'69 Firebird

[Josh@Ridetech]

Got tired of the white dash causing glares last year so I decided to pull the windshield and do a little body work and paint it and the rest of the dash components satin black. There were a couple scratches in the windshield too so it gave me an excuse to pull it out. Now I'm going to finish putting some sound deadening in the interior and start wiring. LS Fest is creeping up faster and faster so I need to get this buttoned up.

[LCA1971]

Very nice!!! Love those cars...

[ryeguy2006a]

Came out beautifully Josh! Glad there weren't any surprises under the paint for you!

[Josh@Ridetech]

Very nice!!! Love those cars...

Thanks! I do too! Haha

Came out beautifully Josh! Glad there weren't any surprises under the paint for you!

Thanks Ryan! I was lucky enough to see pictures of the car when it came from being blasted a couple of years ago and was on the rotisserie. There were a few things I planned to fix when I bought it and here we are, haha. It isn't going to be a perfect show car but I'm shooting for a pretty nice driver at the end of the day!

[Josh@Ridetech]

Hey guys,

I was able to get quite a few things completed and believe that I'm going to start on the wiring shortly. For now, here is where it sits:

Vintage Air, heater hoses/AC lines mounted and ran, pressure regulator/fuel lines ran, power steering hoses, radiator/fans, new windshield, and brake lines all done.













Interior is all sound deadened.



Hopefully I can make some more progress and get it running shortly. I was hoping for LS Fest in Bowling Green but it's not worth rushing it. I just want to get it together and running to enjoy until the snow comes. I ran into some issues getting the clutch master cylinder to bleed. Pumped the life out of it, gravity bled, pressure bled, etc. After messing with it for a few days, I bought a new Tilton master. Turns out I just had a bad/new Wilwood piece out of the box unfortunately.

[Josh@Ridetech]

Quite a bit of progress since the last post. I've done quite a bit of wiring, fenders are on, got the radiator hoses and intake tube figured out, plus alot of other miscellaneous stuff :D. At the moment, I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to mount the Holley and Dakota Digital ecu's. These cars don't give much room to work with (I'm not running a center console so everything pretty well has to go behind the dash).





Decided to make a panel for the Vintage Air AC controls that looked a little nicer than cutting up a piece of ABS. I should have this done this week.




The UPS driver also dropped these off a few days ago... 18x9's for the front and 19x10's in the rear.

[Pedigry]

Vintage air is the best mod on the car. lol. Love the build, gonna be awesome.

[OLDFLM]

I was hoping for Pontiac baby blue valve covers...

[Josh@Ridetech]

Vintage air is the best mod on the car. lol. Love the build, gonna be awesome.

Thanks bud! I'm pretty excited about having AC! Haha

I was hoping for Pontiac baby blue valve covers...

Haha, maybe one day. I have a thing for the satin black look. I may switch it up some time though!

[Vimes]

You're one lucky *******. My legs are too long to be comfortable in one of those, otherwise I'd be doing one instead of a pickup truck. Firebirds always looked way better to me than Camaros, not that Camaros are bad cars. Know this, there's at least one person out there that's jealous of you.

[ryeguy2006a]

Looking great Josh! When I did my Camaro, I mounted the DD module for the gauges to the support rods for the steering column. And for the ECU, I built a box and mounted it in the glove box area. Definitely a tight fit though.

[Josh@Ridetech]

You're one lucky *******. My legs are too long to be comfortable in one of those, otherwise I'd be doing one instead of a pickup truck. Firebirds always looked way better to me than Camaros, not that Camaros are bad cars. Know this, there's at least one person out there that's jealous of you.

Haha, I appreciate that! I love these cars. Hopefully I get to hear it run shortly!

Looking great Josh! When I did my Camaro, I mounted the DD module for the gauges to the support rods for the steering column. And for the ECU, I built a box and mounted it in the glove box area. Definitely a tight fit though.

Thanks Ryan! There definitely isn't much space available with everything going into the car. Trying to make it clean behind the dash is tough for sure.

[Josh@Ridetech]

Been doing a lot of shakedowns and trying to finish up the wiring. At this point it's just a lot of tedious stuff. I need to finish the Vintage Air install and finish the interior. This is how it sits at the moment though!





I finally got it up on the lift and took a picture of the completed exhaust too :D

[Gmc427]

tire size on the rear?

[68Formula]

Is your Vintage Air using their new fully electronic control system that eliminates the cables and vacuum systems?

[Josh@Ridetech]

tire size on the rear?

275/35-19

Is your Vintage Air using their new fully electronic control system that eliminates the cables and vacuum systems?

Yes sir, all electronic. I also decided to use the knob style controls vs using the stock sliders.

[Josh@Ridetech]

Definitely the quickest I've ever pulled the engine out of something after first getting it running... but it's for a good cause :D.

Old subframe out and the new one is in. Put fluids in it today, bled the new clutch MC as the one I had in the car was already bad, and just tucking some things up now. I'll get more pictures posted up shortly.

[ryeguy2006a]

That's incredible Josh!! Can't wait to hear your reports back on the improved ride quality.

[Josh@Ridetech]

That's incredible Josh!! Can't wait to hear your reports back on the improved ride quality.

Thanks Ryan! Incredible is a word that would describe the way the car feels right now. I've been around here for quite a while and I've always been very proud of what the cars have done with the stock subframe. I've always been curious as to when we were going to build a full subframe and I've got to say that I really wish that we would've done it sooner. The car felt good before but it's pretty impressive right now and I've done almost zero tweaking to the shock settings. It turns way different than it used to, it'll be a monster on the autocross. I can't wait to get more drive time on it.

[ModernMuseum]

Hell yeah. Always love seeing another 69 on these forums.