67 Firebird-Part 2

[SamHatco]

Sam

[32deucecoupe]

Great article, with this information I hope my swap goes just as smooth. Waiting for the new hooker/Holley 1st Gen mounts and headers to come out to start mine Great thing about this site is all the lessons learned that are passed on. I have learned that with research on these sites and patience most anything can be done at home and not by a shop.

Your cars looks great and makes me want to get mine on the road. Good luck.

[FireBeater]

Can you post some pictures of these Seats in your car? I am thinking about these for my car as well. I have heard that they might be to tall. Did you use the Procar seat brackets? or make some?


thanks.

Bought a Procar Sportsman Pro seat to replace the Elite seats I sold awhile back



My 3 year old sign of approval

[rickpaw]

I'll take some this weekend. The brackets are from Procar. The seats do sit a tad tall (due to the brackets). I will mod the brackets later to lower the seats down some. I'm 5'11" and have about 2" of clearance between my head and headliner though.

[rickpaw]

Great article, with this information I hope my swap goes just as smooth. Waiting for the new hooker/Holley 1st Gen mounts and headers to come out to start mine Great thing about this site is all the lessons learned that are passed on. I have learned that with research on these sites and patience most anything can be done at home and not by a shop.

Your cars looks great and makes me want to get mine on the road. Good luck.

Sorry I missed your thread.

Thanks for the compliments. The new Hooker set up seem to the ticket. The Dynatech headers are hanging too low for my taste (even with the recommended DSE mounts)

[Josue]

Great thread! I love finding threads where people do exactly what I'd like to do, makes researching so much easier. haha

How do you like the power of the 5.3? Is it enough? Or do you wish you would have beefed it up a bit before installing it (head work, cam, etc.), or went with a LS1/2/3?

[rickpaw]

Great thread! I love finding threads where people do exactly what I'd like to do, makes researching so much easier. haha

How do you like the power of the 5.3? Is it enough? Or do you wish you would have beefed it up a bit before installing it (head work, cam, etc.), or went with a LS1/2/3?

I'm quite happy with the 5.3. It has plenty of prep and will pin you in your seat. On highway speeds it just pulls and pulls. On the downside, it's too quiet (bone stock). I'd stick a cam in it the next time around.

[Josue]

Haha...yea, the sound of a cammed LS makes me grin ear to ear, so that would be the very least I'd do to one prior to install. I imagine the 5.3 is way more available and affordable vs. typical LS's as well, so I like that aspect of choosing this motor.

You having to go with the Holley accessories bracket(s) setup, was that a direct result of the DSE motor mounts? Or is that just necessary when putting truck LS's into these first gen's?

[rickpaw]

The Holley brackets were (still are) one of the cheapest options, and have a factory look to them. It was not because of the mounts. I couldn't use the truck mounts since they are too tall. You may be able to use the truck brackets if you notch the frame cross member and lower the motor. I've seen one Camaro done this way, but the down side is the oil pan became the lowest point.

5.3 is widely available (at least in Tx). I walked into a junk yard and asked for a 5.3. I had a choice of 3 for $400 (all were under 100k miles). I ended up buying a complete engine/tranny package.

[Josue]

Damn...that's an awesome price!

Are you happy with the auto as well? Or can you see yourself switching to a manual trans in the future? I didn't see any when I read through your thread, but were there any oddball parts/procedures in hooking up the newer trans to an older car like this, or was it easy-peasy?

[67machrod]

The Holley brackets were (still are) one of the cheapest options, and have a factory look to them. It was not because of the mounts. I couldn't use the truck mounts since they are too tall. You may be able to use the truck brackets if you notch the frame cross member and lower the motor. I've seen one Camaro done this way, but the down side is the oil pan became the lowest point.

5.3 is widely available (at least in Tx). I walked into a junk yard and asked for a 5.3. I had a choice of 3 for $400 (all were under 100k miles). I ended up buying a complete engine/tranny package.

Hi Tu. Which place did you go to with those 5.3 for $400? Thanks

[rickpaw]

Can you post some pictures of these Seats in your car? I am thinking about these for my car as well. I have heard that they might be to tall. Did you use the Procar seat brackets? or make some?


thanks.

Here are some pictures of the procar seats in the car.





Distance from top of seat to the headliner


Distance from seat bottom to the floor

[rickpaw]

Damn...that's an awesome price!

Are you happy with the auto as well? Or can you see yourself switching to a manual trans in the future? I didn't see any when I read through your thread, but were there any oddball parts/procedures in hooking up the newer trans to an older car like this, or was it easy-peasy?

I'm quite happy with the auto right now. I do want to take the car out on the road course/auto-x eventually so I'll see if the auto holds up. It was pretty easy to hook up the transmission. Newer trans don't have the mechanical drive for the speedo, so if you're still using your old speedo, you'll need an interface box or convert the tail shaft to mechanical drive. I have VHX guages in mine so I just hooked up the speedo to the ECU.

Hi Tu. Which place did you go to with those 5.3 for $400? Thanks

I think it was Mario's (off of Airline near West Rd). They were asking $650 with 3 mos warranty or $400 w/o. I did bargain with them though to get them to drop the price to $400. I did not even try hard. I offered them $400 and they said Ok.

[Josue]

Nice....thanks for the info!

When I get my '68, I always told myself I'd want to convert the 2sp powerglide to a manual, just to have more fun since it'd be a weekend/fair weather toy. But, if I could get a complete drivetrain on the cheap like this, that money could be spent elsewhere to beef up other parts of the car!

p.s.- I tried looking through your build thread, but all your pics are gone. :(

[rickpaw]

Sorry about that. I reorganized my PB account, and it wiped out the pictures. You can look thru the pictures here

http://s616.photobucket.com/user/ric...?sort=6&page=1

[FireBeater]

Thanks for posting the pictures about the seats. They look really good and look like they fit very nicely. You helped me make up my mind.

[67speedfreak]

Those seats look really nice in there !

[etrone76]

Came back from cruisin the coast. Total 982 miles driven. The car did great, other than fuel pressure issues that happened 4 times. I posted the issues in the fuel injection section, hopefully someone can chime in. The headers hang too low, and I left bits of it somewhere on I-10 east of New Orleans. CTC was a blast, lots of cars, weather was great. Too bad I couldn't meet up with anyone on here.



My VHX gauges record the highest speed attained. No explaination needed.

Have you changed out your headers yet? I have the same issue with my Dynatech headers. I only have about 3" clearance, trying improve that now with changing my mounts but it may be a lost cause. Do you have any pics of the ground clearance you have? Thanks, great build too.

[rickpaw]

Have you changed out your headers yet? I have the same issue with my Dynatech headers. I only have about 3" clearance, trying improve that now with changing my mounts but it may be a lost cause. Do you have any pics of the ground clearance you have? Thanks, great build too.

No I still have the same Dynatech headers. I swapped the motor mounts around and gained close to an inch. ridetech's Velocity Camaro was used by Dynatech to develop the headers and ridetech had the motor mounts flipped around. You can see the mounts in post #57 of the build thread.

https://www.pro-touring.com/threads/...493#post372493

[gator68428]

Nice build. Any recent updates? Have you done anymore CTCs or other events?

Now that you flipped the motormounts around, how much room between the floor and collector flange do you have?

That's also an issue with Hooker Super comp headers for vintage Pontiac engine. There's more than an inch between collector and floor. One of the headers I cut it down all the primary tubs and welded together an inch higher, tucking up the collector closer to the floor, gaining a valuable inch of ground clearance.