[TedRamAirII]

Yes, Between the upper rear axle mounting plate and the spring, on the rear side. It may not take much, maybe a 1/8" and try it? Maybe measure your angles and see if that improves them.

[Josue]

Small update...

I've been enjoying the car all season long, and one glaring issue that needed attended to, was the shock situation. My tires rub in the front quite frequently over large dips in the road, and sometimes when cornering hard.

I'm not positive, but are these original shocks??




Either way...they were worn, and needed to be replaced. Having big plans for the suspension eventually, I didn't want to spend a whole lot of money on shocks now, only to replace them in a few years. So, I went with some $32 KYB's.



Still not as stiff as I'd like, but I wasn't expecting coil-over performance from a $32 shock. They DID improve the steering and handling feel quite a bit, and it doesn't rub on certain places that I drive. Still can't escape rubbing on the big dips in the road though, but it is what it is....

No pictures, but I also finally got rid of the 20 year old air shocks that were on the back of this thing too! They weren't even able to hold air, so I was essentially riding around on leaf springs. I remembered that we took a nice set of Gabriel shocks off my dad's car to put air shocks on so he could even out his stance, so they were sitting around. Similar improvement in performance back there too, and they were free!

Oh, and I keep forgetting to show you guys....




What do you think? Should I leave the yellow Street Glow neons on the car?? hahahaha

[AG]

...if you like ghetto.

[Josue]

Ghetto it is then!

Nah. lol I'll be yanking them off when I rewire the car.

[Squidward]

I think purple neon would complement the yellow paint a whole lot better.

Just make sure you have some Wu Tang blasting out the windows when you are rollin' with the glow!

$32, huh? My bird is sporting a pair of shocks that look strikingly similar...

I have to change out lower control arm bushings, so I might follow your lead.

Keep up the good work!

[Josue]

Cheap upgrade, even if it only makes a minimal difference!

[Josue]

Not much going on the past 6-7 weeks, I've been battling an electrical gremlin that has left the car immobile for most of that time.

I thought my battery took a crap, but after a new one, it still drained and left us stranded a week or 2 later after replacement! So, new battery dying like that, had to be the alternator not charging it, right? Nope...alternator checked out fine by 2 parts stores. I even bought a new one for giggles and tried it, but I was still only getting 12.10v at idle. I also bought a new voltage regulator too, just to cross that off the list...

So, I just said piss on it and bought a one wire alternator to circumvent whatever issue was going on. The new alternator goes right to the battery....done. 13.6v at idle now, so at least I can drive the car again until winter hits and I can dig back into this. I'm probably just going to rewire the car, start with a clean slate.

I did finally get some halogen headlights though, driving the car at night has been a death wish!! I wanted to get some cool HID's or LED's off eBay or something, but it's hard to trust that cheap, Chinese crap, so I just got some Wagners from NAPA. Can't wait to see how they do on the road!

I'm told these old T-3's can go for a decent amount of money too? The driver side high beam was out, and I'm not sure why the driver side low beam was so dim like that, but the passenger side high beam is fine.






I've been fixing up the basement for when winter hits too. Wanting to gut the car of any extra, unnecessary electronics...I took the neons off finally. Couldn't see just throwing them away though, so I put them under my pool table!







Dig the '68 Grand Prix rear seat I found on the local craigslist! It was already bolted to a custom frame, and the speaker grill has a Pontiac emblem in it...too cool to pass up!

[/URL]

[Squidward]

I have serious man cave envy! That basement is nicely done, and doesn't look like a hodge podge of dude knick knacks... you know, like TGI Friday's and Chili's had a baby. Yours is tasteful.

New headlights sound like a great idea. Staying tuned in for next phase!

[Josue]

Hahaha...that's what I'm going for! I don't want a bunch of corny crap on the walls just for the sake of filling up the space. Everything has some meaning or brings back a memory for me.

I love drag racing, so anything related to that is gold. Specifically; I'm loading up on a few Cruz Pedregon items, since my son's name is Cruz. (not after the driver, we just liked the name lol) John Force is awesome. My dad used to smoke Camel's back in the day, so I have Whit Bazemore's mid-90's Smokin' Joe's Racing funny car coming. Anything Pontiac or Firebird related is a given. I even found an old gasoline company named "Firebird", so I have one of their signs! And, I want to get some of my favorite car movie/Show posters too; American Graffiti, The Wraith, Gone in 60 Seconds, Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider, Smokey and the Bandit, etc. The ceiling is unfinished down there, so we're going to make one out of posters so they don't take up massive real estate on the walls.

[Josue]

Finally decided to see what she could do at the track!

Wednesdays are Fun Night at Norwalk, time trials until 7:00 - 7:30, then they start bracket racing with 5 or so different classes. Tonight was the last one of the year though, so I went for broke. If something happened to the car, cruising season only has a few weeks left around here, so the car is getting parked anyway...

Maybe it was because I had such low expectations for this car, but it really surprised me!! It never felt like much on the street to me. Not that I've had some super bad-ass cars over the years or anything, high 13 second AWD Eagle Talon, and a high 13 second Grand Prix GTP were the 2 fastest. The car is a loud, shaking, rumbling, gas guzzling, American muscle car though...it just doesn't "perform" up to that title IMO. haha Probably because it doesn't have the ground pounding torque to rip the tires loose at the press of the pedal.....just a run of the mill 350 with mild bolt ons and a peg leg rear end!

So, I was thinking MAYBE I'd be lucky to break into the 15's.....but it ended up running a 15.26 @ 91 mph, so I was pleasantly surprised! Only made 1 pass in it, because of course the track would be this busy tonight, when all the other times we've went this year, I was bitching about how dead it was. There was also some rain moving in that we were trying to stay out in front of. But, maybe with some tweaking to my launch and shift RPM, there could be a 14 in there somewhere!

Gratuitous pics....

I towed it out there because I didn't want it to be running hot when I rolled right into the staging lanes fresh off the street. It still acts funny under hot starts. (vapor lock? starter too hot? I dunno...) And I wanted the trailer there just in case something broke...



We're not even TO the staging lanes in this pic, the lines were backing up into the pits. Over 450 cars there I guess. FYI - My brother's Trailblazer SS behind me, 13.40's with some bolt ons, and my buddy's Golf R in front of me...AWD turbo, 11.80's with VERY minor tweaking! Thing is impressive!









Felt good to be back out there again! I haven't run at that track since at least 2003 when I had my GTP. Hell, it's been 8 years or so since I've even been down a drag strip. I forgot how nervous it can be, out there in front of all those people, center of attention! hahaha

We'll see what next year holds, maybe I'll get out there more and see if I can dial it in some. I'd just be super pissed if I broke something and had to be without the car for the rest of the season!

[Josue]

Photobucket is working again! Figured it was time for an update.

I developed a tick in the engine at the end of last season, ended up being a collapsed lifter. Could have been an easy fix, new cam at the least, but it didn't make sense to me to take the motor apart that much and not have it rebuilt. It was old, worn, and leaking pretty badly. This 350 isn't going to stay in the car forever though, and I wouldn't get rid of the original motor, so rather than rebuilding it only to have it sit under my work bench or in the shed until the end of time, I bought a used one to rebuild and sell down the line when I upgrade. Didn't want the temptation and slippery slope of a 400 or 455 build, since i was on a budget, so I bought a cheap 350 out of a 69 Lemans.

For something as seemingly simple as replacing my motor with the same motor, the swap was a real PITA! It was just one thing after another!!

-Took a while to reassemble the motor, I was waiting for a friend's help because certain parts of the process were intimidating to me since I'd never dug that deep into a motor. I also found out I needed a new dipstick tube, so that postponed it due to slow shipping from Classic Industries.

-I get to the point where the engine is ready to pull, and the brand new picker I bought is TOO SHORT to reach the carb plate! So I have to stop and borrow a friend's...

-Found out the Flowkooler water pump on my old engine wouldn't work on the new one, 8 bolt on the '68, 11 bolt on the '69. Seemed as simple as ordering a new 11 bolt FKWP? Nope, they're 4.5" long, so now my pulleys don't line up!!! Tried a March pulley from Summit, still too short. PM'ed with some people back and forth for over a week before ordering a certain stock pulley needed to make the swap work, then waited a few more days for it to arrive. All good now.

-Bought plug wires for a stock '68 Firebird...meaning with points. New motor came with a HEI distributor, I was unaware plug wires would be different!

-New crossmember for the 2004-R is set back further, so it interfered with my H-pipe. Had to chop it off and just run true duals.

-Finally got the motor fired and broken in, after another small setback. Had to swap out the fuel pump, tried to use the one that came with the motor, but it was shot. Another week passes before my friend can make it back over to tune it and make sure it's road worthy, and the 2nd time we start it...the throttle cable snaps!!!!! So I have to wait another day, after running down to Summit to pick one up the next morning. Could have been worse though, glad it snapped in the barn, instead of leaving me stranded at a stop light somewhere!

Doesn't seem like much now that I typed it out, but between parts setbacks, an expected/unexpected death (cancer), quick trip out of town with the family, my work schedule, gym schedule, family obligations, and my buddy's schedule, this whole process took over a month! I thought for sure it was simply going to be a weekend project. lol Oh well, looking back, it's cool to have the experience under my belt, and I'm glad I went this route, instead of parking the car for years and years waiting for some grand build that would have never happened.

The car's performance is beyond my expectations! Went through the typical hiccups with a drivetrain swap, few kinks to work out. Throttle cable was a touch too short, so it was causing the idle to hang up. Vibration in the drivetrain, fixed by the same shims I used under the mount on the TH350 when I had a vibration after that swap...to fix the pinion angle. Tach wasn't working properly, simply bought a new one. lol And I put a new set of gauges where the radio was mounted, between the console and the bottom of the dash, so I had that radio flopping around on the floor for over a week. Got a mount from a member here (see for sale section) that worked perfectly to place the radio in the factory location. I also finally added a set of Morris Classic Concepts 3 point seat belts. Way safer than the factory ones!!

It drives awesome though, and overdrive is amazing!! 3.08 gears, and I'm only at 2000rpm's at 75mph. Around town, 50-ish mph, 1700rpm...it's lovely! The choke is also working properly for the first time in ever, so the car fires right up and runs great!

Onto the pics!!



Used motor came with a bunch of goodies! Selling off the stuff I don't need will help offset the costs.



Freshly rebuilt 2004-R






Reassembled











Old knob style....ack!

[wovenweb]

Did you consider going with steeper gears with the OD trans?

[Josue]

It crossed my mind, but this car is so slow, I don't want to try and make it something it's not. haha I'd rather keep the 3.08's and have great cruising RPM's vs. better bottom end and worse cruising RPM's.

I'm REALLY enjoying the OD gear for cruising! The car is so much smoother and quieter going down the road. It IS quite a dog in that 4th gear though, damn near have to down shift to 3rd to pass someone....

[GTM]

I kinda liked the blue with hubcaps but if yellow is your thing, nice.

[amcmike]

Love the color! When you're ready to upgrade the Nova 8.5 peg-leg, I'd recommend 3.42gears and do a Truetrack instead of a clutch posi. The gears won't increase rpms all that much, but will really wake it up even more on acceleration.

[Josue]

Thanks!

What's the difference between the 2 posi's?

[amcmike]

The Eaton Trutrac is a helical style differential instead of clutch. Very strong and very effective with no clutches to wear out. I have one in my truck and I love it. Eaton recommends it over the posi for drag racing and circle track (I doubt you'll be doing circle track, but the same idea should transfer over to road course). It's very popular with cars upgraded for track use. Best of all, it's just a bit cheaper than the clutch posi.



Just be sure to use regular mineral oil (no synthetic) and no anti-friction additives (doesn't hurt the unit, but can reduce it's effectiveness).