I went over to my parents' house for dinner tonight and my bro wanted to start working on his 89 Formula. We were talking about what to do first and decided to take out the headlight motor and see if we could fix it. My parents have a 92 Firebird with a killer motor and a hacked and spliced wiring system that rendered it a garage ornament for the last few years. It is a really nice car, but it hasn't run right in years and they've been trying to sell it for about 3 years now with no luck, it's just a lost cause and a money pit. Soooooooooooooooooooooo......PARTS CAR! We told my mom what are plans were, to pirate anything we could to use on the Formy, and then sell more to pay for the stuff we needed to buy for it. She was all for it, sad to see the Bird parted out, but glad they weren't going to spend any money on his car! I bought it for him last year for his birthday, so they will probably end up with a grand total of nothing in it. Anyway, we got the new headlight motor in and the car is no longer a one-eye. This week I am going to yank the front fender and door off of the Bird and bring it to my shop to weld up the holes from the GFX so we can use them on the Formula. Then we're going to find a 4th gen spoiler and put the body together and bring it to my shop for paint. Then interior, then suspension, then wheels and tires. This thing is going to be one sweet ride when we get done with it! Here are the before pics:

And the headlight fixed!

Did you guy a new headlight motor? Could have just rebuilt the stock one. All you would have needed were three nylon spacers, and voila, you'd have a working motor.

But anyway, looks like a nice project. Good luck and have fun.

Nah, we just yanked the one off of the 92. I'm going to rebuild the old one to keep as a spare.

Looks like a great reso project. If you need any weatherstip or parts,here's a link to our Pontiac section on the site.

Pontiac Formula Parts

Just a quick update. We're going to be painting the wheels soon and almost have all the body parts we need to get it painted.

Sounds cool,keep us updated.

T

I'll post pics tomorrow, but we got a ton of work done tonight. We took the wheels off and painted them satin black, put the black centercaps off of the 92 on them, and cleaned up the silver lug caps. Came out really good and looks pretty sweet with the black on red.

Also put the new door and fender on, need to align them a little and bolt the headlight back in, but we're headed toward paint!

What color ya getting it?

Same color red.

But we may have changed course. We just got a line on a 91 Formula we may buy and fix up instead. It's in a lot nicer shape and it already has the 91-92 style we wanted.

It needs a transmission, so we may stick our spare transmission in it and sell the 89.

I love my '91 look. The face lift is honestly a night and day difference IMHO.

Here are the latest pics of the 89. He's driving this one while we fix the 91. Then he's going to decide which one he wants and I'm going to take the other one. 8)

As you can see, we put a new door and fender on it and also painted the wheels black. We also fixed the headlight motor.

Cool Thread. Budget cars are awesome!

It looks like a pretty good car and definitely worth fixing.

Well, the Formy is getting a big update this weekend. My brother blew up the 305 on Saturday, so we needed to do something. The car had like 180k hard miles on it, so it was worn out anyway.

We bought a 355 from another TGO member, picked it up last night. We're also going to replace the trans with a 90k mile one I have in the shop.

Paint is going to have to wait, but hopefully once we get the car running again we'll get the paint taken care of.

Sounds like a really big project, good luck with all the work ahead.

So what ever happened to your 91? Any updates?

The 91 is mine now. I haven't had a chance to do anything to it, too busy.

I plan on swapping in a T5, TPI intake setup, painting it, and then probably selling it.

Well, looks like a bit more work. The bearings were worn out and the crank was scoured in the engine we bought. We had to pull the crank to have it turned, so it'll be a few more days. Should have it back next week sometime.

Got it back last night! Runs great, like brand new! We put a newer transmission in it that shifts perfect. All it needs is some deeper rear gears and this thing will be RIGHT!

Now on to the interior and paint!

Well, time for another update. A few months back my bro overrevved the new engine and smoked it. Threw a rod through the pan.......again.

This time my parents made him work to get the money for a new engine, and he learned his lesson. He's been driving my dad's old minivan when he needs a car, and he's had to deal with seeing the car he loves sit with flat tires and a busted engine.

He raised the money he needs and now he's all about working on the car, plus he just got into college so my parents are going to give him some new stuff for the car as a graduation present (although he doesn't know it yet, they are making him work on the engine first!).

So we're in the process of yanking out the old engine, and we'll be installing a Gen III 5.3L into it.

I'll keep this thread posted. He's in the process of cleaning out the garage so we can get the car in to start work on it, tomorrow we shoudl be getting it in there so he can start taking it apart.

Well, car is in the garage and he's started tearing it down. Front fenders and hood are off and he's tearing the old engine down now.

I bought a 4th gen coolant tank and washer bottle at the junkyard today. Gonna get them mounted in the car one day this week. Going to try and clean up the engine bay the best we can. Once we get the engine out, I'm going to bring it to my shop and we're going to paint the engine bay satin black. Then we're going to repaint the car in the original red.

Also bought a 94 Camaro grey/black back seat, now just gotta find the fronts and we'll be good to go.

looking good... good luck with the rebuild.

so anything happen to the cars?

The 91 I fixed up and resold, the 89 we're still working on. It's been a crazy summer so far, hopefully we'll have it ready for the new engine soon.

Oh that's cool... did you make a profit off of the 91 if I may ask?

Wow, been a while since I updated this. Sorry for the delay.

Car is still completely torn down. We are now in the process of putting a new engine together for it. We're going with an early 357 with the L98 heads and a TPI setup. We're going to use what we have to save money. Then we're going to convert the car to a 5-spd and then redo the body a bit.