picking a truck

[stdeclipse]

I'm in the market of looking for another car and I have always liked the s-10s. However, I entend to have this car as a nice looking daily drivable surpriser...by that I mean in the same way in which I had my eclipse, lack of body kit, decent rims for traction, almost all the bolt-ons you could think of and a fully functional exhaust that just asked to be picked on...Now for a non-turbo car I figure it was fast without going into the actual engine itself, ran 14.8s @ 96mph w 143whp and 137 ftlb torque. Something of this nature is what I'd like to do with an s-10. So my obvious engine becomes the V6, cause I don't really have the money to turbo anything that's not factory turboed and I don't have the money to by a syclone...so, I've recently been looking and was curious as to which V6 would have the most go, a '95 s10 or a '01 s10. I know the newer one weighs more, but caranddriver rates it at 190hp. I can't seem to find anything that goes back enough to find the hp on the 95 or the gear ratios for either. That way I can get power/weight ratios and final drive gears and make an educated guess...what I wanna do with the truck is this: dark color truck-> 3"3" drop with clear grill, dark tint, true dual exhaust dumps after rear axle, then mod the engine with bolt-ons hoping to achieve mid to low 15s if not high 14s. if it's not a dark truck then just the drop an engine bolt-ons. Problem is I don't know much about these engines, been around DSMs all my life. So I don't know what's possible with these trucks, but they are small and light, that's why I like them. Any opinions or referrals would be great.

[ZL1power69]

well just looking performance, the 96 and up v6 (VIN X in the pickup rated at 180hp and W in the blazer rated at 190hp) has more porformance potential and there is a larger aftermarket part backing. one of my friends has an 03 v6/5spd s10 and stock it ran a low 16 and after a bunch of boltons is maybe in the 14sec range. the 95 cpi engine doesn't have as many aftermarket parts available for it but it has a better hp and torque curve do to the intake manifold. its rated at 195hp. read the stickys at the top of this section and threads called "real performance from a vortec v6" and "v8 performance from a v6" for some ideas on what is posible with these trucks. if you have any other specific questions let us know