Craigslist Find of the Week: LS-swapped ‘Colorado SS’
The Colorado SS that never was, and likely never should have been.
We recently found this truck on Craigslist, which notes that it is for sale in Orange County, California, and has had an LS V8 swapped into it, plus quite a few other modifications. It’s basically a mashup of a Trailblazer SS and a Colorado regular cab truck. The ad calls it a Colorado SS, but that isn’t really a thing, except for a show truck or two. It appears mostly together but is on a salvage title, and the transmission isn’t just toast, it’s AWOL.
From the look of it in the pictures, this truck has front-end damage. Also, it has the grille, headlights and bumper cover from the Trailblazer grafted on, though not well. Fitting the headlights in at all must have been the hardest part, because the Colorado and Trailblazer share no body parts. The interior looks to have used Trailblazer SS parts too, and the wheels and rear differential are from that SUV as well. It really makes us wonder what happened to that Trailblazer’s 6.0-liter motor.
The seller doesn’t provide many details, so we have no idea if the motor is an iron block 5.3 liter out of a junkyard Chevy van, or the aluminum version out of the Trailblazer and its ilk. One thing we know for sure though, you have at least 300hp under the hood now. Chances are that all that power, and the sticky tires, plus drag racing, are the reason the transmission is no longer around. These trucks used the 4L60 transmission, which features a modular bell housing, so the four-cylinder transmission may have been bolted to the V8. A few hard launches with those slapper bars at the drag strip may have been enough to kill it.
The interior is less than finished, and there is no telling what the smog legality status is. But on the plus side, it is currently registered. So borrow a trailer, count out $4,000 in small bills, and head down to the O.C. to get yourself a sweet little sleeper (once you peel off that stripe).
