69 Bird HO "Barn Find...in the city"
 

Found this 69 bird around the corner from my house covered in IVY and barely visible on the side of someones house. Finally, got up the balls to knock on the door a few months ago and the guy that owned the car had no idea what he had and seemed open to selling me the car. Anyways, after a few months of acting uninterested he kept calling me and I picked up the car this weekend. Ends up being an all numbers matching 69' HO with the WQ engine. The car has 82k original miles and has been sitting since 1978. Got it for 3k, what ya think? Will go nicely with my 67...

The car also came with all the body parts needed to fix up the front since he had wrecked the car at Dodger stadium doing donuts...haha! WQ is a 4 speed car for those of you whom didn't know.

Great find! Look forward to seeing this come full circle, to its original "as sold" condition.
Good luck!:D

Me too! Only thing is I'm not sure if I'm experienced enough to be restoring a car like this. I mean, I know i can do good work but that's just for a nice solid street muscle car. I think this car needs the full original treatment. It has everything including the matching 48 heads, exhaust manifolds, tranny, exhaust rearend, etc....

Congratulations on the purchase. Besides the HO 400 engine, what other options does the car have?

Great Find!! It should be a blast when done.

What do we think?

I think you bought a carb & got a numbers matching car for free! And that you also shouldn't ever tow a car with a motor in it facing backwards!

Nice find! Looks like all you have to do is wash it and put the front end back on.

As it's on a flatbed, why the towing comment? Also, why not?

It's on a trailer & when loaded tailheavy will be hard to control. When the weight is behind the axles it will sway wildly.

Just sharing from experience.

Great find!

wow. I would try washing it real well and hitting it with wax to see what polished out. Maybe? Too cool. Might have a really great Patina thing going.

Cool! Definitely have a restoration project on your hands. You see, even after 40+ years these cars are still out there to be found.

You stole it.

I second that (from experience).


Awesome find. You are one lucky b&@&*%d.

AMEN to that! Took a car to the drags,broke an axle.Ended up pushing it on the trailer backwords for some reason.What a scary a$$ ride on the way home! Never again,and good advice!!!

all depends on what you tow it with.

Boss is 110% correct, did that myself at the rip ole age at 19. When faced with the proposition of hitting a jeep head on cause the trailer was 90 degrees to the truck I choose to slam the suburban into the side of the mountain in an attempt to kill only myself. God liked the selfless act and when i hit the blacktop barrier it straightened the trailer out. scared the living $h!+ out of me. can remember it clearly to this day 15 years later. Learned and invaluable lesson. btw ford Grand Marquis never even moved an inch on the trailer, I strapped that P.O.S. down damn good! :)

Sorry for topic hi-jack great looking project, doesn't seem like it's to rough, so if your good with a wrench and have patience I suspect with some PY help you can bring it full circle.

Oh yea I see power disc brakes..........

I think it was a good price to pay.
Will you post PHS, if you purchase it.

It "looks" like the 3k Carb has been swapped out previously, by first picture.
Still a great deal on a Rare Bird in my opinion !

Many congrats to you Sehorn

Great find!
You have to love the west coast!
Could you imagine how it'd look if it were covered in ivy in the North East?
Good Luck with getting it back on the road!

I believe a 4-speed car like this w/o Ram Air option would have a '263 carb.

As far as putting it on the trailer it only got towed a few miles on side streets. Didn't have much of a choice because it would have been more dangerous putting it on frontwards since it had no power or brakes and the guy lived on a hill, getting it turned around could have been deadly, but thanks for the FYI.

Not sure about all the options yet cause I don't know much about them, other then it does have power disk brakes and hood tach. Wheels are just some of my spares since the original tires are flat. I think it may of had steel wheels with some hubcaps.

The carb on it has been changed, guy had it swapped out before he parked it. However, I checked the numbers off of it online and according to the website it's a 68' ram air carb (will post numbers tomorrow, don't remember). I imagine they are just as rare...?


In picture car had already been power washed. It's not waxing out.

And I already ordered the PHS documentation. Will get more pics up soon.

Great Find!!Good luck with the project

No, it is a WQ RA engine so it would have a 273 Qjet even without Hood Inlet pan option

X2.

If it's a true R/A III, it's one of 1498 built. Be cool if it came with the optional functioning ram air.

The hood doesn't look like it ever had a ram air system under it,but who knows, maybe it was wrecked during its time? I'm the third owner and the guy I got it from bought it from some lady before that, so I doubt it was ever wrecked other than its current damage. The exhaust manifolds have the same heat tube pieces bolted to them that the Ram Air's had on the drivers side, according to ram air diagram. Would the factory air cleaner have the same piece?

Where would the hole for the pull lever be in the firewall? If it did have the 611 option it should have a hole I'm guessing.

I thought I read/heard that the WQ block could have been ordered with 348 RPO without the Ram Air pans..making it an HO. I have seen 69 invoices with WQ blocks with the RA option and the HO option.

It is vague to me as I never owned a 69, but there was a huge debate on whether a 348 RPO 400 was technically a "Ram Air" car or not.

Banshee
You are correct L74 HO/RA III WQ Firebird engines are identical in very component with or without RA Hood Inlet pans.

A 69 400 HO WQ Firebird engine is identical to the WQ 400 RA III Standard in a 69 Trans am, less RA pans.

Yeah, I've already read all those old arguments on hear about whether or not it's a Ram Air. Fact of the matter is they are the same car just some may have had the 611 option, some didn't. The early ones "may" of had it without the option since the sheets say ram air even though there was no 611 option to signify it. My guess is that this is a later car (somewhere around 17 thousandth built in Van Nuys) and if it did have the pans the PHS documentation will say that it had the 611 option. Seems like people with earlier HO's try and claim that their cars came with Ram Air's because there was no distinctions in the paperwork. If this one does happen to be early one, I'm not gonna play that game cause I'm pretty positive this is the original hood and it should have some marks if it came with pans.

Any whoo, what are these going for nowadays? Assuming it's an HO without the pans.

Have you checked the cowl tag to see when it was built?

towed a 99 Camaro SS Saturday,loaded backwards on my short equipment trailer.
Towed with a dually 3500 Duramax flatbed. No problems what so ever but Im sure this would be an exception.Hood on Camaro was about 2 ft higher than normal due to the PO hitting a power pole,so normal forward facing wasnt an option.

I had no intentions of changing the topic of this thread and apologize to the OP for the distraction.

Killer car with or without the Ram Air - it's a keeper for sure.

We always drift and change lanes in most threads, even if nothing is getting towed anywhere. ;)

Around April or May of 69 the Ram3's started getting 9273 XB's instead of 8273 XX's.
Only the buildsheet knows for sure what got what though.

I have to confess, by the pictures it looks like it would clean up a lot better still - with some elbow grease, hot water, good detergent and a green scotchbrite pad.
Even the front glass is still dirty ! lol

As far as what the WQ Bird Hdtps are worth -
Under-rated cars that are hard as heck to find intact.
Not enough change hands to really keep a pulse on their market.
I'd say probably under 30k if this one was finely restored, right now. :2cents:

I would say an intact RAIII with correct block, trans, rear, carb and at least 95% original and complete (correct glass, alternator, heads, intake, distributor) essentially most all the hard to find parts with original sheet metal, no rust or panel replacement, unrestored, $15-20k.

It is rare...and difficult to find an HO as it is....all the other hard to locate parts with the car is a huge expense.

Here are some more pics including some of the No.'s.

intake, body tag, engine ID, axle, more engine id (by the timing chain)

And some more...

You can see the VIN and engine ID by the Timing cover match. Everything else if matching up too, I have no reason to believe everything is not 100% original. Except carb, which is a replacement 68' Ram Air carb

VIN, ENGINE ID, INSIDE, TRANNY, ANOTHERPIC AFTER CLEANING UP (AND A BUTT)

MORE...
ENGINE , CARB, AS THE CAR SAT FOR THE LAST 32 YEARS (NOTICE THE RETAINING WALL ABOUT TO FALL ON IT, PIC MINUS THE IVY THAT WAS COVERING IT), MORE CLEANED UP

Nice find for sure!! Gets tougher every year!!

You stole that car. Nice find.

cleaning up nicely. congrats on the score.

"What do you think?"

Lucky basterd...thats what i think.

That car is looking better and better in every pic. Did the previous owner ever tell you what happen to it and why it sat so long ?

Said the clutch was out of it so he parked it and it hasn't moved since. Had plans to fix it up but he had no idea ho to do any work. Kind of ignorant though cause he originally told me it was a 3-speed car and had been sitting for about 16 years. Turns out it had been sitting for over thirty years, and well it wasn't a 3-speed.

did you get it running?

You saved it!

Only a matter of time with that wall.

Do you mean that both Left and Right Exh Mans have a heat shield on them ?

The factory air cleaner would be a single snorkel.
The snorkel would point to driver side - and a flex tube would fit onto the underside of the snorkel - and other end of flex would go to driver exh man.

What is the number of the carb you have ?
Since you have 03C build date, you would most likely need a 69 dated 7028273 (68 part number-69 date code). Maybe you'll find a buildsheet on top of gas tank too.

The carb on car is either an automatic carb, or a manual carb that has been remanufactured and had the modulator vacuum nipple added. Thats how i knew it was not the factory original carb earlier in thread. It also has the vac spout on passenger throttle base for the dual port distributor vacuum advance used on some 68's and supposedly some early 69's.

Since you have hood tach and electric clock, its probably got factory gauges in left dash pod - instead of idiot lights. Those 3 things usually tend to run together.

Not yet. Will try and get it running this weekend, just have a lot of prep to do before hand. If any of you have any suggestions on what I should do with an engine that has been sitting this long let me know...

The No. is: 70282761 and also has 1717 next to that.

It does have factory gauges, not idiot lights. Also, dug into the axle and it's a ZK with the 3.90....SCORE!!! Has the "N" on the top. Tranny also has the exact same number as the engine and VIN, 17785. I knew in my heart it had it all i'm just finally getting around to verifying. I didn't want to snoop around the car to much and raise any questions to the guy we bought it from.

What a find. Always great to see the "special" ones like this surface...

Amazing find, congrats! Windward Blue is beautiful color. Have fun with it!