A Tale of two TA's

[EVO]

Thanks Brian and Martin. Yeah, Ive seen the 335 at Dulles. Its an A model , the second of the production models. My RC model is of the B, or heavy destroyer version with the big wing cannon. The B or V14 as it was known survived the war and was flight tested by the French, who promptly crashed it and it was bulldozed into a pit sadly. Its one of my favorite models to fly, having and 80cc 2 stroke single piston front engine and a 45cc 2 stroke single in the middle driving a 3 ft driveshaft to the rear propellor. Only one flying in the States at 1/5th scale. The 262 is quarter scale and has two 120N thrust turbines. Both fly great.

As for the Brown TA, the new LS started with the first crank after checking fluids and gauges and stuff. Runs like a champ. Had to shut it down early as the power steering pump started making hellacious noises and the PS fluid got seriously hot. Im thinking the pressure valve in the pump is sticking or the original firebird steering box may have a blockage somewhere. Ill figure it out on monday.

E.

[EVO]

So the new power steering pump did indeed have a sticky pressure valve. Took it apart and cleaned it and it started working noise free. Went ahead and finished most of the interior install. I had a hard time finding new seat belts in tan color with the correct retraction reels for the rear. I ended up disassembling the original retractors and feeding in the new belts. Fresh Buckskin on the original covers and they are good to go. I also installed some cool little Trans Am projector lights in the bottom of each door. They are wired to the dome light so come on whenever you open the door. New carpet from ACC was easy to install. Finished installing the dash and started programming the Dakota Digital Dash. My daughter requested pink gauge lights for daytime and aqua for night driving. Gotta say, the RTX gauges look really cool in this bird. Next up is painting new fender flares in Brentwood Brown with gold pinstriping to match.

E.

[EVO]

Forgot a pic of the projector lights. The logo will be much smaller once the car is at ride height.

E.

[AB69Z]

Forgot a pic of the projector lights. The logo will be much smaller once the car is at ride height.

E.

any pictures of installation of these?
also where did you source these from?

[thumper877]

Car is really turning out awesome. Bet your daughter is getting excited. The projector lights are cool touch

[EVO]

Update time! So I think I mentioned before that my Dad is really into woodworking. He has designed and built 2 different wood glove box overlays for the 2 C10's I built for my other kids. The first was "Estelle", the blue C10 for Twin no. 2. The second was "April", my son's C10 and since Twin no. 1 named the brown TA "ROXY", Dad came up with this custom glove box overlay. The wood is Cambodian burl wood and the name ROXY is inlaid in mother of pearl. To get over the inward sloping glove box on the TA, Dad came up with the center piece thats angled to show the name. Came out pretty cool I think. Once all the sheet metal was installed, I was free to install the Hotchkis subframe connectors while the car was sitting on its own 4 wheels with full running weight. Connectors were bolted to the front subframe and welded to the rears with rosette welds where the bolts would normally go. This did wonders for chassis rigidity. Now when I pick it up on the lift it doesnt turn into a wet noodle like it used to. Once the connectors were in, I was able to install the lokar parking brake cables with a small plate thats welded to the connector as I didnt want to attach it to the floor. Also just managed to squeeze in the windshield washer reservoir in the front fender outboard of the battery. It can still be filled with a funnel and the detroit speed washer pump does the job well.

Evan Q.

[EVO]

Next up were the wheel flares. I ended up using the plastic front flares and a new plastic chin spoiler along with urethane rears as they were the only ones in stock. The plastic ones only needed a quick scuff and were ready for adhesion promoter and primer followed by some freshly color matched brentwood brown. Turns out the car has had one repaint and the color wasnt quite factory so Its a good thing I took one of the old flares to the paint shop to get it matched. The rear urethane flares were another matter. They needed quite a bit of pinhole filling to get smooth but turned out nice. The edge welting that goes between the flare and body was also treated to fresh brown then I put new gold pinstriping on the flares and finished it up with 2 coats of 2002 clear. they look SOOOOO much better than the cracked and pitted originals.

Evan Q.

[EVO]

So when I removed the original wheel flares, I was met with a nice little surprise in the form of a giant rust hole in the pass side rear rocker. The wheel flare had been covering it and I kinda knew it was there but didnt know the extent. Turns out the pass rocker was one giant mouse nest. pulled out a big whopping pile of nest from the inside. Well, nothing for it but fix it up! I didnt have enough time to do a full rocker replacement so just settled for a half rocker re-do. I had to cut out a much larger hole to get decent metal to weld to at the front. Turns out this rocker had been patched before so I had to put a patch on a patch so to speak. The inner rocker was basically gone at the rear so I made a plate to extend down to form the pinch weld area that was missing. Not enough room to fully weld around the perimeter so did rosette welds on the join to the inner rocker that was still there. Once all the interior part was welded up, I sprayed a bunch of rust converter and then etch primed the whole interior. I cut out the rear of a replacement rocker and made a patch panel for the exterior part. TIG welded in the patch panel, did a bit o body work at the welds and painted and primed it up. Pretty much invisible once the wheel flare is put back on.

Evan Q.

[EVO]

Then all that was left before road test was mounting the shaker scoop to the top of the engine. I used the top part of the air cleaner base mounted to brackets which were bolted to the LS intake manifold. The shaker scoop just mounts to the air cleaner base with the giant ring clamp just like the original.

Evan Q.

[EVO]

So here's the finished product. Came out pretty nice I think. Ill probably have to strip it down and do a full repaint sometime in the future, but I think my daughter ought to enjoy driving it for a bit before it heads back to paint prison. Hoping to get some pics of all 3 vehicles together soon.
Dyno tune this week!
Evan Q.

[thumper877]

Really turned out great. You did that in record time too. She's going to have a blast. I really love the glove box overlay also. Looking forward to the pic of all three together

[EVO]

The lights came from lumentrendz.com

They are mounted on the interior bottom surface of the door close to where the lower window track attaches to the bottom. Dont bother using the little hole saw that comes with them, its junk.

Evan Q.

[EVO]

So thats it for the Brown TA, just gotta give it a nice dyno tune and its off to its new home. Was able to cruise it around with my daughter this weekend. She sure does love it and cant wait to start giving it some street time. Took a min to get all three outside for a quick photo shoot. Now I get to work on MY TA!

Evan Q.

[thumper877]

Cool pics

[tcronkright]

Nice build and great attention to details. I really like the gauges and extra lighting touches you added.

[EVO]

Thanks Tom! and Thumper too! On a side note, I installed a hydratech booster on my Son's C10 with the willwood brakes and love the feel and performance of it. I had ordered a pair of them way back in feb when I bought the brown TA, The second for my TA. Anyhow, They just now finally arrived. I guess Hydratech was way behind on orders and materials just like the rest of the world. The Detroit vacuum booster worked fine but it just doesn't compare in my opinion to the hydratech power booster. Installed it in the brown TA yesterday along with a Wilwood master and WOW! Instant stop. Love it. Hope to get back to working on my '70 bird soon.

E.

[EVO]

Well I guess Im gonna have to change the name of this thread to "A Tale of 3 TA's"

Evan Q.

[EVO]

After finishing Roxy for my daughter, I started watching the values of these 77-78 TA's climb outta sight. Always loved the look of the Solar gold paint so I went hunting for a real Y88 Trans Am. Finally found one in Georgia. Nice Y88 in fantastic shape. 4 speed car so its one of 1670 built in '78. Im kinda thinking it might provide a home for my Roadster shop spec chassis as it should fit. Would be kinda cool to cruise a Y88 with an LT4 in it....................
Evan Q.

[thumper877]

Wow car looks really clean. Couldn't agree with u more with the lt4

[EVO]

So I was about to start on the Gold TA back in Sept of '23 when a good friend approached me and said he had just bought a '79 TA and was looking to do some modifications to it. So the Gold TA got put on hold AGAIN! The black TA project quickly snowballed(as they all do) into an Roadstershop frame swap and LS3/T-56. and full restoration of everything else. On top of that, 2 months into the build, He asked me to paint it once I had done all the mods to the underneath. And me like a big dummy agreed to paint a BLACK car. I think the only color worse from a bodywork standpoint is silver. The car was pretty straight, had the same rust hole in the passenger rocker under the fender flare and had good floors. He informed me that the car was to be named "Roofus" in honor of his favorite dog that had passed. The build was pretty straightforward so I wont post all the build pics, just the relevant ones. The black car also got a set of flush mount front and rear glass from Fesler. Roofus was completed in March of this year so Im finally free to start on my Gold TA. Here are a few pics of the transformation of Roofus.

Evan Q.