[RIPSHIN]

'71 Formula 400-4 speed.....driver.....
Dave

[Formulabruce]

Bill mitchell would have loved this car, its his dream T/A , looks great!

[eaglesan13]

Nice! And welcome to the boards.

Originally Posted by RIPSHIN

'71 Formula 400-4 speed.....driver.....
Dave

[PONTIAC-ONE]

Originally Posted by Formulabruce

Bill mitchell would have loved this car, its his dream T/A , looks great!

Yah, I read someplace that's how the T/A was originally going to look...correct?

[1971455HO]

I love it too. Nice car. And also...welcome to the forum.

[keith k]

Originally Posted by PONTIAC-ONE

Yah, I read someplace that's how the T/A was originally going to look...correct?

Yep, sort of. Was originally going to have all the T/A stuff (including the fender air extractors that this car doesn't have), but with the Formula hood instead of what becam the T/A shaker. And it was Bill Porter (the car's designer), not Bill Mitchell.

Nice looking car!

[RIPSHIN]

Thanks for the compliments and greetings
Long time reader... first time writer...
The car is an early '71 40,000 mile car with some quirky stuff on it for sure......loaded except for door locks....
As the story goes,the foilage came in the trunk to the dealer who installed it..all the spoilers and foilers were on the car when I got it...
I have to say there are some sweet cars on this board...too bad they're spread out so thin that none of us get see any of them in person.....
Formula Bruce...that purple....man it looks good out in the sunshine !
Dave

[OVERULD]

Originally Posted by RIPSHIN

Formula Bruce...that purple....man it looks good out in the sunshine !
Dave

Every time I look at a picture of that car I can taste a grape sucker like they used to give you at the doctor's office whenever you got a shot. If I ever saw it at a car show I'd probably go up and lick it to see if it tasted like I remember those suckers!

BJ

[Norwood]

Ripshin, Looking good. I'm not a fan of the HYBRED look but the white makes it look very clean. How about some more detail pics.

[ClobberBird70]

Yes, more pics please. Great looking car Ripshin ...

[RIPSHIN]

I'll have to dig around for some more pics...
Here's one on "The Dragon" (Deals Gap),hwy 129 west of the Smokies.....don't know if any of you are familiar with it.....318 curves in 11 miles and all they ask is that you don't cross the yellow line....I burned up half a tank of happy gas going out and back...ok..maybe 1/3 of a tank.....Let's just say I was into the secondaries ALOT more than I was in the primaries.....

[Kell]

That looks great, I agree, the white makes it look clean
my brother went last year and I will be going ASAP, need to find a house first and new tires, then I'm driving my primered bird over there.

No Killboy pics?

[Tazzz2]

"The Dragons Tail" is just one of those bucket list drives that every car should (no actually must LOL) experience at once... I've done the Dragon on multiple occasions and loved it more every time and would highly recommend it to anyone...

[RIPSHIN]

Kell
Yeah,there are at least 40 pics on the "US 129" site(cars 1-3pm) , "Dragonslayer" and Moonshine Auto" have a bunch too...they must have some high speed cameras because I did not give them much time to take pics as I was moving at a pretty good clip.....I was up there on 10/22 of last year.....
After "drifting" through I came to a conclusion about Radial T/A's....won't somebody please make a good "sticky" 16" or 17" white letter tire ?? You know there has to be a market for them !
And Tazz.....I agree about everyone hitting that road at least once.....there are some other really good roads around that area too.....
The Scca is having a hillclimb event near Robbinsville in September...lots of odd/fast cars involved including a buddy of mine who races his '74 Z28 that he bought new in 74....although it is NOT stock now and is extremely quick...

[Tazzz2]

RIPSHIN, the Dragons tail is completely unforgiving and you drifted the tail???? If so you must be one "Hell" of a driver.... I race, auto-cross and drive (road trips) well in excess of 60,000 miles a year and with all that driving I wouldn't even remotely consider drifting the tail....

Look on u-tube and see the carnage of bikes that have been aggressive and failed... Heck they're light and your swinging 3,600LBS on 15" BFG's,,, Man you got some stones ^5 dude ...

[RIPSHIN]

Tazzz
Not really difficult when I don't have to dodge moose like you guys up in the great north country have to do ! I did come up on 2 different motorcycle wrecks on the Dragon...both of them had hit they're pipes on the road when they leaned over a little too far and sent the bikes straight over....the thing that really cracked me up was there was a Scooter rally up there too,yep..scooters everywhere.....people came from all over trailering their scooters to "run the dragon"....
Are you up in Toronto still.......went to camp in Port Sydney north of Orillia...also bought a canoe from Evergreen Canoe co. and they're out of Toronto....spent alot of time in Algonquin park too....

[Kell]

Originally Posted by RIPSHIN

After "drifting" through I came to a conclusion about Radial T/A's....won't somebody please make a good "sticky" 16" or 17" white letter tire ?? You know there has to be a market for them !
...

Yep, there would be a huge market for them. My next set of tires I will probably stencil the white letters for the "Trans Am Racing series" look, you see it all the time on those and it fits right in. You are right about those 15's though, you can't even find speed rated street tires anymore in that size.

Trying out stripes on my car, can't decide if I will keep them, they are subtle in most light, shiny black on flat black, but show up a little too much in direct sunlight. I won't be painting my car anytime soon so this is as good as it gets, I enjoy driving it as is though.

[PONTIAC-ONE]

Originally Posted by Kell

Yep, there would be a huge market for them. My next set of tires I will probably stencil the white letters for the "Trans Am Racing series" look, you see it all the time on those and it fits right in. You are right about those 15's though, you can't even find speed rated street tires anymore in that size.

Trying out stripes on my car, can't decide if I will keep them, they are subtle in most light, shiny black on flat black, but show up a little too much in direct sunlight. I won't be painting my car anytime soon so this is as good as it gets, I enjoy driving it as is though.

I had a Black 1974 Olds 442 w/455 and it had a white stripe down the center, looked cool and everyone called it the skunk.

[njsteve]

Originally Posted by Kell

Yep, there would be a huge market for them. My next set of tires I will probably stencil the white letters for the "Trans Am Racing series" look, you see it all the time on those and it fits right in. You are right about those 15's though, you can't even find speed rated street tires anymore in that size.

Trying out stripes on my car, can't decide if I will keep them, they are subtle in most light, shiny black on flat black, but show up a little too much in direct sunlight. I won't be painting my car anytime soon so this is as good as it gets, I enjoy driving it as is though.

Nice! It looks like Darth Vader's car. Very evil looking.

[165th]

Originally Posted by Kell

Trying out stripes on my car, can't decide if I will keep them, they are subtle in most light, shiny black on flat black, but show up a little too much in direct sunlight. I won't be painting my car anytime soon so this is as good as it gets, I enjoy driving it as is though.

Hi Kell, that car looks wicked! To reduce the gloss, have you given any thought to spraying a color such as dark charcoal or satin black on a set of stripes prior to applying them? Just a thought, but if you sprayed a stock set of stripes, they may even come out 'ghosted' with the impression of the white/black and black pinstripe still reading through the charcoal topcoat?