I've looked at them, and it looks like the metal bracket needs to be cut off and welded. I really hate the pulldown bs, and I was just wondering if anyone has done this, and if there is an easier way.

Thanks!

Are you talking about the rear hatch? If so, I've done it before. Not all that complicated. If you take off the rear pieces and get to the motor and with a flathead push down the part that drops the motor down all the way and unplug the motor.

Then you have to really play with the alignment of the motor itself until you have the hatch closing more or less where it needs to be.

I had mine closed all the way down for over a month when my gearbox went.. it's just tough to close, especially with new struts..

I have fully converted my Formula to a manual pull down, for 2 Reasons #1 Reliablity and #2 weight.

You will need to remove the Heavy, Unreliable power pull down assembly, Drill out the 3-4 Spot welds on the bracket. Find a 82-85 car to get the Manual bracket and latch assembly out of, then I had a friend weld in the new bracket, and we adjusted the latch.

All in All it took 30-40 Minutes to convert over to a 82-85 Factory Manual hatch. Had mine doen a few years ago now, and it still works great, I love it! My buddy also did the same to his 88 Firebird.

Mine was converted before I bought it. I think the power unit is still in there, but somehow he done something with the gears and made it stationary. I have no idea how it's done.

You could rig the pulldown assembly so that it stays in place, and still use the power release/key to open it. You'd have to unplug the motor so it wouldn't try and run all the time. Normally the whole assembly moves up and down on nylon sliders, but I imagine you could drill holes through the tracks and bolt the assembly solid. I considered doing it to mine, but I'd rather have it working as it should.

On MY T/A clone I did it just like Ward said, I got into the car with the trim off and had a buddy hold the latch down and I marked where to drill through the pulldown brackets to make the latch tight and stationary. and used bolts and lock nuts to hold it all together. in that particular case all of the parts for the power pulldown were either broken or missing altogether, and the wiring was all bad as well.

My Iroc-Z still has power pulldown since it still works great, and I would just repair it if it broke especially since it's so easy to fix it with Lon's kit.
but with my bird I needed a whole new one so it would have been more than I was willing to spend on it.

I didn't realize there was a kit. Does it work well and hold up?

Lon's company Top Down Solutions is a sponsor of Thirdgen.org, and he offers everything to repair your pulldown motor and when using the parts from his kit the new repaired motor is even better than factory specs check it out here:

http://www.top-downsolutions.com/ind...310f784287996c

That's cool. At least I know my options now. Thanks for the info!