I have a set of 80's? i-roc rims on a 96 4x4 blazer a friend told me that I have to reverse the front and back meaning I would put the rear rim on the front of the blazer and the front rim on the rear is this correct??

 

I can not say for sure but I do not remember a rule about not rotating tire on the Blazer. Meaning the rims are the same front to back.

 

Doesn't make any sense to me unless they are directional tires on the wheels you have and they're mounted in the wrong place pointing backwards.

 

The rims themselves are labeled Front and Rear from what I was told is that with the Blazer being 4wheel drive that if I didn't reverse the rims it would mess up something?? I just can't remember exactly what I was told I would_could mess up.. my dad said that I was just crazy and it's not true he also tried to get me to switch it around but I can't afford to do that and it mess anything up so I was just curious about what could happen if anything.. I've been driving the Blazer for about two years now with the rims on reverse (front on rear and rear on front) with no problems

 

Sorry, when I posted I had read your thread wrong. I had it backwards in my head.

There was some higher end camaro’s in the 80’s with staggered rims and a combination of staggered rims with directional tires. In these cases the camaro rear wheels where wider to handle wider tires in the back. They could not be moved to the front because the offset would not be right for the steering geometry and would most likely rub. Assuming you do not have access to the year and options of the Camaro the rims came off of you could just use a tape measure. My guess would be if front/rear is marked on the rims they are staggered.

The most critical things on a 4WD is that the tires are the same Diameter all around. You really want matched tires. If you run different diameters front to back this can damage the transfer case. Since the S10 was not designed to run camaro wheels it is most likely that the offset it not correct.

If the rims are different but you got matching tires to seal on the rims it should be ok. I would try to avoid 4wd mode at highway speeds on a clean dry road just to be sure. Even if the tires where mismatched it would be fine in 4wd in the mud or snow. I would still be temped to put the wider wheels in the back as they would be more likely to rub in the front.

I mentioned that the offset of the wheel will effect steering. The below video does a nice job explaining it. While the video does not talk about wheel offset you can see in his diagram the the center line of the tire is a critical part of SAI. The wheel offset also effect the Ackerman angles but at a lesser extent. Some people can feel in the steering that something has change how the steering reacts to these changes and some do not even notice.

 

I think Gorn's post nailed it,you probably have staggered size wheels made for directional tires wider on the rear but don't have directional tires mounted on them on your Blazer. That makes sense and I agree I'd want the wider wheels on the back even if you have same sized tires mounted on them.
I've owned 3 Camaros and all came with the same size wheels front and rear,I forgot some of them came with staggered sizes stock,you could probably get good money for those if they are is nice shape,I'd bet they're hard to find and people are looking for them.