[Scarebird]

Part of the delay is using the T/A as a test bed for future products. One of which is a better rear disc setup. The S10/Blazer setup is an excellent one, but has it's flaws; ie. won't work well with bolt in axles, expensive calipers, etc. I bought a non-posi diff from a friend, and sold the 2.41 posi assy on craigslist (pricewise a wash). The housing was stuffed with 3.42 GM gears, TruTrac limited slip and Moser 30 spline axles.

This is what we have currently:





This will clear disc 15" Rally rims, and can be welded up to have both calipers trail the axles for A bodies and 67 F's...

[Scarebird]

Another project was a bolt in bracket for the excellent Wilwood clutch master. I designed it to fit the 77-81 F firewall, it works with the Howe hydraulic throwout bearing. In hindsight I wish I would have just made the damn Corvette manifolds work and use the Z-bar setup I already had and saved a dozen hours...



It does however tuck in real nice under the booster. I am going manual, using a Mopar minivan master in this car. It has a nice 24mm bore and the pushrod hole is deep, aluminum construction and relatively cheap.

[Ollie]

I will offer my TA for testing.

[Scarebird]

Is it running?

[Scarebird]

Still pecking away. 79-81 gas tank fill tube was too long. Priced out having it cut and re-soldered; not bad but closest shop was 15 miles away and could not do it in one trip. Decided to cut it and use a piece of 2" Ø gas hose and a couple of clamps - worked fine.



Put together the rear disc setup - the calipers are quite affordable (80-85 Citation fronts) but no longer on the local shelves; a mail-order item. Painted GM blue to match the T/A stripe. Hose routing worked out, and OEM cables are able to be modded to fit. Once the rest of the components for the ebrake arrive will hook up to a 4WD and tug backwards to test holding power.



before with drum spring:



after trimming with side cutters and adjustable stop added:

[Scarebird]

Keep buggering on. No posts but average a couple hours a night work on the T/A. Exhaust install time. My favorite. GM provides a couple of catalytic converters with the EROD package; naturally GM sent the wrong ones. They seem to be workable so I cut and trimmed the flanges, tacked them into position, cut again and welded in to fit tighter under the car.



The passenger cats were wrong; the O2 senser was interfering with the subframe - not good. Simply capped off the bung, GM provided a few extra bungs so welded one in the correct position.





GM now uses band clamps - nice stuff. I used a band clamp in the rear, and added additional support under our cross-box. I used this box as the Thrush supplied had the head pipes welded turned up 5 degrees for some reason. This support was tied into the seat reinforcement. Pipes seem to tuck in nice.

[Scarebird]

Gauge time. There were several issues about using the stock gauges with an LS. Tach feed was one of them. I decided to try the Speedhut gauges; feedback was excellent and well deserved. Neat thing about it is you can design your own bezels, backgrounds, needles etc. I cleaned up one of the stock designs, getting rid of the numbers below the tick arc. I placed the gauges in the stock TA bezel - pretty dirty. I began cleaning the bezel with Bon Ami and dish soap - nada. Tried a light shot with chrome cleaner - too much!

!!

It took some of the turning out, but not the corrosion underneath.

Plan B. I thought of getting a repop unit, about $360 but not in stock yet. Ebay units looked worse than mine, including huge holes cut for long gone gauges.

Plan C. refinish existing piece - emailed but have not heard back from guy...

Plan D. Powder coating bezel medium gray for the race look.

Plan E ordered a Formy unit I saw on Ebay - got it today, excellent shape.




So now I need to decide which to use...

[66bonne]

Making progress and looking good.

Jim

[JC455]

A little late, but have you seen these?
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/ATM-2138

[TransAm_Stan]

Nice build.

I might have to give those gauges another thought.

[Scarebird]

I had not really touched the T/A this month, kinda burned out and bummed about the fitment of the custom tail panel. I decided the hell with it and ordered a bunch of 70-73 components. The tail panel was chonged up pretty good; Ames said all of theirs were damaged, as were Classic's... so I finally sucked it up and massaged the deformations out so they may actually fit the light buckets.

Cut a test hole to take a look at what is going on...



combined arms assault: plasma, sawzall, snips, spotweld drill, air chisel...



most of the panel gone.



Testing an idea I read about; left side tail light has white painted reflecter, other side stock silver - not much difference I can see



Got my instrument panel from Randy Combs - looks quite nice. Will be fitting it out with gauges soon.

[Scarebird]

3 months since the last post, things have still been moving along. The 70-73 rear has been grafted on; quite a bit of work and fabricating fill pieces! GM used a lot of pooky on the tail panel, so will I.




The inside was reinforced more than stock - a piece of angle iron ties in the two frame rails and hopefully reduces twisting and flex. A heavier steel plate was welded on to the top of the frame rails and a gusset welded tying in all.



I originally was using a Mopar minivan master cylinder, but it did not move enough fluid, so a 1984-93 Dodge D150 master was used instead. I plan on a manual setup.



Another thing that vexed me was the imbecilic way Pontiac hung the nose. I carefully removed some urethane from the upper headlight brace, welded a tab to it then bolted that to the forward fender bolt. No more gaps.

[Scarebird]

Red letter day: it runs. Temporarily hooked up ignition power, tested fuel integrity, filled and pressure checked coolant. Will finish up filling diff and trans so I can drive on/off trailer.

[Scarebird]

We got the brackets in from the cutters. *They are a more refined design; simpler. *They use the 10379038 GM 2004-2011 Cadillac CTS *pedal assy. *These run around $70 from Rockauto and Nalley GMC. *We needed to weld an extension to fit the existing F pedal. We did try the Impala piece - the offset was wrong. This is the Caddy piece here:



We start with the bracket here:



The smaller piece off to the left is a backer we made as one of the firewall holes was stripped so we elected to use bolts. *Mounting 3 individual bolts is no fun, so we ganged them together, and left a shelf to mount wire looms to boot on the engine side.



We used 3 nylon spacers to clear the insulation for rigidity.



Mounted.



All finished. *I drove the car today to the paint shop - pedal motion is identical to a vechicle of 70's vintage. We will sell the bracket, weldable pedal rod and 3 nylon spacers for $38 plus shipping, just mention PY...

[Scarebird]

Back to paint. Engine started the other day; now moving under power. I was going to borrow Verdean's trailer - thought why not drive it there? Did a quick test drive, realized power steering works better with fluid...



As you see a few things are missing; all lights, bumpers, trim, etc. We wired in a single brake light and a race style ignition panel, with girl's mirror clamped to it for rear view. Did a fast alignment with an Iphone app and as Alan B Shephard said "lit the candle". Drove good, brakes stiff as master bore may be too big (will sort out later). Lotta low end power, weight hopefully around 3300#.

Now to get rework estimate - Nick was not in a good mood.

[Transporter]

Originally Posted by Scarebird

Back to paint. Engine started the other day; now moving under power. I was going to borrow Verdean's trailer - thought why not drive it there? Did a quick test drive, realized power steering works better with fluid...



As you see a few things are missing; all lights, bumpers, trim, etc. We wired in a single brake light and a race style ignition panel, with girl's mirror clamped to it for rear view. Did a fast alignment with an Iphone app and as Alan B Shephard said "lit the candle". Drove good, brakes stiff as master bore may be too big (will sort out later). Lotta low end power, weight hopefully around 3300#.

Now to get rework estimate - Nick was not in a good mood.

Personally I think you will be much happier with the earlier rear panels/tail lights in, everything else just doesn't look "correct" even with the big back window.

Turning out really nice.

[Scarebird]

Thanks.

Hinge time! Nick said the driver's hinge was shot - he was correct. Repop units are not well received and used hinges may be worse. There is a guy down in Cali who does rebuilds for a decent rate, but time/money is getting tight so decided to give it a shot.



I used a bunch of flanged bushings; 1/2" OD and 3/8" ID. The arms are made from 11 gauge steel (0.121" thick) so bushed length was trimmed down to twice that in a lathe, with a washer on the non-flanged end. The bolts nearest the hood had their heads trimmed down to clear, but the rest worked very well. I had to ream the holes all to 1/2" ID. Once tightened to spec the nuts were fused.

[Donovan]

looking excellent

[Scarebird]

Back from paint jail.

Nick reworked the lower quarters, wondering if I should paint the insert Lucy Blue like the 69 T/A's?

[Scarebird]

In the month since the last post I did a few things, one being removing the temp exhaust extensions and welding in a pair of slicer tips. These kick in a little bit, more like te 70-72 Camaros had for a cleaner, tighter look.

Another thing was fitting up the tail panel and trunk lock. This is what I ended up doing. Not being any sort of low production or high value as stock car, I modded the tail panel so the lock face sits flush. I did not like the idea of the lock sitting too far in and the key scraping the paint when turned.

I clamped the tail panel in the Bridgeport and used a swedge cutter to get to 0.812" Ø. I needed 0.841 or so, a brief touch of the rotary file did this.

In the mean time I made a test backing plate. I am thinking of making a small laser cut run of these as the welded studs seem to all disappear over the years...

I welded some gussets in the latch section of the trunk so access to the back two bolts is bad at best...





Test fitted up. Will use some neoprene gasket and smear the outer section of the lock with sealant.