Tue, 1 Dec 1998 11:52:11
I never thought about putting this info down on
paper. I didn't know it would be so much!! I wanted to tell you the whole
story, I always dislike it when
people do not want to share info about their car so you definitely can't
accuse me of that here. The problem is.....where do I start? I hope you
have time......
I do have to start off having to make a confession though. It started life
as a LeMans, not a GTO. I have a good story to make up for it
though....read on.
The car was made at a factory in my home state of Massachusetts. GM had a
big plant out in Framingham. My grandfather was in the market for a car and
he figured the big Pontiac would suit him well. He drove it for a while and
decided it was too big and he wanted something smaller. With the gas crunch
coming on, it was easy to see his reasoning. My father then bought the
vehicle from my grandfather with only 18,000 miles on it. That was 1974.
The car saw daily usage through the use of my parents until about 1980. As
evolution would have it my brother got to drive it to the coveted high
school. He soon realized the cars amazing potential. He swapped out the
steel wheels and hubcaps and threw on a set of Cragar S/S rims and some
white letter tires. He also added dual Thrush exhausts. What a difference!!
He started smoking a lot more than the average car off the line at that
point. He also decided it was a good time for the faded paint to go. Being
a student in a technical school and having friends in the auto body shop, it
was the perfect opportunity. The shop took over and the car emerged weeks
later drenched in gorgeous color. The rear wheel wells were very subtly
flared out 3 inches and the car was treated to a 72 Ford Midnight Metallic
Blue paintjob. It was a good looking car. I still remember going to
swimming lessons in it! (usually on the left side of the road!) The car and
I both turned 7 that year.
I believe it was the summer of 1982 that the call came from my brother that
the car had been stolen. He had gone to a baseball game in Boston and as he
sat there, thieves were making off with his prized possession. The car came
home the next morning on a flatbed truck. I remember it as if it was
yesterday. Looking out the bay window getting ready to go to school, that
gray drizzly day, this red flatbed came into my driveway with a car I had
barely recognized. It was good to have it back, but it had certainly seen
better days. The wheels were gone, the glass was broken, and the nose had
been dented from the crow bar the thieves had used to pull the hood. The
steering wheel was no where to be found and the speakers and radio were
gone. Sugar was poured in the gas tank. The car was a mess. I remember
crying as I saw it coming down the street..
My brother was a resourceful chap and vowed to bring the car back to where
it used to be. He scoured the salvage yards for a new nose and hood. He
went back to the tire dealer and bought another set of rims and tires. He
molded a 6-inch snorkel scoop to the new hood and tossed the 350 two barrel
engine in favor of a 400 4 barrel out of a 68 Firebird. While this engine
smoked the 350, my brother had plans for the original motor. The 350 was
bored out 30 over and a crane cam and lifters went in place of the stockers.
It was a good thing he had the 350 done again, because it was just about the
time the 400 let go. I remember that too. It was right after a burnout of
about 200 feet!! Smoke was everywhere!! I thought it was cool. What wasn't
cool was the oil that covered the nose and windshield shortly after that
stunt. I think oil pressure was lost. (we definitely lost something!) I
don't remember coming home in the car that day. I think it was towed. It
wasn't too long until I saw the car again. (that school worked pretty
fast...) Once again it used the 350 for motivation. There certainly wasn't
any replacement for cubic inches, but this motor proved to be very reliable
as it lasted all the way up to 1992.
In 1983 my brother joined the Air Force and the car sat. My sisters took a
liking to it and drove it around for a while. (one sister actually bought a
73 luxury LeMans while my brother had his so she could duplicate the one the
family loved so much). They liked it and shared it for 2 years or so, but
grew out of it as it became increasingly more expensive to drive. (Not to
mention all the people that wanted to race them when they drove it) The car
sat again for about a year. That was 1986.
Early 1986 my mother was in need of a car that would get her to and from
work. Dad and I made the car drivable again at that point and my mother
drove it to and from work for about two years (after we removed the scoop
she couldn't see over), but the car saw very limited duty in that time. It
only made the 7-mile round trip work run for mom and maybe an occasional
trip on the highway. Needless to say, time was not kind to the car.
Maintenance was nonexistent (no one cared and I didn't know enough........I
was learning though, but we'll get to that.) and consequently the car rotted
away. The flares were starting to crack, the paint was starting to chip and
fade, rust was coming through behind the rear wheels (did someone say Tin
Indian?) and doors and the Cragar wheels and were starting to rust. The car
and I were 13. This is just about the time I took a serious interest in
this vehicle. I read the magazines and the articles and I understood what
could be done to this car. I had always loved the car and talked about how
I would own it someday, but I was never "do" anything to it.. That was all
about to change.
My mother got tired of the big car ( it needed something fixed every other
day and we had a second family car now) and elected to not drive it any
longer. Well, taking cues from my brother, I couldn't let the car go to
waste. So at fourteen, I started to make happen what I wanted to make happen
in all the years I could remember at that point. I started to make the car
mine.
I polished the wheels and I kept the interior vacuumed and Armor-Alled.
There wasn't much I could do about the body, but I was getting good practice
on my bike. (I would break the bike down every other weekend, sandblast it
and paint it up. Same color as the car...Midnight metallic blue) I was
pretty mechanical watching my father and brother work on cars all the time,
and the hot rod articles were making sense. I decided I could take on the
motor with minimal hassle and investment.. I would save the paper route
money and buy bits and pieces here and there. Spark plugs, plug wires,
starter, alternator, radiator etc. It was a challenge to keep up with basic
maintenance but it was worth it if I could drive it at 16. (Many nights
went by where I would just sit in the car and wonder what it would feel what
it would be like to drive it...how easily it was to fall in love..)
Bodywork came easier and Dad had promised me that if I prepped the car, he
would buy the paint and spray it himself. Done deal!!! I sanded and
sanded, filled and sanded some more. The flares were quite a task, but a
test of skill that proved to be a good one. They were molded again (this
time to about 2.5 inches off the original body) and smoothed out. I sanded
some more and filled in all I could with Bondo and scratch filler. The body
was much bigger than I had expected and I was realizing I was a
perfectionist at heart. Months went by, but it was all worth it in the end.
The car was 72 Ford Metallic Blue again and was one of the best looking cars
in the high school parking lot! Who would have though Dad could paint? The
car and I were 16.
Let me tell you, that in a high school of 5000 students, to hear your car
being talked about in every hallway you walked through for the first week of
school is quite a feat. People loved it! Many wanted to race it, but with
the 350 being five years since its rebuild and still only being a 2-barrel,
this was not an option. (Well....I could be persuaded........Ok. So raced
it. Sue me. ) Many offered to buy it. I got an offer for $3000 in a Burger
King parking lot! My sister took it out old time's sake and a Corvette
offered to race her for pink slips. (Whew! Good thing she didn't race, I'd
be without a car!)
It was again, a good looking car.
Through the first three years in school, the car was liked and admired but
it wasn't really beating the Mustangs and Camaros. It went through many
stages of a buildup in my head but nothing ever seemed to transfer to the
car. ($$$$$$$) I did buy a set of 295 steamrollers for the back of it and a
pair of 265's BFG's to fit up front. I mounted those on some Centerline
Auto\Drag polished rims I had saved for. (paper route money sure came in
handy then!) It had made a difference, but it wasn't enough. I wanted a
faster car. Ultimately though, the cost of the go fast bug was too much to
bear. The 350 would have to do until I could afford a good motor.
(Although the 350 81 Trans Am I raced to school every morning was never that
far in front, but that's another story. So isn't the 383 4 speed
Barracuda.....Hold on. I'm getting ahead of myself.)
Seeing how it was my first car and a big one to boot, the fence posts at the
end of the driveway have not been too kind. The flares were taking a beating
and were showing some battle scars. The paint was never perfect enough for
my tastes (and was also three years old) and rust started to become a bigger
factor than before, so I decided to take on the body work one more time. I
recruited some help of some friends from school and we prepped the car and
once again. I don't even want to mention how much Bondo was on the back of
this car. Let's just say, I should have bought stock in the company. We
remolded the flares, fiberglassed the interior floors and trunk floor, (some
big holes coming through here) did some lead work on the hood and sanded the
car. Dad sprayed the paint again. 72 Ford Midnight Metallic Blue. We
truly outdid ourselves this time. You could see our respective maturity in
out assigned tasks. I was much better at body work than I had been three
years prior and the friends I had recruited should have worked in a body
shop. Dad's painting skills were honed on all the plastic models he was
building in the last few years and it was evident in his execution. The
paint was flawless. (the clear was another story....bad things happen when
you paint outside....)
We were removing the newspaper from the windows on graduation day. The
clear coat was still drying as it sat on the high school grass as I got my
diploma. It was a symbol of all my love and hard work and a symbol of all
that were a part of it. It was beautiful. It was the best I had seen it in
all the years I could remember.
The beginning of the end:
GM hot start has always been a problem in this car. There had been so many
starter swaps in the school parking lot that I have lost track. This
proved to be especially important one day at my girlfriend's house. You see,
she lived on a slight incline. I had parked the car in her driveway and
shut it down. She informed me that it needed to go into the street and that
I would have to move it. Ok, no problem. Well, the car didn't think it
would be a good idea to start, so it didn't. That's ok too. I'll just roll
it.
How many Pontiac's do you know that have hit a house? I thought I could
control it from outside the car (the incline didn't seem that big) but I
couldn't. Down the hill, over the sidewalk, across the street and down the
neighbor's hill into the front wall of their house. That sucked. Kinda
funny, but still sucky.
Not much damage to the house, but the car had hit it at an angle so that the
rear bumper was pushed right into the rear quarter of the car. Crushed a
good foot and a half of the drivers rear quarter. With all the fiberglass
and bondo back there, it was a pretty sight. I got great pictures of that!
I had talked a friend into buying a 73 GTO that was in need of some care.
That turned out to be a bigger project when we really started getting into
it. She got discouraged and decided to sell the car. Of course I bought it.
It was actually a good thing as it netted me bumpers you see in the pictures
(which I was in dire need of due to the house accident) a GTO NASA scooped
hood (A1 condition.....also a good thing as the old one had bent from
flying open on me and was rusting out in one corner) The car had a 3.55
posi rear end, a 400 CID motor (also out of a 68 Firebird) with an Edelbrock
Performer intake, a 600 Holley and a turbo 400 trans. It also had an HEI
ignition setup. All good stuff. So I took all that was worth taking from
the car and had it taken away. (I wish I hadn't thinking back now. It was
an original GTO. Unfortunately it was well beyond repair. The rust had
infected everything)
I took all the good engine parts and put them on the 350. The intake ,carb
and ignition really woke it up. I bought a set of headers and a friend of
mine had sold me a set of Flowmaster mufflers off his mustang for short
money. They ended up going on the LeMans with just a 24inch pipe off the
header and then the muffler...that was it. Setting off car alarms at idle
is really kind of a neat thing. I could wander through my college parking
lot and set off at least three. I think you get the point that the car
sounded and ran well....
To make a long story short, ( I did say I could go on for days, didn't I?)
the car soon became less and less reliable and more and more a pain in the
neck to work on. I was discouraged with the body. (the accident was kind of
embarrassing) The bumpers helped, but the quarter was really munched.
Water pumps and starters in the middle of January were getting the best of
me and I no longer wanted to put up with it. The 350 was getting ready to
die (number 2 cylinder kept fouling with oil) so I figured I would let it
rest. That was 1991. I had bought a four speed Chevette to tool around in.
I still had plans for the big ol LeMans. They included doing a new motor for
the beast and finally doing the body the right way, with new floors and
quarters, but his would take time and a lot of money to do right. Neither of
which I had, so the only thing left to do was plan.
With that gone, and all my pieces in the garage, I had to do something. I
had the 400 motor my brother had done originally rusting out in back of the
garage in pieces. I had the 350/350 Turbo I had just pulled from the LeMans
and the 400/400 out of the GTO. I took the best pieces from the bunch and
built a motor.
I used the 400 out of the GTO and the heads from my brother's motor. Not
my original plan, but the heads from the GTO were dead. The machine shop had
asked me if I had an extra set. I explained that I had an old rusted set
behind the garage that may work, but they were badly pitted. They persuaded
me to bring them in. They were sure they could clean them up. Turns out
these heads were factory HO heads with #16 castings. I didn't know much
about Pontiac history at that point but I knew something was up when the
machine shop wanted to buy them from me instead of doing work to them!! I
saw this a s good sign and had major work done to them. The bowls were
blended and smoothed. The heads were shaved to net a 69 cc chamber in each
cylinder. The intake ports were port matched and smoothed out to increase
flow. New valves went in, 2.11 and 1.77 to help it breathe and the old screw
in studs were replaced with 7/16 screw in studs.. The block was bored .040
over (it was already done to .030 once) and align honed with deck plates and
cleaned up all around. The connecting rods were shot magnafluxed,
shotpeened and stress relieved. The big ends were rounded out and ARP bolts
went in place of the inferior stock ones. (I had a chance for some really
sweet balanced SD rods from a machine shop for short money but I didn't have
it. I know, I know.... don't remind me. I'm still kicking myself......) The
crank was also turned and balanced. The oil holes were chamfered and the
crank was ground .010 under. The motor went together with TRW flattop
pistons (yielding close to 11.1 for a compression ratio) and competition
cams 292 Cam (244 duration on both sides @.050 lift) and valve train. I
ditched the regular rocker arms for true roller rockers from Harland Sharp.
They were a 1.65 ratio. I was looking for some serious power out of this
unit, and I was well on my way.
To top it off, I finished the motor with a Holley 750 and an Edelbrock RPM
performer manifold. I reworked the HEI distributor with a curve kit and
passed it's main duty off to an MSD 6al box. Black Jack and Flowmaster
would handle the exhaust once I got this unit into a car.
The LeMans was very discouraging by now. I was gung ho about it at first, so
I started again on the body. I sanded the entire car (except for the
crunched corner) and primered it gray. I sandblasted the entire engine bay
and painted it up with a nice zinc chromate primer. I was doing all right
but it suddenly hit me that I didn't have the huge dollars it would cost me
to do the car right. Doing the rear quarters right was probably going to
cost me close to $1500 I figured, and it still needed floors and a trunk.
Never mind the fact that parts were extremely hard to find (still are) for a
car like this and that it weighed close to two and one half tons. What kind
of drag car would this be? I wanted something really light I could drop
my 400 into, something that 11's in the quarter would not be an outrageous
demand to make. I also wanted something that didn't need as much work to
the body that this one did. After looking for a few months, I finally found
it. A 71 Trans Am.
I saw the T/A when it had a 454 Chevy motor in it. It sounded good, was
extremely fast, and looked fantastic. Well, the guy wanted $2500 for the
whole thing. I didn't have that. He offered to give the car up motorless
for $1300 so I said ok, deal. What a big mistake that was. The car
never had sub frame connectors in it. (Can you say twisted?) I got it home
(after blowing the tranny in the ford van tow vehicle of my friends mother
(she was not happy)) and was sandblasting the engine bay a few weeks later.
I took a really good look at the tranny tunnel and it was all of a sudden
very clear. The tunnel took a sharp right turn. We couldn't even get the
second sub-frame connector in place the car was so badly warped! There was
a four point bar in the car and the roof lines looked good and straight so I
figured it was ok. No way. The second connector never came close to fitting.
It also didn't help that the spring perch on the passenger side was welded
to the car. Ended up selling that car for $700. That was a quick lesson
learned. I had wasted a summer on this whole thing and still didn't have a
car.
The 400 still sat together in the garage without a home( I looked at it
everyday) and the LeMans was still out front with a big For Sale sign in its
window. I still didn't have the money to do the LeMans correctly but I was
itching for a project. My brother in law knew of a guy that could weld and
told me he might be able to help. He hooked me up with him. He looked at
the ol beast one day and came back to me with a number I could afford. "
$1800" he said. "For everything. Floors, the quarters, the trunk." I
said..."done deal."
The way I look at it Peter, is the LeMans was coil sprung in the rear
(unlike the T/A), wasn't twisted (unlike the T/A), was a full frame car
(unlike the T/A) and had disk brakes up front. Why not build it? It was
the perfect race car. Besides, Granpa bought it new. This car and I have a
history together. I had to keep it.
>From that point on, I have been building what you see in those pics I had
sent you. I sandblasted the entire engine bay painted it black satin over a
zinc chromate primer. I highlighted it with plum crazy purple accents and
swirls. (You should see it. I'll try and take some detailed pics of it to
show you. People love it. The block and heads are also plum crazy purple,
as you can tell in the pics, so it looks pretty good) The turbo 400 (also
purple) was fitted with a full manual reverse valve body, a 34 element sprag
and a TCI 10 inch converter. I had added and extra deep pan and a Perma Cool
tranny cooler to keep things from slipping on me. It stalls at about 3000.
The rest of the driveline is as follows: The driveshaft is a three inch tube
with some super heavy duty u joints (I forget exactly what size: 3056 or
something like that..) in place of the stockers. The read end is the ten
bolt out of the GTO I had mentioned earlier. This time, the gears are 4.10
instead of 3.55. I also put the car on a diet bringing its total weight
down to approx. 3300 lbs with some creative thinking.
I finally got the motor in this year and wired up the car for gauges and
stuff. (Actually my friend Bill does the wiring. The car was such a mess
from my hacker brother and father in there! Didn't help the wiring was also
25 years old. Bill did all the wiring in the passenger compartment over and
he did all the wiring in the engine compartment over. The gauges, the dash,
the fuel pump, the fan, the charging system, the lights, the battery cutoff
switch...everything!). Bill is worth his weight in gold!
Some Jaz fiberglass buckets went in place of the stock bench and I got a
black carpet out of JC Whitney to cover the new floor. A B&M pro stick does
the shifting with me and AutoMeter monitors water temp, oil pressure, oil
temperature, volts, and fuel pressure. A 16 gallon Jaz fuel cell resides in
the trunk along with the battery.
Performance you ask? With 275 M+H Racemasters out back as my only traction
aid, and minimal tuning Bill and I got the car to run a 13.8. Not a bad
run for someone that hasn't raced a car in over 5 years. It's a far cry
from the 11's that I'm looking for but it isn't too bad for a car that used
to run 16's. And there is plenty...... Let me say that again, PLENTY of
power to put a Mustang to shame. On a positive side note (if you can call
it that) it turns out, 3 cylinders had bent valves at the time of that run.
This must have happened during engine break in. I don't remember any loud
noises, but that's not to say it couldn't have happened....Anyway, just
imagine what I can do with all eight pumping! I'm calling Rock and Roll
Engineering as soon as Christmas is over to hook myself up with a new valve
train. Once I figure all that out, I'll be golden and I'll be able to put
down strips like the ones you have posted on your site! Future plans
include a nine-inch rear end and a 6-point cage and, like I said, an 11
second run. I want to lighten the car some more, so I'm looking into some
fiberglass companies to make some panels for me. I am mostly interested in
getting a glass hood for it. I currently have a few hoods for it. One is
that mint condition NASA scooped hood off the old GTO that I mentioned
earlier and the other hood I got off Bill's grandmothers 75 LeMans. I am in
the process of molding a 7-inch snorkel scoop to that one. (sound familiar?)
They are both in fantastic condition, but are still extremely heavy.
Well Peter....all I can say is you asked! This is where the car stands now. The car and I will both turn 26 in the
upcoming months and I had never loved it more!
Thanks for your time and again, the space on your page.
Thanks,
Mark Sweeney
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