The New Project: Part Deux!

[njsteve]

Here's the car now. Looks like the second owner added the rear spoiler in the late 1980s.





And the interior. It has a perfect dash pad and steering wheel. When I arrived it still had the 1977 bucket seats that were installed in 1987 when the car was broken into and the seats stolen. Once I arrived from my 3000 mile flight, Grant and I spent an hour or so, installing the new seats that he had located over the past year.





Original mileage with every piece of paper to back it up.



Funny thing I found from reviewing all the dealership paperwork is that they seemed to have changed the starter every time they did an oil change. Looks like they tossed the heat shield during the first starter repair in the early 70's and from that point on they just kept cooking solenoids and never bothered to repair the problem, instead of chasing the symptom.

[njsteve]

Here's the original, fiberglass ram air hood with the screens still intact:

[njsteve]

And now for the bad stuff:

During the car's "quickie" paint job in 1985, there must have been some issue with the trunk drop offs, so the body shop boxed them in with an entire plate of sheet metal. Looks bizarre, since the quarters seem pretty solid at the bottoms:

[njsteve]

The rear frame rails also have some soft spots by the tail pipe hanger, where the hanger cracked a section of the rail out, possibly due to the custom exhaust that is using only the rear hangers to support the entire weight of both pipes. Normally they should have a transverse muffler that is fully supported by two brackets above the rear differential, sharing the load.



And the lower area in the normal Firebird frame rail bad spot:



Here's a quality repair [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/rolleyes.gif[/img] - use spray foam in the rocker hole. It seems to be isolated to the passenger side inner/outer fender well seam: (By the way, look at the assembly line sticker still on the original brake drum!)



Once all the foam was picked out:

[njsteve]

And the traditional rear sway bar mount cracks with the obligatory weld repairs.



The funny thing is that while digging through all the repair orders I found the original one that has the welding repair done back when the car had 28,000 miles:

[njsteve]

The trunk floor actually doesnt look bad. (knock on wood)





It has the space saver spare tire option:

[SS427]

Wow. Black, a 455 and a Formula. What a neat car. What are your plans? You gonna see if you can start an even longer thread..... [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/smile.gif[/img]

[njsteve]

Grant just sent me these better photos of &quot;our&quot; interior installation.




And the car sitting in the British Columbian sun. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/grin.gif[/img]

[njsteve]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: SS427</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> What are your plans? You gonna see if you can start an even longer thread..... [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/smile.gif[/img] </div></div>

Them's fight'n words!

This better not take no freaken 7 years!!!
[img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/no.gif[/img]

[Xplantdad]

Awesome Steve...congrats! I LOVE Formula Firebirds. It was my brothers first car and my first muscle car ride! [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/headbang.gif[/img]