keith’s Pontiac Firebird:
“Formula”

First page: My 1989 Formula 350 TPI
Second Page: Formula L98 before taken apart.
Third page:Modifications & plans for my Formula
Fourth: Friends cars and suchthings.
Fifth: My future parts.
Sixth:87-92 Firebird Trans-Ams,
GTA's and Formulas.
Seventh: My "To Do List".
Eigth: My '87 IROC-Z pics b4 and after
Nine: My Formula L98 motor apart.
Tenth: Stereo stuff.
Eleventh: '68 GTO stuff, father son project

This is my dad's '68 GTO page I made for him http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2791673

I am also on my space as www.myspace.com/cronsformula/

And my car club is at www.v8havoc.com were looking for more members!

This was the article, the second week of April, Our father son, project, that was of my dad's '68 GTO. It would have been nice, if they put it in color, they did other car of the weeks, in color, but ours, they didn't, go to page 11 for the real color. It's awesome, check it out.

                                     

Here is the engine finished for whats under the hood now as of 11-01-08, I just need to put that HSR intake on, and other hood next year and retard the cam 8* from what its at now, and put in that holeshot 2400 lockup stall, I picked up for $200 with some 24# injectors.  I don't techinically need the injectors, but maybe I'll try them and see if they help at all based on a/f ratio's.

    

I removed the rear spoiler the other day, it weighs about 30 lbs, I have a '91s to replace it thats I think about 8 or 9 lbs.  I bought it at Pick-N-Pull too for $12.43 everything there on half off sales is a deal and a half.

 

Now the rear suspension is all done as of 10-31-08!  IT only took me like forever, because those lousy bolts were froze into those bushings.  I cut the both sides of the passenger sides bushing; then only one part of the drivers, then used an impact hammer to push it out.  I had to cut part of the SPOHN LCAR's where they were hitting the shock mount, that way the bolt would fit, otherwise it wouldn't.  I called and spoke to a tech guy at spohn, and he said they're all the same, you may need to trim it some, so I did, and then welded it to the rear end, he said they help a lot, I'll put some pics of it up. 

                      Here it is:

Heres the passenger and drivers side, I kept the sway bar for later on, if I do change my mind.

 

The old sway bar links and bolts did break though, but thats 20 years on them, so oh well.

                                  

Here's the exhaust finished under the front of the car.

 

Heres the side of the collectors: on the drvers and passengers side

 

This is a shot of it from the rear when the cars down on the ground.  It looks like its not centered, but thats how it goes when you have a 9-bolt, its not centered in the rearend. 

                                 

I spoke to a couple tech guys from holley, working for the hooker branch, but they were no good.  So I finally talked to one, his named was Darrel Cook, he's a great guy, and I'll endorse hooker products more now, but they could still be better, more showy, but you get what you pay for.  I have my radiator hold down painted and I also painted my A/C block off to match, it looks great. 

 This was the drivers side, I was still finishing some things, putting in the oil pressure sensor and putting the motor mount bolts in, and putting the belt back on the alt/watwerpump, my setup is trick, and now the fans are done, I'll post some pics of that later too.

  

This is under the car seeing the nice new headers.  The exhaust is waiting for me to put it back up on the headers.  That lube on the steering is from over the 125,301 miles it has on it.  But she runs great and like a charm!  The first owner put 13,000 miles on her, then the 2nd put 90,000 on her, then the next two, only put  the next 24,000, and I only put about 1500 on her, before I took her off the road to make go faster!

                               

This was this week 10-20-08 when I first had the headers in and almost finished, this is the passengers side

I finally found this picture a few days ago, around 10-5-08 and this is my twin super charger setup I talk about on page 3, I planned it when I was going to modify a LT1 intake for use with a distributor and thread and tap the intake for tubes for the coolant, and a remote thermostat housing, but that costs too much money, and they then came out with the HSR I have now.  And I didn't know I was going to use a Intercooler in this photo, so I didn't route it for the plumbing, but I'll sketch a new one soon, but this was what I drew on 1-28-05 so...

                                         

Here is my finished radiator holdown and you see it in other pictures, it looks great, the paint I bought from dupli color, makes it look similar to original paint!  U can also see my new finished CAI

 

 

 This was 9-27/28-08 when I finished making my upper radiator hold down. This was when I first was making my new radiator hold down, because the original plastic one was too small.  The original plastic end tank radiator ones suck!  The one I had in my iroc broke on the drivers side front tank, so I used my formula's and it broke in the same place!  I used a lifetime warranty one from autozone that was a brass tanks with copper core, and it was great for $119.50, but they don't carry them anymore.  So I bought the biggest I could fit in my formula or 3rd gen f-body for a pretty good price, much cheaper than a small fortune for the perma cools, and it works just as well.  I used a 24"x12" piece of 22 gauge aluminum, and cut it in two pieces, and rivetted it together, drilled the holes for the front 4 bolts, and laid it in place, then used a pipe to role it over to the top edge of the radiator.  Here was as I was assemabling it at first.

This was when I had first rolled the back edge over the radiator.

This was after I Installed the fans.

  

 This is when I got the fans attached to the hold down, basically finished.  I went from the fans up to the hold down, and took a 3" wide piece of the aluminum, and went down to the fan upper bolt hole, and cut the metal into a triangle, so its more nice looking, lol.  So almost all finished.

 

This is a closer shot.

 

Here's the hold mostly finished, I might add some felt to it so it doesn't scratch the surface under the hood, and clear coat it so it won't get dirty and is easier to clean off.  I just polished it lightly, and may a little more before I clear coat it.

  

 I started making my new CAI a few weeks ago, because of my new radiator being so big, this setup is a little smaller, instead of the firebird setup for the throttle body, its too long, so I used the camaro's, with a 3" mandrel bent pipe that goes over to the passenger fender for the K&N.  Because its a little shorter in length, it doesn't look like it, but its almost an inch shorter in length.  But there's just enough for my radiator clearance.  Check it out.

Here's when I started laying out some rough parts.

 

This is finished first setup, just not painted.

This is when I first had it in place.

This is when I put my plastic cover over my air filter, I had used this on my original CAI setup.  I may add some more plastic around where the tubes enter, so it will only suck cold air from the fender well.  I may see if I have enough room to even run a tube into the fender well, and have the filter under its edge, similar to a 4tg gens moroso CAI.

 

I am going to run my car with the stock stall, and my modified TPI intake, and all its other mods right now, and then maybe I'll put the stall in.  But I may just wait till I have the cam 4* retarded from straight up, and the HSR on the motor, then that should help quite a bit.  And then I'll add the 24# injectors to the motor.  But TPIS has found the 22lb/hr rochester or Bosch injectors to be good up to about 450 hp, but I'll see, I may get a mide band O2 sensor setup, I already welded a spare bung in the passenger long tube header collector s-bend, so I'll see what happens when the time comes.

This was Labor September first 2008

This was the first day the cars been washed in a little over three years, it has been under a cover the whole time though.

 

                                   

Heres the nice dual exhaust, theres a tad over 4" of ground clearance, which, is about the same for the header collectors, so you can't have much more clearance if you want to run long tube exhaust.  The exhaust cost me $500 for the headers, I bought them from summit racing, but the first three pairs of the Hooker supercompetition's were crappy or didn't fit right, so I have the fourth set in the car now.  I complained and got $150 off of them.  I put $177.98 into the exhaust.  I used the Hedman s-bends, going into a summit H-pipe kit, I'll go with a 3" x-pipe later, the h-pipe still adds more torque and power while quieting it down slightly, mentioned below.  Then I am running 35.25" of tubing into 2.5" bullets, then the dumps as you can see below, Im still trying to get the tips just perfect, its almost perfect, but the left tip and get moved slightly.  It sounds great, and everyone will see it, it looks cool, and as soon as I get the suspension done, you'll notice, its no stock car, it already sounds great in the videos I put up, some oil in the cylinders is still burning out, so thats why theres a tad of smoke.  But I can't wait to take it back out on the road next year!

                                 

All this new info is as of July of 2008, after I was done working at Caterpillar in Joliet, Illinois, I finally had time to give some TLC back to my formula 350. So here she is!

I had her on the side of the house on these large Craftsman Jackstands that can get I believe if I recall it right, 18"-19" high, and are good for 3000lbs a piece. 

This is where I did most of the welding, as I was putting my exhaust together.  This is a flux core welder my uncle gave me, because he bought a better one, it doesn't weld that great because its a flux core welder, but its good enough for basic stuff.  I want a better MillerMaic, Miller made this one too, but its nothing near the same quality of the expensive units, but fine for exhaust work.

 

These are my raw Hooker Super Competition Long Tubes, they're the 1 3/4" primary, 3" collectors. They were quite loud at 112-114 db's while it was idling. And a side shot.

 

These are my Heddman S-Bend extensions, I had made some of my own versions, I used the old exhaust parts from a friend of mine, but these wound up being better, because they actually go 5 1/2" from the center of the collector, to the center of the extension, so they wound up being better for this application, because these third gen f-body sub frames are a b****!

 

This was my welder next to the car, when I needed to tack the h-pipe together, I used summits 2 1/2" kit. I could have used a x-pipe kit, but for the extra money involved, a h-pipes just fine, and for now, all I need is a 2.5" exhaust, when I go to 3" then I'll go for the x-pipe.

 

Heres the H-pipe tacked into place. With it attached and running the noise drops to 106-109 db's, depending on the idle.

 

 

This was right before I started to weld the H-pipe together.

 

Heres the pipe welded together and painted with Duplikolors high temp, ceramic paint, I believe it's good to 1200*

 

I welded the 38" of 2.5" aluminized steel pipe to the 2.5" bullet mufflers and 6.5" of dump's I to the mufflers.

 

This was after I installed the H-pipe to the headers, after I had it painted. I know it looks crooked, but thats the way it is in a third gen, the subframes aren't the same, the passenger side can have a pipe going relatively straight back with no s-bend, but the drivers side needs one, because the collectors dumping basically right into the subframe, which is no good, so s-bends are a must, and they have a 3"-2.5" collector adaptor built in, so it saves some money also. With the engine running and idling, its 104-109 db's, a few feet back it drops to 98-100 db's and while you rev the motor to about 5 grand, it goes to 117-119 db's.

 

These are various shots of the exhaust finished, I know the rear end is kinda rusty, I actually ground off the rust, primed and painted it after I finished the exhaust, I'll put some photos of that below these, it looks so much better. Then I get to prime and paint the subframe connectors, they were installed from a previous owner years ago, but not painted, and I'm just doing it now, so it will be out of the way for years to come.

 

 

 

Heres the exhaust a better direct shot from behind the car.

 

Heres the rear end, after I used my die grinder and a wire wheel to remove the surface rust, it wasn't bad, just over the last 5 years of it being under a cover, it had some mild rust on it, nothing an hour of grinding didn't take care of. I know it looks like I built the exhaust wrong, but the 9bolt borg warner rearend, doesn't have the housing in the center of the axle, but slightly offset to the left, making it look like the exhaust is off. This offset helps make the rear end stronger, while theres quite a bit more meat to the pumpkin than a ten bolts, and the pinion is slightly lower on the ring gear, rather than straight in to touching it, also making it stronger holding up to more abuse; the rear end doesn't flex as much as the 1982-2002 ten bolts do, and has been shown to hold up to at least 855 lb-ft to 900+ HP of abuse. The rear end, is basically like a ford 9" or 8.8 or even a mopar 8 3/4" or 9" setup, so its much stronger, it just takes a smidgen more power to drive, but not enough to worry about.

 

 

And heres the rear end all primed. I used cardboard to cover the exhaust, undercarriage and duct tape to cover the service brake lines, it worked well too.

 

 

Heres the precious 9 bolt, lol, all painted and ready for rear suspension goodies!

Closer

 

Heres the hood of a '84 firebird, I picked up for $23.48 at Pick-N-Pull on the half off sale. The car was a convertible 6 banger, but the owner put a gm goodwrench crate motor 350 in it, just a flat tappet motor, so it was done a while ago, but it was missing the a/c and a lot of wiring wasn't connected to it. The hood was in pretty good shape, no real damage, and only minor surface rust, so I already primed the hood, I'll add a pic of it soon. But I'll add a '79 T/A scoop to the hood to clear my holley stealth ram intake, because the stock hood is too small, unless you chop it up, it won't clear, and I'm not doing that to my factory hood, so this other one, I'll be glad too.

This is the hood by itself

 

Here's the hood with the scoop.

 

It's going to be this 6-banger, flat hood with this scoop on it. I am going to use this 5" tall, shaker hood scoop from Glass Tek out of plainfield illinois. There at www.glasstek.com They have some bad ass shit, we have there hood on my dad's GTO, Check it out.

These are the side view, the side most people will see when driving. It's the same scoop they used on the Bandit car, but this one is 5" tall, and fiberglass, so light weight and more kick ass!

 

This is the bottom, and the back view, what the driver will see.

 

This is the original scoop on a '79 T/A, so you can see the example of it, I'll have it mounted simlar on my car, but it may have to be further to the rear of the car, or closer to the front end, depending on how I want to set it up, but I'll make it as close to replicate the stock '79's look on my third gen.

 

Everything below this point is from 2007!

This was september 28th. All I have left is too make the upper radiator hold down, the original is too small; then run the switch in the interior for the fans.

 

 

 

This was when I had the hood touching down, but not closed, it was next to my parents house.

 

This was my motor, after 4 years, that it was actually able to run! It did too.

 

All I had to do was the usual timing adjustment when you first fire it up, here I was adjusting the timing.

 

Here's me, glad the thing ran after 4 years, all I have to do know is adjust the valves.

 

Here I was moving it in the driveway.

 

I was so happy, after four years and all my hard work, it's running!

 

 

Today 9-7-07 I put my Bosch plugs in my Sportsman II cylinder heads, since my heads are angle plugged, there is a bunch of clearance for the plugs. The pics start from the front, to the back of the head on both sides.

These shots are on the drivers side.