I just bought a 86 s-10 pickup, mainly because of my Dad's urging (he's a old school boinger guy) to have something "reliblable." Well, now the rear end has noise in it that can be heard a block away and the lifters started rattling! I am considering putting a 13B in the dam thing and be done with it. This so pisses me off, I babyed this truck and it ready to die! And to top it off I still owe money on it! I am very dissappointed, to find after I bought it, it has a 2.8 L v6, that those motors only have a life expectancy of 150K and mine has 164K on it. The only comfort to this whole mess is that I can buy a rear end pretty reasonable, I work in a salavage yard. But the motor is going to cost $1,200, I think I could almost buy a rebuilt 13B and put in it. Anyone out there have a source of information on converting a boinger to a much better rotary?

 

ecu, wiring, pluming, trani, drive shaft, rear end, gearing in the rear end, front end suspention(for a confortable ride), exhaust, mounting, big huge mess.
be a lot easier to throw a 350 into the darn truck

 

The 2.8 V6 is one of the strongest, most durable motors Chevy has ever made. Sorry for your bad luck.

 

Why did you choose to buy that particular truck? My friends dad once urged him to buy a late '80s Corvette because he was sick of seeing all the 2nd gens and other Japanese cars around all the time. My friend always bought, rebuilt and sold cars. He did buy the Corvette. Had it for less than a year and then sold it. Lost his *** in the end. He replaced it with a 3rd gen. The Vette had tons of torque and was fun but there is just something about a rotary.

If you are going to try to put a rotary in it (which would be cool!) be sure to do a transmission swap as well. The S10 tranny was designed for a much different engine power range and you'll probably hate it. You'd be fine with the engine and tranny. Throw a carb and a distributor on it and call it a day. If you have emissions then install a cat, airpump, and learn how to lean out the carb once a year. Just fab an engine cover so they can't tell it isn't fuel injected. I think in the end you'll still pass $1200. It would be so much cooler though.

 

Tighten down the rockers on the V-6 and it should hold the lifters tighter and then the cam will last longer and it should be fine for a while longer

 

Do a rotary!

 

Fix it, and sell it.

 

Have a Neutral DROP competition with a neighbor, friend or spose. Then remove the vin tags and leave it parked on a residential street with a bunch of fake (or real) blood covering the interior. Make it look like a struggle occured.

Just what I would do....

 

Vin tags are everywhere, it's unlikely you'll get them all. They're engraved in random places.