improved on-road handling, all the original rubber suspension bushings need to be replaced. For 4x4 driving, a repair person recommended that the front left stub shaft may need replacing. The fuel sender gives incorrect gas level readings, the A/C needs to be recharged and reconnected, the heater core is plugged, new weather stripping on the doors will keep the wind out, and the underhood cruise control parts are missing. I'm confident a person who knows how to fix Chevy trucks could make short work of these problems. Idiot teenagers shot pellet guns at the windshield a few months ago, resulting in a long crack along the bottom 1/3rd area. It's below line-of-sight, at least. The one remaining annoyance is the gaps in two corners of the raised vinyl roof, and the holes in the bug screens.

PM me to answer more questions you have, expect a delay in replies from Saturday middays to Sunday evenings. I have all receipts for repairs I had done, plus many from the previous owner. I'd be more than happy to show it in person so you will have no doubt about what you are purchasing.
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[kerry]

Nice looking camper.

I wouldn't leave that metal cover off the refrigerator. There have been a lot of cases of RV fires from failures in the cooling system putting flammable materials onto the flame and starting the RV on fire. The cover is intended to contain the flames inside the metal portion of the refrigerator so it won't spread to the adjacent wood.
Dometic (?) has been retrofitting lots of refrigerators with extra metal covers to further contain the flames.

[77blazerchalet]

..I wouldn't leave that metal cover off the refrigerator... You are correct, I only took it off for photographic purposes.

[silverscout]

Wow, this is too bad. Good luck on the sale, the trucks in great shape.

[77blazerchalet]

Too bad I want to sell it, yes, but maybe not, too. I may get another later and could end up owning a string of them, who knows? Right at the moment, reality says I might be better off without it, but the project sure is interesting, and I have no intention on giving up the research and serial number gathering. Some might wonder about my price compared to others - since I'm tracking every one I find, I'd be glad to compare & contrast mine with the 45+ others I know about for sale out there.

Underside 2-photo composite here to show the small amount of patina rust. You can still see the black paint on the frame, and unless I am mistaken, that's the original 31 year old greasepencil "64" marking (upside down) from the factory. Don't know what it designates. You can also see the repainted/refurbished transfer case, and the 2 year old tires that have less than a hundred miles on them.
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[77blazerchalet]

Pic of the engine. It's fairly clean, flat forgot that the cruise control bits are not there, I just edited my first post to mention that.

[77blazerchalet]

Worth mentioning, too, is that a parking storage canopy is included with the purchase of this here Chalet. It's one I bought from Pep Boys, several automotive stores sell it. However, it has custom made steel leg extensions with metal foot pads, and the requisite rebar stakes and smaller steel rod stakes that are needed to firmly staple this whole thing to the ground - notice all the extra ropes. The black plastic clamps you see are needed to minimize the wind flapping. These things aren't content to stay on the ground, they really wish to fly away.

At the very least, I've solved a bit of the engineering required to jamb a Chalet under one of these canopies. **4/7/09 Edit: The canopy part finally bit the dust in a windstorm last week. The Sun bakes all the strength out of cheap plastic stuff like this, and in the end all it takes is some wind to rip it to shreds. I bought a whole new one at Pep Boys, so it now has a new cover and three of the tweaked poles replaced. And that leaves me with a big pile of replacement poles, I guess, but it was cheaper to buy the whole thing than just the replacement cover......
http://i539.photobucket.com/albums/ff358/19camper77/Chaletcanopy.jpg

[77blazerchalet]

Another fault to mention - although someone might chime in to say how easy or difficult it would be to fix - if my Chalet sits for multiple weeks without running the engine, light blue smoke comes out of both pipes for five minutes or so after startup. A blip of the throttle clears it out and there's no smoke after that. I've read this has something to do with old valve guides, small amounts of oil leaking past them into the cylinders. Mine has the 400 engine, by the way, marvelous V-8 sound.

[tommudd]

so would it be up to a cross country trip, fly out, then cruise the back roads back to Ohio?
have wanted one of these since the day I first saw a new one on the local Chevrolet dealers lot
Oh what kind of gas mileage could I expect out of it?

Thanks for your time

Tom

[77blazerchalet]

so would it be up to a cross country trip, fly out, then cruise the back roads back to Ohio?.. I believe it would, but the best reassurance if I was driving it would be to get an educated opinion from someone who can vouch for the electric wiring. My paranoia is that something might short out and it would stop running, but I know very little about electronics. There's not a lot to old Chevys, so if you can spot marginal ground wire connections or other things like that, you are way ahead of me.

I've never measured the gas mileage on mine, one of the other Yahoo forum Chalet owners who used to daily drive his said he could get between 9 to 12 mpg. Since my gas gauge reads a quarter tank off, that would be good to know for going cross country. My speedometer is a bit off, 65 is closer to 70mph.

If you want to hire a local vehicle inspector to check it out, I have no problems with showing it for an independent assessment. PM me for more details or much longer answers to any other questions you have.

[77blazerchalet]

The lights work, too, by the way. Imagine how annoying it would be for a fella driving some other old vehicle home after just purchasing it, only to discover after sundown it had no lights.....

[77blazerchalet]

I have been forgetting since late last December to put in a pic of my emissions test results, very nicely passed, thank you. Mentioned the li'l trip here (http://expeditionportal.com/forum/showpost.php?p=315508&postcount=195), just never got to mentioning it in this thread.

My Chalet is still available, also open to trades + cash for some kind or other of lightly modded, well documented 4-door SUV that's been owned and cared for by a thoughtful Expo-type person. The whole objective of this is to get a more practical "but-still-campable" 4x4 that suits my eclectic ideas (http://expeditionportal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18047).
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[77blazerchalet]

Using this excuse to bump the thread back up to the top - I resized the pics in the first post to a more screen-friendly size, and threw in the link to the recent eBay auction of a fairly similar Chalet that had a winning bid of $9,900.
**8/15/09 Edit: Hmmm. The aforementioned eBay auction (http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140337020432) winning bidder must have been penniless, because that Chalet is back again for its 5th listing (http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140339877092). The first through third "reserve not met" figures were $7600, $6600, and $6100. I still think mine is a tad better because my 400 engine is original, and I am certain the mileage on mine has clicked over at the 100k point. Plus I can show that my appliances work.**

[77blazerchalet]

Might as well throw in this shot below to put the thread back up to the top of the heap. Also worth noting is I just got another new Pep Boys canopy cover, since the last one was on the poor quality side and only lasted 7 months until a nasty rainstorm ripped it in half. Now I have one new cover and three sets of poles & framework....

Also, it passed its yearly emissions check with flying colors last weekend.

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