67 GTO build

[67King]

Alright, been here a while, not posted anything about my build, yet. Wanted to make a bit of progress, and it comes in bunches.

Bought this car as a 15 year old on May 13, 1989. Have wanted a GTO since I saw one in a junkyard coming home from a remote work location when I was 14, and the guy driving stopped there to look for a part for his car. The one I saw turned out to be a 70 Judge, and though the engine wasn't in it, it was allegedly in the trunk. White car, red interior. WT7 opted (black rear wing, hood scoops, chin spoiler).

Anyway, built the engine in high school, drove a little in college. Decided to do a better build in grad school, then thought I'd scuff it and shoot it. But I ended up stripping it down to the bare metal, replacing a quarter panel, shooting it in epoxy primer......then it got de-prioritized, as I got married, graduated, moved to MI, started workking for Ford, had kids.....you get the point. My father, who was not a car guy, but enjoyed the GTO, passed away a few years ago, which inspired me to get cracking.

Will try to not post up too many "plans," but only what I've done so far. Summary is boxed the frame with a Helwig FX kit, cleaned up the factory welds, smoothed out all of them, etc. Global West front suspension. Used their coil over setup, but didn't do the extended travel. Went with Ridetech coil overs, as I'm not a fan of twin tube shocks. That caused problems I'll get to. Rear coil over aalso GW. Went with a custom width Currie 9" rear, UMI arms in the back. Wilwood disks all around (yes, I know there are better options, but get it going, first). Wheels are what I've wanted since I bought the car, American Racing Torque Thrusts. 17X9's, trying to run 275's at all four corners. Fronts are going to require entirely reworked wheel wells.

Transmission is a TKX. Car was originally an automatic. Went with a stick since they are more fun, and I didn't want to run cooling lines, or deal with controlling the transmission.

Car was actually an all numbers matching car, so I'm keeping what I'm taking off. But using the original block. Since it is the original one, I went belt and suspenders to protect it. 4 bolt main caps, lifter bore girdle. Bored 0.035" over to use off the shelf pistons. 4.25" stroke with BBC 6.800" rods. 461 CID is the result. Edelbrock round port heads, CNC'd by Butler. 2.11/1.77 valves. Doug's headers.

Lots of bodywork to do. I hate paint and body, so I'm doing trunk and floors, but am going to let the pros do the rest. Car was originally Tyrol Blue. INterestingly, Pontiac painted it over red oxide primer, and most of the cars that are repainted don't quite match.

Anyway, pictures coming.

[67King]

Okay, here are some old pictures from before I started to repaint it oh so long ago, then some in process in my dad's driveway, and then some more recent of me pulling the body off the frame to get started.202152202153202154202155202156202157

- - - Updated - - -

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This is example of how ugly the factory frame welds were. So I ground down those, welded up areas that didn't look so great, then smoothed over the welds with the glass reinforced filler.

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Thought I had some better pictures of the frame as I went along, but can't find them. May come back and add some more. Note for anyone doing a Hellwig FX frame, there were 3 different suppliers of frames for GM. Whichever frame they used as a template did NOT match mine! I had some huge gaps in the middle where the frame was formed for the body mount by the front seat rail. I had to fill in some large gaps, and for the additional mount that Hellwig provided, I had to tweak the ears to get them to fit. Apparently my frame had a wider formed section than the one they used.


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Used Epoxy Primer from Southern Polyurethane on the frame. Interestingly, the gloss level varied a little. After I had the frame straightened, I had to touch it up a bit, and when I sprayed the motor mount brackets and crossmember, they came out glossier. But otherwise, I'm very happy wiht their EP. Had always used PPG's DP90, but that stuff is just too expensive.

[67King]

So here I was playing around with ride height before I bought the coil overs. Fabbed up a threaded rod so I could play around with things. This was all the Global West stuff. Have to say, Doug was great, he is a GTO guy, has both a 65 and a 66. However, sometimes I'd get a tech guy there who was not so great. Advise me on setting up the suspension, and teh tire was resting on the bump for teh HVAC in the wheel well, and his response was "yeah, what do you expect?" I was thinking "um, to be able to drive the car?" Anyway, just played around with it, and it appears to be all good. And I can actually get my low profile jack under the frame if I ignore that.
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To the back. Had some issues with the Global West coil over brackets and Ridetech shocks. The Ridetechs have more meat for a larger bearing, and need about 1/4" more gap than the Vikings for which the GW was designed. So, I had to mill out a bit to make it fit, but once I did, it was okay. Fortunately, there is a very large chunk of meat in that bracket so it is still fine, structurally. Looks like I need to take an "after" picture of it installed after I modified the bracket. Sorry, I'm not the best at documenting.
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Finally, I had some issues with the rear end. Bought through SC&C, who is apparently no longer in business. It took about 9 months to get this, and when I did, it was misbuilt. Was supposed to have adjustabout lower control arm mount points, it did not. And it was not supposed to have perches for the factory coil springs, and it did. But given the wait, I just decided to use it, rather than get another housing in and move it all over. However, there is one thing that you can see in this picture that I'm not sure about. There is a small piece of stamped metal (I think steel) that is loose. Not sure where it i supposed to be, pressed back, or what? Anyone know?
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[andrewb70]

Great work on the frame.

I think that is just a dust shield for the pinion seal. It should be pressed on the pinion yoke.

Andrew

[67King]

Great work on the frame.

I think that is just a dust shield for the pinion seal. It should be pressed on the pinion yoke.

Andrew

Any suggestions on how to get it to stay there without taking things apart? Haven't gotten it to take a seat.

For some reason, I'm having issues loading up more pictures. Not sure why, they just don't load. Have a few more posts I want to make.

Thanks for the comments on the frame. Thoroughly enjoyed your video of yours, particularly the narration. The guy who welded yours was as old school as they get!

[andrewb70]

It should be a light press fit

[jaybee]

Great car! It's amazing the cars that used to end up in the junkyard. You get huge props for pulling one of them back out.

[airbuspilot]

Have you done seats yet? I have a 67 and thinking of modernizing the front seats. TMI makes nice seats but not specifically for 67 GTO. They offer a "universal" seat... says brackets need modifying.

[StevieBB54]

Beautiful project and car looks like a ton of fun and enjoyment to be had. In regards to the dust slinger on the pinion, its a interference hand pressed on, but then its staked to the pinion. Had that on a 44k lb rear end once, it sounded like the liberty bell clanging while driving. lol
What size wheels and brakes did you go with? The fit is spot on.

[67King]

Have you done seats yet? I have a 67 and thinking of modernizing the front seats. TMI makes nice seats but not specifically for 67 GTO. They offer a "universal" seat... says brackets need modifying.

I'm not sure about seats, yet. I recovered my stock ones in the late 90's, and they are in great shape. I'd like to keep the period correct look, but I'd rather have parchment to go with teh Tyrol Blue color of the car. And I'd like headrests for safety, and side bolsters for comfort. So I'm not sure, yet.


Beautiful project and car looks like a ton of fun and enjoyment to be had. In regards to the dust slinger on the pinion, its a interference hand pressed on, but then its staked to the pinion. Had that on a 44k lb rear end once, it sounded like the liberty bell clanging while driving. lol
What size wheels and brakes did you go with? The fit is spot on.

Wheels are 17's. I think the front brakes are 13?" Cant' recall. Appreciate the compliment!

[67King]

Okay, some more pictures of the engine build, now that I figured out why I couldn't upload them. So for those who don't know Pontiacs, the lifter bores are "open," and therefore, a bit weak. I guess that roller cams aren't as bad, as the setups that are out there to retain some of the lifters don't work with the lifter bore girdle. Yes, that is JB Weld in there, that's how it was designed, to fill the voids between the cast lifter bore surface and the machined girdle surface. And yes, that is a Tesla in the background.
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As my car is all numbers matching, I'm doing the belt and suspenders thing on the block, so I had to make it work. Though I suck at documenting, I tried two different systems. One was a plate that bolts down using the provisions for bolting down the valley pan, and keeps the lifters from rotating by having a parallel flat on the outside. Nice, simple, clean system. Didn't fit. Tried drilling holes for bolts, which seemed to work, but the valley pan wouldn't fit over it.
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So I moved on. The other option is a retrofit kit for a Ford Windsor style block. You have to cut and tweak the spiders on it. I ended up having to counterbore the lifter bore braces to get that to clear, but that is how I finally got it to work.

Ran into a couple of problems. First was a flywheel lock. As in there isn't one for a Pontiac. ENded up repurposing the one from my Porsche escapades. This one is for a 944 or 968. But hey, it worked here. Same part of the block, when I was putting on the bellhousing, I had to deal with offset dowels, as the tolerance for the old Muncies wasn't great by today's standards, and I needed to tighten up that. This got ugly. The old dowels wouldn't come out. When I got them out, I had scored the dowel holes pretty badly, as you can see from the pictures. The standard offset dowels didn't work. Ended up junking them, and going with a more expensive option. Anyone reading this who needs to use offset dowels, don't waste your time with the junk you can find anywhere, buy these, the cost difference is very modest, and these things are incredible. https://www.robbmcperformance.com/products/dowels.html. Sorry I don't have good shots of the fix, like I said, I suck at the documentation.

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Ran into another problem. Putting the engine together, one of my rod bearing pairs wouldn't line up. Turned out I got two uppers. Now having been a while since I messed with V8's, I was used to inline 4's, and they didn't have uppers and lowers, nor were they directional (yeah, I screwed up that, too, finding out when my crank wouldn't turn), I learned something. Or re-learned it. Check before you install. Because I had to go back (yet again) and check all my bearing shells to be sure they were all right. So again I had to re-do some stuff. Anyway, good thing abiout Butler, well there are a lot of good things, but they sent me a new pair right away, didn't need the old ones returned or anyuthing, juust got it to me as quickly as they could, so I wasn't slowed down too much. Highly recommend Butler, too, as I'm sure the other 2-3 Pontiac folks here will agree.
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Anyway, here is some eye candy. Crank scraper, my Bronco in the background, stretch gauge, paint. That thing on top for you non-Pontiac people is the valley pan I mentioned earlier. It has PCV baffling in it, too, FWIW.

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[67King]

Headers are Doug's round port, which are larger in diameter than the more common D-port. These suckers are TIGHT. Fortunately, they didn't need a whole lot of major dimpling, just a little massaging. Unfortunately, that required heat, which damaged the ceramic coating. But, that's life with headers, I guess.

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That's all I have for now. Currently working on exhaust. I've put V-Band clamps on the headers, then run a flex coupling back to some 45's where I'm fabbing up an X-pipe right now. All 3" mandrel bent stuff. Will hopefully get a little further, and get some pics for the next update.