[edvisme]

Back in 1984 I was reading the classified section of my local news paper when I spotted the car listed in the title for sale. Currious, I called the number. The nice man on the other end said he bought the car new and it was time to let her go because he was on his death bed from cancer. I went out and looked it over. It was in decent shape. The interrior was a flawless black. It had power windows, power locks, air, gages, tilt wheel, rear seat conseaole. The body was good except the lower rear quarters were rusted fairly well and in grey primer. The 455/t400/308 diff combo worked flawless. I scored the car for 900.00. I drove the car for about a year, tinkering on it, learning how to work on cars (I was a kid at 19 years old. One day I decided to swap the q jet carb that had an extremely worn throttle shaft with a Chevy style one my friend had. It worked ok, made the car chew up most chevys on the street. The secondary kick rod had developed an issue with occasionally sticking thus making the car stay at wot. Well one day I was out in the car. I come around a corner in an industrial park, stabbed the gas pedal and it wouldn't release. I was steering to the he road when I was trying to kill the engine ( my friend had installed an hei distributor and had a 12 volt source on a toggle switch hooked to it.) As I was steering to the aide of the road, my foot hard on the breaks I couldn't find the switch to kill the engine. The torque of the 455 over road the breaks and pushed the car straight into a flatbed triler. The chit the side of the trailer and ripped the entire drivers side open like a can opener, destroyed the front bumper, header panel, left fender, door and quarter panel. I was so bummed. I limpped the car home and let it sit for awhile. The car appeared to be a total loss so I parted it out . Once the car was gone a friend called me. He went on to say that in the current issue of high performance pontiac, it listed the production numbers for the 2nd gen firebirds. He told me to sit down before he said the number for my now gone bird. I dont recall exactly what the number was but it was extremely low for the one now gone. I was so distrought, sucide seemed an option. Somewhere in my house I have the build sheet for for it. The 455 fender emblem still sits on my desk. Man I wish I had that time to do all over again:'(

[cuz68]

That is a good and SAD story, What do you have now?

[edvisme]

Thank ya, cuz68 for the reply. I have a 1970 Firebird Formula 400 now. If you do a search on this site under my user name, you will find some posting on my car. As soon as I drive out the half tank of gas in it, it will be going under the knife for a complete body and paint job (the winter project.) I will be updating the build thread as the build progresses.

[johnta1]

Did you ever find the buildsheet for the 74 Formula?