[thefirebirdm@n]

Hi all. I've been on PY a long time but haven't been very active in years. Things are ramping up so I decided to start some new threads. Any and all feedback, observations, comments are welcome. I've always trusted that the community of people in this forum are extremely knowledgeable.

I bought this 1973 Trans Am off ebay in 2006. I bid on the car but did not win it. About 5 days after the auction ended the seller contacted me. The high bidder had backed out and he was literally going down the list of bidders offering to sell the car to each of the others who had bid on it, in order and even offered to sell it at their bid price. I had bid somewhere around $13-14k on it and although it had bid up to around $20k I got the car at that price plus ~$800 to have it shipped from Washington State to South Carolina.

Side note: Big lesson learned for me - I coordinated through ebay to pay to have someone formally inspect the car. I think the service was ~$100 at the time and he sent me a write-up on the car, lots of pictures and a video I think. I would find out/realize later that the gentleman who inspected the car for me didn't put a magnet on not one square inch of the car anywhere. I take responsibility for that. I have should have requested it / insisted on it. Had I done so, I might not have bought the car.

The TA is a 455/4-speed car. It does not have the original numbers matching engine in it but it does have a correct for 73 455 in it. I can't recall if the engine code is for a manual or automatic but I believe it is a 455 coded for a 73 Trans Am. Have to look at the engine again and check. Its an original white car with the Tuxedo (Black/White) interior and was in generally in good driver condition when I received it. The pictures attached are after the engine rebuild which I will talk about in later posts.

[thefirebirdm@n]

I don't think I even got to put 50 miles on it. I drove it to work, this is back when I was still a Defense Contractor working at Shaw AFB, gave one of my friends a ride at lunch time and barely made it out of the parking lot and onto the main road. The car started running very rough, backfired hard and died.

I knew a local guy through my kids school that was a retired Air Force Auto Mechanic. He was still doing mechanic work in retirement. He had a huge 40x60 out behind his house and just got tons of business via word of mouth. I had the car towed to his house and we were able to determine that one of the Hydraulic lifters had failed (See pic, I still have it, keep it on the shelf ) and had rounded off the cam and the distributor gear had come apart. So the engine need a rebuild.

We pulled the motor and performed a pretty basic but complete rebuild of the 455. Jim Bulter spoke to me over the phone and recommended the Comp Cams XE268 cam and that's what went into the car. I also replaced all the bearings, seals, gaskets and bolts with new ARP bolts. I also installed a new Timing Chain cover and put on a set of the factory headers RAR sells. I had a local machine shop do the Machine Shop work (which turned out to be a mistake I would find later). I did all the dis-assembly /assembly myself under the guidance of the afore mentioned mechanic which was a great experience given this was my first complete engine rebuild. Engine break in went fine and the engine ran great.

While the engine was out I also made the decision to swap the 4-speed for a 5-speed and bought a Tremec TKO 600 from the now defunct Keisler Engineering. I bought one of their perfect fit kits. Other than 1st gear being too short with a 3:55 rear I had no problems with Keisler or the install and the transmission worked as advertised.

I trailered the car home and then trailered it to an exhaust shop to have a new exhaust installed. Leaving the shop I hadn't driven it a mile yet and I noticed there was white smoke coming out from behind the car. Long story short, the local machine shop either did not replace the valve stem seals or installed incorrect seals.

I drove the car a few more times, which was embarrassing with all the smoke but I had to park it fairly quickly because I had made the decision to move my family back to Texas from South Carolina. Fixing the smoking issue and/or doing any other work on the car would have to wait.

[thefirebirdm@n]

After the move to Texas was over, about a year later, I got back to work on the TA. I pulled the motor and took it to a local Pontiac legend here in San Antonio, named Barney. He was already pretty old at the time and now today he's in a nursing home but he raced Pontiacs back in the 70s. I asked him to go through the heads initially which he did but after looking at them he asked me to bring him the block as well so the short block came out and went to him too.

While he had the motor I decided a complete overhaul and restoration of the entire front clip was in order. Yes I fell victim hard to the "While I'm in here..." syndrome.

I pulled the entire front clip off the car (it did make pulling the motor back out a breeze) and took the firewall down to bare firewall. I didn't like that someone had painted it white and it looked terrible (lots of orangey rust all over the white) and I wanted to paint it back to black. One interesting thing I found is that the backing plates for the headlights in the nose were completely wrong and a kludged up mess. I bought the correct ones off ebay and added all new hardware for a complete restoration of the nose.

[thefirebirdm@n]

I also decided to clean up and paint the subframe because why not!! And of course there were upgrades. I removed the stock upper and lower control arms and replaced them with DSE Tubular uppers and lowers. I replaced the springs (coil overs are probably going to replace them very soon) and also sent off the gear box to a guy I had found that rebuilds them to have it updated to the more responsive specs you would get for a 78-79 Trans Am. I don't remember the exact number changes off the top of my head.

I kept the steering linkage stock but upgraded the clamps to something more modern. I also removed the stock front calipers and replaced them with Wilwood Dual Piston D-52 calipers which were basically a bolt on and upgraded the size of the rotors. I will probably re-visit the rotors. At the time there was a lot of guidance available to upgrade rotors from 11" to 12". One option was to buy 12" rotors for a later model car which would have come with metric lugs. I had found references to pressing the metric logs out, drilling the lug holes slightly larger and installing standard SAE lugs. That's the route I took. I bought and used a drill press for the work but like I said, given I could have introduced stress cracking I may re-visit this before putting the car back on the road.

[thefirebirdm@n]

Continuing the front clip overhaul:

- replaced the brake booster and master cylinder with a complete new kit from Inline Tube.
- removed and refurbished the wiper motor
- sandblasted the inner fenders and other various small brackets that hold the front sheet metal together and had them powdercoated in a low gloss black
- removed and refurbished the steering shaft assy with a new rag joint and fresh paint. This was interesting because the steering shaft in 73 has two plastic pins in it that act as the sheer joint for a collision. After taking the shaft apart I had to fashion replacement plastic pins when I put it back together.

[thefirebirdm@n]

More pictures of the steering shaft and gear box.

[kingbuzzo]

subscribed to on-going saga...no wonder it took you so long to write it up!

Beautiful car...sorry for your troubles but can somewhat relate

[thefirebirdm@n]

After getting the engine back from Barney, we installed in back into the now completely restored sub-frame and then installed the sub-frame back under the car.

Rather than bolting the front clip back on right away this is where I got the bright idea to restore the entire underside of the car. I had already bought all new stainless brake and fuel lines from Inline Tube, new clips etc... and could not in good conscience install them on a dirty car.

This would lead to the decision that has led to the car sitting for the last 10 years. Well the long delay was really waiting for the right help but that comes later in the thread.

You'll notice I am now running Tribal Tubes Tri-Y headers on the 455. The gentleman who made them and sold them sold me a pair for both my Trans Am and my 69 GTO (another thread waiting for me to author it) and I know there was some controversy and grief with this person and his business during the ensuing years but I had no problem with him. I ordered my two sets of headers, paid for them and they were wasn't much delay in getting them.

I should also point out at this point I am running the aluminum pulley set sold by RAR. I love the way they look, they're lighter and they'll never need paint or rust. This car was also missing the steel tube that protects the starter wire so I bought one off ebay, blasted it and had it powedercoated and installed it.

Next, I suspect this will raise some eyebrows but the goal for cleaning up the underside of the car was not just to clean it up. I also want to paint it or coat it so it would never need anything more than maybe a light cleaning, pressure-washing etc... ever again in the future. I decided to use bedliner.

One of the long time members of our local chapter of the POCI has helped me with the car off an on. In fact he is the key person helping me with the bodywork we are doing to the car right now (I leave in about 10mins to go put another 2-3 hours into as soon as I finish this post) and he was/is a big fan of DIY bedliner and has used in lots of applications. I was impressed with his results and I liked the concept so I made the decision. Its certainly a more permanent decision that under-coating but it will create a nearly impervious barrier for the underside of the car.

The prep is to strip the part to bare metal and then primer and then spray the bedliner over that. The underside of the car will should never rust again and I don't have to worry about exposure to any other fluids that might splash up on it. As of today, all but the back section of the underside of the car has already been covered and TBH I think it looks great too.