[w72]

After five years of waiting on parts, people, pandemics, and other uncontrollable stuff, our Trans Am is (mostly) alive! This forum has been an indispensable resource, thank you to everyone here who helped this project along. It's my dream car, I could hit powerball tomorrow and probably wouldn't buy or build anything different.

Quick rundown, we started with a very nice car optioned the way I'd have bought it in '78. Black on red hardtop, W72 WS6 4-speed with A/C, deluxe interior, am/fm 8-track, and very little else. Drove it 200 miles home, took one good cruise with my better half, then the proverbial fly landed in my drink.

Took it to have the brakes freshened up, picked it up with two rocker arms hanging sideways and trash in the filter. The next week, our neighbor's house burned down and spit embers all over the car, prompting the fire dep't to douse it in corrosive goo. Four months to find a shop to say yes to the job, they took 14 months after promising 12 weeks.

That was enough time to make me vindictive, so I started buying parts instead of going to therapy.

The next 2.5 years were more fun, I found a great shop with an actual 80 year old pontiac freak owner who wanted to do one more before he retired. We worked at a pace that suited us both - he is way past working long hours every day, and I have a growing business to run single-handedly. Big shoutout to Snell Automotive in Memphis. Larry is a "real one".

Just picked it up last week. Still have a ton of minor things to address, but safe to say she's hotter than the strip clubs this town used to be famous for (r.i.p. Platinum Plus).

[w72]

While the car was still in paint, I knew I had to deal with the engine damage. Local options are all suspect (or actual suspects). I already had a set of ported 95cc 6X-8 heads and a matching RPM intake that the Butlers did for me years ago for a project that never happened. I drove to Oklahoma with a pile of parts and dropped them off with Len Williams, who found a nice '72 block. We went .060" over, zero decked, forged 4.25" crank/rods/pistons, and he also did more work on the heads and valves. He got coy when I asked about specifics, but he's an old school drag racer - if I asked again he probably would've lied! The in/out game is controlled by a Melling SPC-8 RA4 copy, Rhodes lifters, and Crower stainless 1.65:1 rockers. My first impressions are that Len nailed it. Despite sitting for two years, it barked to life immediately and didn't leak anywhere. 467ci, about 9.75:1 cr, we're feeding it 93 octane E10.

Spent gasses dump into the 2.5" exit repop manifolds and downpipes from Paul at R.A.R.E. They also supplied aluminum pulleys for the accessory drive. Pypes 2.5" x-pipe into their 14" straight through mufflers and repop 2.5" splitters. The exhaust installation was a breeze, no clearance issues with the Canton road race pan. I can get a Wix 51258 in and out easily. We used a RobbMC starter with pinion support.

The driveline is overkill on purpose, I built everything so that if I get hungry for a bigger cam and better heads, the car will be ready.

The four speed ST-10 was spared, and is living a safe life in a '62 Catalina owned by a friend. In place is a TKO600, as the TKX hadn't been anounced yet. That's okay, I like the ratios better. 1350 u-joints are feeding a Moser 9" with a Detroit Trutrac, pinion support, and 35 spline axles. Ratio is 3.70:1. ARP 1/2" wheel studs with open end lug nuts at both ends, which look killer! I never want to see an acorn again. I should get a prize if I break anything south of the clutch, and if that blows up I'm hoping Quick Time knows how to keep my toes attached.

Brakes consist of a 9" dual diaphragm booster and Wilwood mc/prop valve squeezing C6 Corvette brakes from Tobin at Kore3 up front with Moser's Explorer rear discs with parking brake.

Dave at PTFB helped a ton with chassis and suspension. We used their solid body bushings and frame connectors (welded in). Up front, the upper control arms are from Global West, and I pressed their delrin bushings into stock lower arms. PTFB comp springs, new steering parts with a quick ratio Borgeson box, and single-adjustable Koni shocks round it out. In the rear, it's all PTFB stuff. Comp leaf springs with spherical bearings up front, relocated front leaf mounts, adjustble rear shackles, seriously beefy shock/sway bar mounts and drop links, and Koni shocks. We used the factory WS6 sway bars front and rear.

Wheels/tires are 17x9", 255/50/17 and 275/50/17. I wanted to keep some sidewall, the 40 series everyone uses look stupid to me. I haven't thrashed it or hit the bump stops yet, but no rubbing or interference anywhere so far. Ground clearance is good, and there's no rattles, binding, or play anywhere.

The carburetor is a paperweight, maybe I'll tinker with it when I'm so old I have to finally buy an A-body. I have Cliff's book and lots of small tools. We used a new tank with an internal electric pump, ran new 3/8" feed and return lines (I hope that doesn't end up being a mistake), and a Holley Sniper tbi unit with their Hyperspark ignition and timing control. Initial setup was easy. If you're letting it control timing, you need to be meticulous about setting up the initial distributor position and rotor phasing. Plan to do lots of studying or hire a pro to help tune it. It is "self learning", but on a big cube junt with less than 15" vacuum, you'll need to break out the laptop. We have it running very well, but there's still some tuning work to do on cold idle/warmup. For now, I'm keeping everything fairly rich with a conservative timing strategy.

Here's what remains to be done: the brakes are awful so far. The front is doing almost nothing, and there's drag in the rear that gets worse as it heats up. That should be easy to fix as it's all basically OEM stuff. I haven't had it aligned yet, surprisingly it goes straight and has good turn-in. I stupidly used a sheetmetal valley pan, going to swap in a Tomohawk pan and take the opportunity to make sure the pushrods are spinning. Valvetrain is a bit noisy, so we'll check the lash as well. It's my first go with Rhodes lifters, so not sure how much noise to expect. It needs the paint cut and polished, the gaudy red/charcoal decals applied, and some window tint.

I only have about 5 miles on her, and I fully expect that something will pop up and ruin my day before it's 100%, but today I'm ecstatic. Again, thank you to the members here who keep the love for this zombie marquis alive.

[w72]

Couple more pics.

[TAKerry]

Shame your first response was a spam, hopefully the mods can delete it.
Nice looking car, congrats on getting it back. I know its a long road to go from putting it in the shop until it comes home. Hope you end up having a lot of fun with it. Glad you didnt do the ls thing, now if you would only swap that efi for a carb you would good to go, LOL.

[PAUL K]

Looks great! Well worth the wait and effort.... Enjoy!

[78w72]

Nice car! Sounds like a very nice build. I have a 78 black on red W72 4speed hard top TA too, did a basic resto-mod with a mild original #'s engine & trans with stock suspension besides lowered front springs.

As for the "gaudy" red/charcoal decals, these black cars only came with gold decals regardless of interior color, mine originally had gold decals too... but with the red interior the gold decals clashed horribly & screamed 70's disco! So I decided to use the red/charcoal decals that came on white/silver cars. I did mine about 15 years ago when all the other TA forums were popular and I was one of if not the first, on those forums at least, to use the red decals, never saw them on a black car before that but Im sure someone did it somewhere. IMO they look very good and not gaudy at all, Pontiac should have offered that combo on pre 78 cars but they did offer it on 79-81 cars that looked great.

Heres a couple pics of mine just to show what the red/charcoal decals look like on a black/red car.

[kingbuzzo]

What a great build and the patience pays off sometimes...paint looks amazing

[1965gp]

Very nice build- I went with the PTFB suspension on my 72 as well as the solid mounts. It’s amazing how solid the car is.

Love the black and red combo.

[jhein]

It's a shame what happened with the fire but it looks like you turned lemons into lemonade. Very nice. Now we just need more pics and some driving video.

[limejudge69]

Looks like a very nice Bird came from a long road with a few bumps. Congrats for overcoming all of that! Nothing left to do but enjoy it. You located in the Midlands of SC ? The Platinum Plus reference rings a bell

[w72]

Platinum Plus was in Memphis, TN. It was commonly referred to as "The Purple Church" or "the Mount Moriah Performing Arts Center", pronounced "mmmmpac". Mount Moriah was the street it was on, not exactly where I'd raise a family.
You had to go to Tijuana to see anything like it.

[kingbuzzo]

Len has some reasonable crate options...would you recommend him or is it too early to tell?

[w72]

I was happy with every aspect of dealing with Len. Communication was easy, his machine room was tidy, and he delivered on time. I didn't see any "brand X" stuff laying around, he came across as being focused on building reliable Pontiacs that run hard. If I had a time machine, the only thing I'd do differently is to not let it sit around for over three years before breaking it in but that was a bit out of my control. 2020 was weird for everyone.

[Skip Fix]

Nice-just keep the Bird off the hood

[tempest1964]

She's a beauty! Congratulations!

[kingbuzzo]

If you get her on the road do you figure you'll go to the track or the dyno at some point?

How is that rear main seal holding?

[w72]

No leaks thus far. I don't have any interest in drag racing, but will definitely do a bit of autocross. I'd love to do a dyno session, but have heard horror stories about all the local operators. I have a good idea what it should make. I'm not trying to squeeze the last 2% out of it, so a combination of reading plugs, datalogs, and accelerometer data is the plan for now.