decibelle's 1976 Trans Am - 455/4spd/restomod

[decibelle]

This build will eventually include some oldskool audio, but it would be such a waste to not include everything up to that point. Backstory:

Ever since I was a youngin I had a special love for the good ole American muscle cars; the ’69 Camaro in particular. High school turned into college and that love never faded. But the availability did. I didn’t want to (couldn’t) buy someone else’s years of hard labor, another enthusiast’s dream. I wanted to build one of my very own. If anyone else has done some searching for restorable 2nd-gen Camaros, well… let me know when you find one. Coming from the north, I was not in a mood to deal with rust, and I preferred a car with a manual transmission. That cut about 90% of all potential cars in the entire country. I expanded my search to include the Camaro’s less popular cousin, the Trans Am. I was living in Oklahoma at the time and preparing to have to do some heavy lifting to get one to me from another state where people actually live.

And then my husband attended a local meet in Oklahoma City one evening, where we found her sitting in the back of the shop. Beneath the coating of dust lay a virtually rust-free, 455 cubic inches of firebreathing Pontiac muscle with a 4-speed and a once-radiant red interior right before my eyes. I swear she smiled at me.



I asked the owner about her, and to make a long, 6-month story short, I finally bought her from one of our own in May 2015.



Day one on the lot and she's already making some young friends









When you see it...



Her tires wouldn’t hold air. Both doors were horribly misaligned and bounced open during one particularly exciting test drive. Her weatherstripping had long since disintegrated. The entire engine bay was covered in a ¼” blanket of decades-old mud and dirt. She ran rich and smelled like arse. But anyone who’s had their first dream project car finally in hand – you’ll understand the feeling.

I knew squat about rebuilding old, carbureted cars, but I bought her to learn. In the spirit of learnin’, one of the first tasks I took on was teaching myself to teardown and rebuild a quadrajet. These aren’t your run of the mill Holleys I had seen before, they are far more complex – some might say justifiably so, others not. We can’t all be right

[decibelle]

Bath time!









Pretty much everything was replaced.



.135" needle & seat assy
HD accelerator pump & spring
power piston spring (silver)
secondary cam/spring
fuel filter & spring
idle tubes
float
primary choke pull-off
all gaskets & seals

That looks good!



But.... oh.



Turns out ya still can't polish a turd. But the time was coming to move her into our new home in Texas, so everything had to be put on hold for some new wheels and tires to get her up on the trailer. There was only one truck headed from Enid to Abilene in the timeframe I needed it to, and if the car couldn't drive up onto the ramp, it was a no go. What a convenient excuse, then...

[decibelle]

After the big move, things slowed a bit due to me living 5 hours apart. I mostly had to pick at small projects during my weekend visits. Since she was now permanently stationed inside our workshop, she made a nice winter cabin for the local pests which started to eat her interior away. So that comes out, and now there is some minor floorboard rust to handle. No surprise, these are the most commonly rusted spots on these cars, and 9 times out of 10 they're MUCH worse than this.







The next order of business then, in my ADD world, is to get the car running smoothly. Since I became her owner this car has always run a little hot. I found this out the hard way while tweaking the mixture screws one evening. Let's just say the workshop has a strictly no-smoking policy and the T/A did NOT agree! A peek into the radiator and...



Aww, shoot. I made an honest attempt at flushing it in the hopes that I could save it for a *little* longer, but no dice. The radiator is roasty toasted, and if the motor runs with it any longer, so too will it be. Given the reality that every nut and bolt in front of the firewall needs to come out for replacement or cleaning, I might as well make my life easy and pull the engine. Since this car has been somewhat of a vagrant for most of her life, the state of the internals are more or less a mystery until it's cracked open. I took a passing-ish compression test as a green light to start getting down to bidness.



Everything surrounding the motor now lives above in the rafters. It is a good thing we don't have earthquakes here.

The 455 is almost ready to come out and play. Getting the exhaust manifold bolts off was a nightmare that ended in 1300ft-lbs of torque utterly destroying half of them in the pursuit thereof.



Which brings us to the present day - she's almost ready to come out. Wean her off the transmission one bolt at a time, and she will be free at last.



Then the real fun begins.

[SublimeZ]

AWESOME!

I've had 2 second gen f-bodies, loved em both. Good luck with the quadrajunk, I've rebuilt 4 with a 50% success rate. Doors are a cheap fix. Pins and bushings are normal wear items. Dorman used to make them.

[BigAl205]

Ever since I was a youngin I had a special love for the good ole American muscle cars...

Sooo, 3 weeks?

That looks sharp, I can't wait to see what you do with it.

[imjustjason]

OMG!!?! Love two headlight TA's, especially 455's!! Needs the dual ram air hood to be complete. Will enjoy watching this build.

[Kornnut]

Keeping the 455 or going with a newer LS? Looks like the car is complete and in good shape. How is the trunk floor?

[astrochex]

This should be fantastic!

[bigbubba]

That is an awesome find. I used to have a '77 Cutlass with a rocket 350 with a qudrajet, turbo 350 trans with a shift kit, Enkie 10" wheels in the back 8" in the front, lowered 2", all emblems removed, holes filled........(sigh)I loved that car. I love cars you can work on that doesn't require a laptop and a degree in computer electronics. I want my Cutlass back so bad now.

[chithead]

Wow! That's sharp! I remember being in love with those cars all the way back to watching Short Circuit as a kid. Excellent score!!!