1997 Chevrolet S-10 LS review from North America

Weather stripping on 3rd door fell off when first bought, dealer fixed for free.

I got water and mud through the air filter at 36000 going to fast through shallow 1-2 ft. deep water holes too fast. the 97 models and up have a diagnostics port that made this repair as cheap as a trip to the shop, a plug into the diagnostics computer, and a $15 bottle of feul injector cleaner. it turned out that the third cylinder was misfiring due to a simple feul injector clog.

My ball joints both went out at 36500 due to catching air accidently on a steep hill in duluth minnesota. cost nearly $200 dollars to fix.

There was something rubbing in the steering wheel. my chilton manual and three hours of work corrected the spacing between the wheel and the collumn. It wasnt fun, but $150 dollars less than the dealer.

I added a 2 inch body lift. I accented this with 31' bf goodrich all terrains (stock for Zr2). looked great and the tires gave mud hell.

In the heavy winters and steep hills of northern minnesota it was a trooper in 4x4, and the bf's made stopping distance almost normal on snow.

The truck handled mud, rocks, and sand like a true zr2, I was impressed. except for it didn't like getting air on the frontside, I figure the big engine just obliverated the ball joints.

I would buy a knew zr2 but I just rolled this truck in the snow on the interstae doing seventy. I relied on the tires to much, was going with the flow of traffic, but didn't have any weight in the bed for the rear, the rear end slid out and we rolled at seventy into the median. the truck was totalled, but saved our lives. my friend not wearing a seatbelt was unhurt, and I had my seatbelt and got minor cuts on my head. the roof held up well for deadly impact. the only complaint is that my airbag didn't go off, and this may have beeen due to unhooking it to fix the steering wheel, even though I'm sure I hooked it back up.

The truck had balls when needed, and cruised on the highway great, unlike my 4 cylinder s-10. the clutch was actually to hard, but began to wear in to a confortable point after driving for 8000 miles. when in 4x4 stalls were common from a standstill because of no tach, I had to get used to giving nearly twice as much throttle for a clean launch.

I may be biased beacuse I only drove my truck for 9500 miles and it was under 50000, but this engine just beat the crap out my old 2.8, which blew up at 98,000.