1971 Firebird455 - Project

[LeighP]

Remote oil filter mounted and plumbed.....never used these re-usable two piece fittings before, went together fine. Theres some great youtube videos to show you how to home assemble braided hose fittings if anyone's looking for 'how to's".
The two units at the top of the filter are the oil pressure guage sender and the oil pressure safety switch for the electric fuel pump.






Fuel regulator and line is all connected now, found this nice fuel pressure guage with an engine turned face...just made for a Firebird!



And I spent some time with a local company that does hydraulic work, where the guys behind the counter are all car guys. They made up some teflon lined hoses for my trans-cooler set up and we put together some fittings to mount the trans temp sender into one of the lines....I'll be mocking these up soon, then they go back to get crimped.
Man, quality hose and fittings really cost....

[WS6]

Looking good Leigh.

[LeighP]

To finish up the plumbing, I picked up the trans cooler lines after crimping and got them fitted...must be losing my touch, ended up cutting my thumb while fitting adel clamps to the lines and left blood everywhere....seems there really is a little bit of me been added to the car after all, lol.



The brass fittings in the line are for the trans temp sender.


The lines run up over the inner fender in the area covered by the outer fender then down to the trans. (not the clearest pic, sorry)

[LeighP]

Just mucking about with some more small stuff.....also booked the car in for its exhaust in a couple of weeks when I've got a few days off. 2.5" mandrel bend stainless, should last a while.

Made up some mounts and added the overflow tank that I picked up off Ebay cheap. Also added a neat little electric/air horn unit (also Ebay...love ebay, lol) and a small panel to mount the fan control unit and horn relay neatly.
Have to get some people over soon to quote on the body and paint work as I'm pretty much up to that point once the exhaust is done.

[LeighP]

Threw the 17" back wheels onto the car tonight as its going down on Tuesday for it's exhaust.
Car is sitting fairly high...probably near stock height at the moment...but I'm not going to get too concerned about the springs until after its been on the road a while and settled a little...then, if needed, I'll do some ride height tuning.

I like the look of the Year One Honeycombs, and the Nitto INVO tyres fit nicely.





Fitted the new chrome power steer pump tonight as well....man, bit of a struggle because I should have fitted the inner front bolt first (so I could move the pump around for clearance...instead I fitted it last, but its bolted in. Then I find out the power steer belt that came with the pulley kit is too small....lol, lucky I've got a few hanging in the shed out back to check out tomorrow.

[36couper]

Beautiful work. Is that a plastic fuel filter I see? I had a near disaster with one that melted .

[LeighP]

Yeah, it is plastic..but I've been running them for 30 years and never had an issue with one even looking like it's gotten warm....plus I don't mount them anywhere they get direct heat.
I won't use those glass aftermarket filters because of the number of issues that I've heard about......but, other than your comment, I've not known anyone to have an issue with these RYCO brand filters.
Thanks for mentioning it, though.

[LeighP]

Got the pump finished off.....chrome pump from Summit (Summit Brand)....pretty good value, I think around half the price of the Borgesen chrome pump. Both are reman units, so I didn't thing there was any advantage to paying twice the price. Also comes with a neat chrome dip stick cap.



Thought I'd introduce you to my garage security - Vince the Firecat, guarding the Firebird. One look into those eyes and you know he's serious...trust me, mess with him at your peril.

[LeighP]

So, its down at the exhaust shop....Of course, when the guys actually got to see how crowded it is around that back axle they were like "Um, I think we under quoted....", lol.
I told them just do what it needs to be right.....I'm not going to hold them to a rough verbal quote on it. Looks like it's going to take till at least lunch time tomorrow as the tail pipes are the most complicated part. I'm happy with how things are looking so far.

They added flanges to the rear of the headers as they were not happy about using slip over clamps. The "merge" positions nicely under the front of the drive shaft and theres a good clear position for the O2 sensor.


Here you can see the Waldron repro of the Pontiac VOE mufflers.


More pics later....

[LeighP]

Slow progress, since they had a guy short...but now theres another guy in there this afternoon and they've started on the tail pipes.



I will have to make a small piece of hardline for the fuel line between the pump outlet and the body line as the rubber hose comes a little too close to the tailpipe area....but nothing too hard to do.

Hopefully, it'll be done tomorrow.

[LeighP]

Picked the car up this afternoon...the decided against fitting the actual tips as they'll need to be slightly tweaked and he wants to do it when the car is finished with the rear bar fitted so he can get them exactly square.

Heres some pics.....
Finished system from the rear....


The "Merge", which is their patented version of an X pipe....these work well, had them on other systems.


The O2 sensor position in the LH front pipe.


The RH tailpipe showing one of the flanges that allows me to drop the whole centre of the exhaust out if needed to work on the car.

[solarguy09]

Super Sweet...

I am Cat Man.....Me and Vince would be buddies in no time...

.But then I wouldn't be there to take anything....just to drool about your car and pet the cat.

Nice Job...My build thread better be good...you are doing it really nice....

[LeighP]

thanks very much...I hope it'll be in the paint shop in the next week or two....

PS, Vince says "hey"....

[Doug1]

All i can say is I hope you picked a great painter. It seems all my projects go pretty well until they hit the paint stage. I've used 3 different painters on the last 3 projects after the first guy ended up getting advances for "materials" that turned out to be the drugs he was doing. But I digress... lol

The car is looking great!

[aronhk_md]

Doug is right...the painters seem to either be flakes or they have shops and are 3 yrs behind the schedule they give it seems. lol Your car is turning out gorgeous Leigh. What color is it getting painted again?

[LeighP]

Took some thinking and talking to track down THE pane lshop...the guy specialises in classic cars and has a good rep...been in my local area for longer than I have...and when I drop in there, the cars are turning over, so I know work is getting done.

I hope it's going in there on Friday....if all goes according to plan.

Colour choice......
well, I won't know for sure till the paint is in the gun, but I'm looking at white with an offset blue racing strip on hood and trunk with a blue tail panel......
or this metallic dark green thats a late model colour on the local Commodore (Pontiac G8).




or

[LeighP]

I like the green as it'll show the bright deluxe trim and badges better than the white, and the colour reminds me of a modern Brewster Green...

[LeighP]

Another one of those "Darn, it!" moments.....now that the bodywork is temporarily hung, I decided to check the fit of the new Honeycombs on the front (rears are fine).
I was concerned about the depth of the area where the bearing nut cover is as another member had issues with the Honeycomb centre cap.

That wasn't a problem, the cap has enough clearance on my car it seems.......what is a problem, and I wasn't aware of this, is that the 1LE conversion to bigger brakes on the front has also slightly increased my track....now the 9" Honeycombs sit out so far they are almos illegal (tread surface is barely covered) and I don't think I could lower the car any without issues on the tyre to fender clearance.






It appears the 15x7" factory Rally II wheels are OK for clearance.....so at least I have a set of those for it with 255's ready to go....but it would appear I'll be looking at custom offset wheels again......I'm sure I'll get my money back on the Honeycombs, but I'm really annoyed that I wasn't aware of the track change.

[LeighP]

Now heres something that does look good....Ringbrother's eye candy arrived in a box the other day.....





Airframe style billet hinges...the bears make them very nice to move and they are super solid torsionally.
Cool!

[LeighP]

So....the best thing I've always found when something doesn't work the way you'd hope, is to sit down with a tall frost glass of the favourite tasty beverage and have a good think about it.

First bright thought - I just bolted the front togehter...no shims on the upper arms at all.....maybe an alignment would help somewhat.

So its out with the trusty home alignment gauge I bought (was I thinking ahead here or what?) and sure enough, there was stacks too much positive camber.
So I set the camber to -1.25 degrees, as the pro-touring guys are running -1 to -1.5 degrees, and heres the result.







Probably still a bit close to the fender lip...but I'll run them and see what happens. I'm running tall ball joints which are supposed to set the control arm at the height so that you're already into the neg camber gain part of the curve. If so, the tyre should move in towards the centre of the car when the suspension is compressed. Of course, this is fought be the actual body/frame itself rolling towards the compressing tyre and consequentially increasing the length of the upper arm relative to the ground....you can't win all the time, but I'm hoping its enough . I'm not planning the lower the car a huge amount anyway....evne though lowering it would actually help the static set up somewhat.....its all a trade off