I found it in a GM High-Tech Performance article. They only had 2 exterior shots of the car. Has any company ever mass produced this front clip? Is it a One-off piece?

 

Not that great looking. I would imagine cooling would be a problem.
If you really like it, get into some fiberglass work and I am sure you can fab something up with a bird stock nose. Like get that little bondo kit that they sell "fiberglass repair kit" and see if you can cover it so it looks like this bumper. It looks like the stock one from birds with gfx and all you have to do is fab up the top part of it so its conceals the headlights. It seems fairly easy.
If not, your best bet is to e-mail the gm perfromance and ask them of what it is, cuz I never seen it.

 

How exactly would it remotely have any effect on cooling? The stock front clip doesn't have any ducts for cooling anyways. Birds are bottom feeders from the factory.

Personally, I think its a pretty nice custom job when it comes to true custom work. It perfectly keeps the lines of the car without being too busy.

 

completely custom , thats the asc suntour i think . Or sun something . It has a full glass roof and stuff , but it does look pretty good . I dont like the big lights but i like how theirs no turn signals and to keep it legal you could just have the turn sigs in the fogs too .

 

No, its not the ASC Suntour.

This is the ASC Suntour

 

It looks like af actory 85-90 TA nose that had a set of GTS Blackouts fiberglassed over and in... With some other parking lights put in the fog location...

 

I rember that car its a one off custom.

The bottom Fog lights i think where MonteCarlo SS turn signal lights

 

A member here has that exact setup.

cant remember his nick tho .. been a while.







EDIT: scaufeild or something real close.

 

I think it looks really good

 

its unique looking, but I assure you that if you had a bumper that does not go that low to the ground, more air would allow for better cooling. I had a bumper like that, and once I switched to the 82 bumper (due to knightrider that I drew out) my cooling was improved, over three notches down than when I had the 89 gfx nose. I am so sure of it.
However, am sorry its not my place to tell you anything, but more like to help you make a decision if you want to get the bumper.

Anyway, talk to somebody who does fiberglass work. Maybe they can take a mold of a nose that came with the newer birds with gfx, and fab up the covers.
Or I believe I read somewhere on the boards that some company sells the covers for the tailights. Maybe you can put that on, and than cover the edges with some fiberglass, smooth it out and paint it all the same color. There's an idea. Good luck bro.

 

I thought I had another in the gallery, but I didn't see it. If their is, its under firebird.

http://omnipotent-goku.com/iroc

 

I have the GMHTP with that car in it. The article featured 3 thirdgens setup for road racing. I'm pretty sure the guy with the early Z28 posts on here.

 

As far as cooling goes, I don't think many people notice a difference between the a GFX car and a nonGFX car. My car never exceeds 200*. Both fans are slaved as one and when they come on it drops the temp like crazy.

If you looked at my signature, or read my car profile you'd know I have a 89 GTA and with it the gfx style bumper. I wouldn't lose any cooling with that one off bumper.

 

That car has a 434 ci engine and he road races it ... AND there's no cooling problems with it. That front clip is fine.

Tim

 

Two fans, now thats a bit different. I assumed you got one fan. But anyways if there are no problems, than there are no problems.
I still think that the bumper is just unique.
You guys with two fans are lucky.

 

All TPI cars received a dual fan setup.

I just ran the ground from the primary fan to the 2nd fan as well. Sounds like a turbo when the fans kick on. ^_^ A giant whoosh and all of the leaves and crap sitting under the car start to get blown away.

 

If you could get the car or the front clip to texas i could make it for you.

Do you ever come to college station TX?

 

That's Mark F's (legoland) car - he's a very active road racer with EMRA, and does just about every HPDE and time trials event he can in the northeast. He's having a hard time getting his inactive TGO (legoland) account unlocked since the database crash last year. In any case, the lower lights are from a C4 Corvette I believe, and he took the stock fascia (don't know what year he used) and modified it. As TRAXION mentioned, there haven't been any cooling problems, even with his 434 smallblock.

 

If you want to duplicate it don't forget to change the headlamps over to the 91-92 style... the older style would not clear the mod from gfx... would cut off 1.5 inch of the headlights beam! 91-92birds used a smaller light and differnt inner plastic housing

 

Finally managed to log on! As Andris said that's my car. The nose is a one off piece, I basically started out with a regular 85' TA nose and closed off that gap. I had to use a set of 91-92' popup lights as the earlier ones aren't designed to clear. The lower fog/direction lights are late C4 pieces.

I have no cooling issues. Infact my current cooling system is so efficient I have to block it off to keep it warm on the highway. If you think about it I haven't really modified any air passages, all I did was close the gap by the headlight.

Here's another shot of it. -Mark

 

It looks very good, and almost factory in appearance.

Its something I'd very much like to do for my GTA, what materials did you use to cover the lights? How does it keep up with the plastic when it flexes?

What kind of legal issues are involed with this? You obviously have removed the turn signals from the front of the car. Are they built into the C4 light setup? If so, do officers give you any crap for having the turn signals so low to the ground?

 

i dont see why he would get any problems from the turn signals being as they are pretty much where the 91-92 turn signals are from the factory.

 

I think the issue lies more with that it is not a "factory" nose. Some cops can get picky about that. Heck, they get picky if you change the color from yellow to clear for side markers.

 

Cool I'm glad you are on the site! I have always like that nose! Did you form a whole new bumper cover, or did you just cut another bumper and mold the pieces in to yours? How has it held up... any cracks?

I would love any details you don't mind posting about how you did it. I have been wanting to do some custom work to some to some project cars and did not know if making a glass nose or bonding the urathane would be better!

 

that is true, but with the craftsmanship on his, a cop would really have to know his stuff to tell that wasnt factory.

 

You know in 3 years I have yet to have a cop say a thing about my headlights... or the fact that any of my markers are clear. Though I have recieved 5 warnings about the front markers being red! Though 3 of those were in different states! (2 in SC... 1 in AL)

 

The original nose was done by a body shop, that is the same nose you see in the pictures. That nose was destroyed in a road course crash. I then re-created the nose myself using the same general technique with one difference. The body shop applied a layer of bondo on top of the modified section. I assume they did this to create a smooth flat surface. By using bondo you lose the low impact advantages of a flexible bumper so I decided to not use it. Unfortunately the finished work developed one crack because it didn't have enough reinforcement. I'm not a body guy, I'm sure there's a way to do this right and keep the nose flexible at the same time. But here's what I did. I started out with an 85' nose cone, I cut 4 slices where the nose has a recess for the directional lights. I then pushed the two lower sections up and glued them to the rest of the nose using "Rigid URE-Weld" available at all body supply shops. I then welded two angle iron sections to the bumper support so I could reach the raised mounting holes. I cut out the fog light holes bigger to accomadate the C4 lights and made custom brackets to mount them to the impact bar. The C4 lights actually use the same light socket as our directional lights so all I had to do was extend them a couple of feet. If I EVER get a break from real problems like engine, suspension, etc I might attempt a Version 3 of the modified nose. I haven't given it much thought but I would not use this technique since it actually messes up the original lines of the nose when you lift the two sections up like that. You can't really see it in the pic but you could if you saw it up close. I would like to find a clean way of bridging the two gaps by using some additional material. Anyway here are two pics I dug up of when I cut and glued the nose.

-Mark

 

second pic

 

Not true. My '86 TPI TA has a single fan and so does the '86 TA a freind has.

BTW MarkF, nice ride. I always liked your car from the old article.