Here's how she sprints:
Thats right ladies, this poor Trans Am has 185,000 miles on it. My uncle bought it right off the lot in San Diego back in 1994 and has driven it hard ever since. This car has seen the absolute worst of conditions: snowy mountain pass, rain, washboard mountain roads, unpaved mountain roads, a 6,000 mile road trip in the summer. It's had a tin roof with one foot of snow collapse on it, dings and scratches everywhere, rock chips on the nose, the fog light glass is broken, it's slid into an ice wall requiring a new spoiler and it was kept outside for a year in the rain, wind and snow when he was shipped off to Diego Garcia. The list could go on and on and thats just the exterior. This Trans Am is stock up the ass, but that's going to change. See, he gave the car to me after I graduated high school and I'm going to restore it to its former glory and then some. Another uncle of mine came over and gave the engine a total make over. He cleaned the thing inside and out, put a K&N air filter in there and a Hypertech 160 degree thermostat. It runs beautifully considering the hell it's been through.
So here's my big plans: I took it to the shop in order to find out what was causing the two main problems - unstable engine operation after it's been in use for a long period and its inability to stay cold. Turns out Pontiac put in a faulty sensor and a faulty gauge that are responsible for reading engine tempurature and had a service bulliten on them. The car thinks its temperature is about 30 degrees fahreneit higher than it really is. That requires a $1.29 part to fix, no big deal. The other problem turned out to be water that leaked onto the optispark distributor. It was so rusted I couldn't believe the car functioned at all. *5-24-04* I took the car out for a joyride two days ago and floored it on a long stretch of road. As soon as it started climbing the RPM ladder I heard and felt a massive clunk. Turns out the car kicks so much ass now that it kicked its own ass ... one of the transmission mounts snapped clean in half. The tune up and mount will set me back $1,700. The delicious items I will be purchasing include:
Electric water pump
A G-Tech Performance Meter
Finally, I'm either going to get Advanced Inductions 355 rebuild or a 383 rebuild.
So far it has:
Automatic to manual transmission conversion
Strange 12 bolt rear end w/ 3.73's
Spec stage 2 clutch
Spec aluminum flywheel
Lingenfelter 3.5" aluminum drive shaft
MSD 8.5mm OTVC wires
MAC mid length headers w/ Y-Pipe
Felpro 1460 gaskets
Car Sound Cat
GMMG Cat Back
Moroso Cold Air Intake
1LE Elbow
Moroso Cone Air Filter
TPIS Throttle Body Air Foil
Throttle Body Coolant Bypass
Hypertech 160 degree thermostat
pcmforless computer programming
LT4 Knock Module
A Scanmaster LT1
New heavy duty electric engine fans
American Racing Torque Thrust 2's (17x9 all around)
Suspension Items Include:
UMI A Arms
UMI Subframes
KONI shocks
UMI Panhard bar
UMI LCA's
Before and after.
Car audio:
Alpine 9885
Stock speakers
Rockford Fosgate 10" 150w Sub
Alpine 300w mono amp
Kill List:
1967 Firebird w/ 350ci
1996 Honda CRX
1970 Nova
1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse w/ Turbo
19?? Chevy Z24
1987 Mustang 5.0
1991 Mustang 5.0
1999 Chevy Impala with ricer mods
BMW Z4 M
Pics of soundsystem and more of car to come
