m2rtin

Hello, I'm martin and I want to dedicate this thread to my Firebird and its little repairs.

Few facts right off the bat:

I'm from the czech republic, we don't have many V8s here, there are very rarely spare parts to find, we have to buy them from the US and charges for that are not so favourable, so we help ourselves best we can.

The car is 1991 Pontiac Firebird Formula
- 5.0l LO3 TBI - no modifications whatsoever (yet)
- 4Spd Auto - slipping second gear fixed about 10 years ago
- rear end is factory open i guess - didn't check the diff tag, but wheels turn different direction lifted
- color obviously red - red originally but repainted red maybe more than a decade ago.
- originally from Switzerland - swiss mirrors and park lamps/turn signals in front bumper

I have no RPO tag in my glove box, there is a leftover adhesive visible, but I know I have:
- power mirrors, door locks, antena, windows, T-tops, power hatch (rls/pull dwn), rear defrost, A/C, cargo screen, crusise control, UX1 delco radio.
- if You spot sth else, please let me know. I'm sad that the RPO does not exist...

Let me mention my other project real quick:
- I have a Jeep CJ7 that me and my father decided to get in shape and it is not entirely done yet because of all the other projects and basic occupations we have - like this firebird of mine for instance. But hopefully we will manage to keep up as many of them as possible. Here's a link about some of that:

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f8/cj...thread-814877/


Now, I'd like to note some words about the background of the car. My father bought it locally 10 years ago, back when i was a primary school pupil. It was undrivable due to the slipping second gear which was fixed back then. From that day forth it was in great shape, clean and everything, original (other than the swiss stuff) and functional. One day it was gotten rid of as all offroad unworthy automobiles do in our house. Some time has passed... And last fall it came back to us due to the economy, the way it is...Desperate times desperate measures for lots of folks. Anyway, my father doesn't like unpractical cars and my brother has a 84 vette. So i became sort of a caretaker. It sat in front of my house the whole winter. It wasn't exposed like that the first time nor the last.

originally back in the day:



after years:



whole winter:

m2rtin

But just before the winter came we managed to do some small things around it. The engine couldn't be started, we traced the malfunction to the sending unit, which was a bummer. The tank went terribly out, but there were three of us for the job, so we managed pretty OK. The sending unit is connected to the steel ouput tube via ahort rubber tube. This rubber tube was deteriorated and not connected to the steel tube at all. So we replaced it. The same failure occured in my brothers vette btw. I guess it's all the natural suff they put in fuel these days. When the tank was out it was more than convenient to do some anticorrosion coating, so we did that to the whole chassis.

tank out:




On the last image, You can see how bad the tires are.

m2rtin

We repaired power hatch pulldown and i ripped the spoiler off, because it was in a bad shape with bumps all over it. A lot of dirt was under the spoiler just sitting and waiting for an opportunity to start getting under the paint and corroding the hell out of my trunk lid.

We took the car to my front yard and it stayed there the whole winter as i mentioned earlier. I coud see it from a kitchen window so i used to have breakfast while patroling the bird. The absence of the rear spoiler was disturbing at first. Like a cat without a tail. But during the winter i got used to it and now i think it's neat and slick.

I took some stuff home and repaired them a little. For example this radio box had this plastic threading chipped off:



Also it was broken:



So i took the soldering iron and kind of welded it together as such:



I took the door panels which had the fabric sticking out and i glued it to the paper board properly. This is how amusingly i applied pressure afterwards to make sure it sticks well :



A dictionary then 13.8V stabilized power source, amplifier, chipboard, projector i believe, side from PC, radio box and radio from FB and radio from E-150 conversion van...Holds firmly .

m2rtin

I took the radio out, because it needed a bulb replacement. I bought a diodes to get rid of this need for good.

This is half bulb hlaf LED:



Full LED:



Also i made the JACK input hack i found here on thirdgen.org.

In this manner:



Nice and ready:



But then i found out the right speakers are mute. Later I discovered that one of the two DM165 amplifiers is heating excessively. I was hoping the condensers might be bad and replaced them preventively. I found very helpful page about that:

http://www.howtoalmanac.com/Scott/Ho...oAmpRepair.htm

My brother bought some GM radios just to have some in stock. One of them will serve as a donor. Meanwhile I fell in love with another - button radio. It looks like the one from Firebird with the button steering wheel, except this does not have an equalizer. It is actually from Chevy Lumina or Pontiac Trans Sport. I like it better not only for all the buttons but it has four amps and the build quality seems improved. It needed new bulbs as well, but i had to solder them in. When I tried it in the car with the dimming I accidentally short-circuited a board and a small transistor exploded. The follwing was written on the TO-92 casing:

7176
N232
E B C

I tried to replace it with today's PNP and NPN transistors but I could not find a match. It is strange, because it has 12V on basis when the radio is off and about 6V when it's on. I even drew a small scheme I traced. But I still can't figure out the right component to fit in.

The transistor enables dimming of the green display. If i turn off the park lamps the display lights up with max. intensity. If i turn the park lamps on it goes out. I can short-circuit emitter and colector and the display dimming feature works OK. But it drains 0.23A when the radio is off. Which i think is a lot. So help here would be very much appreciated.

This is my workspace by the bed:

m2rtin

Speaking of help, here is a photo of a thing I'd like to identify from You guys:



It clicks to the bottom side of a button panel right above the radio box. I have a hatch rls and a defrost button there, newer firebirds have front fog light button in the middle of these two. I thought it is a courtesy ligt, but i'm not sure. Anyone knows what it is for?

m2rtin

Now, the tires had to go, no doubt about it. In the front there were 205/65R15 and 215/65R15 in the rear. All worn beyond safe range. My father went ahead and bought me nearly new stock sized 215/65R15 Pireli P6000 to the front and Maxxis UA-603 to the rear. I am well pleased with both.

There You go:



New tires:



Newly shod:



All center caps present. I have the plastic lug nut caps as well, but i'm missing one nut and cup per wheel as the previous owner possibly installed a safety locked lug nuts. I don't have these though, i'm using another type of lug nut to complete the quintet.

m2rtin

Today I finally finished repairing a front headlamp motor. I manipulated a lot with the battery when trying out radios and illumination and stuff. And when the battery is connected the headlamp motors are actuated. They try to pull down. But they struggle, because they are already down. Anyway, the one on the driver side started to spin freely one day and when i turned the lights on it went up just a bit few times and then it stopped moving altogether. The manual **** turned freely with no effect. I unmounted three bolts holding that motor and unhooked it from a balljoint. I opened the gearbox and this fell out on me:



I thought it was deteriorated grease because it crumbled in hand. But later realized it was the pellets. It seemed like the best thing to do would be to go on ebay and buy a repair kit for sth like 20 bucks with the shipping. But after my father explained the function of those - how they ease the impacts and protect the worm gear, I gladly accepted his suggestion that the delrin pins could be replaced with a rubber cylinders made of a hose. We took the first acceptable size and cut three pieces. To prevent the tube piece from collapsing i inserted a steel pipe.

Just like that:



I didn't like how the motor bearings are all dry and went ahead and disassembled the whole thing with care for the original gaskets. I washed it and lubricated it and put it back together. Here's how all the parts look like:



If You are planning on doing something similar, please notice that the rotor assembly has a small steel ball on the top of the worm gear instead of bearing. It is easy not to notice and lose it. Also the brush springs are loose.

This is the whole unit ready to be mounted:



I applied a silicone sealant on the original degreased gaskets - both sides.

During the process i ruined the plastic manual ****. I had all the pieces so i glued it together and used the soldering iron and welded it just like the radiobox and all... worked out all right, gotta be careful the next time tho.

I installed the motor and aligned both headlamp cover doors so that the panelgaps are as parallel and regular as possible. Both work great now. Also aligned the park/turn lamps best i could to match the new headlight setting.

The battery is still being manipulated a lot, so i unplugged both motors for now not to torture those motors over and over again.

m2rtin

Today i had some spare time, so i went through all the boxes of parts and HW that came with the car and i found TPS. I took a multimeter and found out - by no surprise - that it is faulty. The resistance could be measured only between two terminals and the resistance increased while moving the TPS arm. Other terminals behaved like an open circuit.

Now, literally zero people would do this, but i was curious about what is going on inside. So i took it apart like so:



all the components:



printed circuit:



I measured a bit more and found out that just a vain is faulty. So I bypassed it with a thin wire from PATA PC cable:



mated electronics:



It seemed like it has done the trick so i glued it back tohether:




There you have it.
Of course i'm not going to use it ever , I didn't do it for the bucks, I just did it because it could be done. I know that some of you might wonder why there was a faulty TPS between spare parts in the first place. Well, we're old school here and we throw away things with a heart ache. "What if this broken stuff is useful someday, let's keep it!" ...It never is.

Let's think of that as caring about the environment. I saved nature dissolving one TPS one too early. I think this makes up for the fact that i'm thrashing the AIR system AND the cat.

Which brings me to one thread i came across here on thirdgen which was about the AIR and why to get rid of it and why to keep it. Three pages of pretty hostile comments. Everyone pretty much agreed on one thing. And that was how the system works. Between the lines it could be read that if it was not illegal in some states, everybody - and i mean everybody - would be happy to install new hi-tech cat instead. Lower emissions, higher flow, no nonsense under the hood. Which brings me to my final point. I don't have my firebird to save the planet. My prius does that. (don't have one, not saving the planet yet). In the end, i don't think it takes that much longer to decease in catted car running in a closed garage.

m2rtin

OK, today i've bypassed the VATS, because the key cylinder is worn out. I have the #15 -11800 Ohms, rather wide tollerance, so regular 12kOhm resistor was good enough.

I also bypassed the diverter valve to clear up the engine bay a notch.

A really important milestone for me now is to acquire a pair of POWER MIRRORS. I browse ebay everyday, but it is difficult to find cheap item with seller willing to ship overseas. $200 shipped seems like a lot to me and the import charges are even less pleasant. I have an opportunity to ship from florida once a month or so, but ebay people ship only to paypal account address. If one of You could help me out with this, it would mean a world to me.

Kriffin

This is really cool! I like your make-do repairs!

m2rtin

Thanks Kriffin!

A leak occured somewhere on the roof. T-tops FTW, right? I figure the winter did not have a positive impact on them seals and now the high temperatures stretched different materials differently, i guess. It seems to be one of those defects that everyone has to go through if they want to have waterproof f-body with t-tops.

A drip in the rain:



I carefully started to strip the seal from driverside but the glue was stronger than the seal itself so i damaged it on three places where the seal was sitting in a rail on the windshield section. I decided to expose the other side just where the roof sections were.

Also I decided to unmount the center t-top panel. There were some rusty spots on and under it and the waterproofness of this seemed insufficient:

m2rtin

I cleaned the insert tracks and we coated it with a few coats of black paint. The driver front side was the worst the other parts were not coroded at all.




Also i drilled the rivets on the center panel and separated the aluminium strip from the steel base which was given a zinc coating.




When assembling the center panel together we used 4mm bolts and we used some paste sealant to separate the body and the center panel itself. Also we seperated the aluminium part and the steel basis in the same manner:






Evidently, we decided to use the same stuff to install the rubber seals all around:





You can notice that we applied it on the rail not in the rail and we did not use any other glue or nothing.

this is the t-top in it's place:



All right, that's that then. The damaged seal was treated with a special glue for rubber that my friend Lukas delivered as he is mixed up with this bussiness. So everything worked out great.

m2rtin

Recently I replaced faulty temp. sensor:



It had this faulty sensor since the last fall. It caused the ECM to run rich as hell. It was thinking that the temperature was -40°C. And as it barely warmed up everytime it was cranked, spark plugs were a bit lazy. It flooded a few times. Faulty VATS connection in the cylinder key at that time also did not bring anything supportive to the table. Yeah, and some rodents enjoyed the insulation on spark plug no.4. All this is behind me now and it purrs like a kitten.

m2rtin

Today I removed the door latch assembly because it was poorly greased if at all. It was working so heavily that the lock motor actuator on the driver side did manage to lock the doors only after several pushes on the lock button. This was not acceptable.



Washed and newly greased:



Now it works smoothly as every used-daily mechanism should.

thomas1976

Huge respect for the work and ingenuity, hope it will turn out nice.

Personally I would have put the RTV/rubber sealant in the t-top weather stripping rail, to allow for easier service in the future, but its just a detail.

scooter

iTrader: (11)

You ever find your power mirrors? It's be willing to send you a set if I could have your original ones

84 1LE

iTrader: (9)

Nice to see an american car appreciated outside the US, excellent work.

KR81

Nice thread and rebuild details, really enjoyed reading it! Keep the updates coming!

m2rtin

Many thanks for the kind words from all of You! I really appreciate it! Thank You.

A really great Thanks and a tip of the hat goes to a member FLYNLOW92rs, who parts out his blue 90 Trans Am. He kindly shipped perfectly working set of power mirrors overseas, fantastic effort, the packing was crash-proof, I am really greatful! It always warms my spirit up to an exhilarating degree when someone makes it possible to overcome a milestone from the other side of the world - quite selflessly.

Here's a bunch of pictures:



Could work:



I popped the mirror out from the mechanism. I learned how to do so here at thirdgen.org



This is how it looks like without the mechanism, there was a small US vasp hive :



When i first tried them out on the car, the passenger side mirror went up and down but not from side to side, so I took apart the mechanism. In case someone is wondering how it looks like:



Pretty simple, right? I tried the motors out of the car, though and found out that they work allright. So the malfunction was in the switch. I shuffled with the "joystick" and the left/right mirror switch a few seconds and somehow it started working. No problem since.

Then i took a grinding paper of adequate softness and went from this:



To this:



Then i applied filler spray can, worked grind paper some more and coated it red. No excessive effort. It needs to fit the patina of the rest of the car. My 20 year old car does not need to present itself as comparable to the showroom vehicles. Cars age same as people. They need to be taken care of but who likes his granny with a baseball cap sideways....at least that's how i justify the minor leftover dings and scratches. Not the best metaphore either...

Putting it all back together:


Polished mirrors:



The overall photo will be taken tomorow.

I'd like to mention that since the last time I contributed to this thread, I emptied the trunk of my brothers 95 impala that was filled with my FB interior panels. I adjusted the rear seat and so forth. Now the interior looks homely once again.

Also we went to town to adjust the toe/caster/camber properly, which was a step up.

m2rtin

I have the original power mirrors as spare. The driver side mirror does not have a glass, feel free to send me a PM for details. Thanks!

lonestar7

iTrader: (1)

Great job. looks like you're making good progress. We you finish with it, you will have something to be really proud of.

m2rtin

Ok, not exactly tomorrow, but here is what I've been up to:

I've ordered cool temp. fan switch and t-stat from Rodney:



I think I got to him throught this forum. I searched for the cool setup, because I eliminated the pressure radiator cap so that the coolant can flow from radiator to expansion tank freely, so all cooling components are less burdened in my opinion. Of course at stock setup the coolant boils and the fan won't help, because the switch is designed to kick in at 115°C or something crazy like that. Well done GM...

There's the t-stat:



And the switch comparsion:



The old one was detoriated from the exhaust heat.

m2rtin

So I did that and was all happy about the cold setup even though my single fan is running most of the time... I'll have to get some indicator light for that later.

Then I was determined to get the old CS130 alternator back together. The current one is from some alfa romeo and it is the only alien part under the hood. It's source runs through an exposed bulb which doesn't help the look either.

On the Delco, we tested the diodes and coils and everything by multimeter. Everything seemed to be fine, so I ordered and installed a new regulator:





Can You tell which one's new? They both are! After I've done the swap I found the original regulator in the old spare parts box, where I found the TPS few weeks ago. This one had a GM logo. So I was already a bit suspicious. I tested the CS130 on the car with a new regulator plugged into an original connector and it would not work.

I haven't seen many alternators, but I can tell this one is not the one you'd wish for. Solder-to-disassemble is the first thing. But the whole part is somehow untrustworthy and if I was to be badly woken I might even say repulsive.

Anyway, It wouldn't work with the original connector. The connector has two wires going in. One is thick and red and goes to the S terminal straight from the batery (Positive at all times). The second is thin and goes to the F terminal. It is positive when the ignition is ON.

That's a bit wierd, isn't it? From the wiring diagram that internet provided, it seems that the L terminal should be connected while working with any setup. But my stock connector doesn't have that one connected. I tried to power the L terminal and the alternator was working. (The S terminal didn't need to be connected.) So I took the ignition ON cable and jumpwired it to the L terminal through the good old bulb. And I'm now where I was with the alfa romeo alternator. In which I trusted more .

So now it looks like this:



I haven't figured much else, I wasn't searching the forum yet, but It occured to me that this could be poorly chosen regulator. There is one with "PLIS" terminal, but the GM original I found in the spare parts box had "PLFS", too. If anyone knew what I need to do to eliminate the jumperwire-bulb setup, please share.

m2rtin

Also I wanted to share a story about what happened when I took the car for the long run.

After We sealed the t-tops and got the cold setup and changed the alternator, there wasn't much stuff to watch out for. We changed the coolant and it turned brown after a brief warmup, but that was just sediment.

I filled the tank with a mix of 70% regular petrol and 30% E85. It was alright when warmed up but the throttle response was kind of hesitative when cold. Nothing serious, just a nuance, really.

I went about 60 kilometers to my pal who owns a BMW e36 and we set off to a 250km journey, which doesn't seem like a lot, but lets say that the roads in our country are not so streight and flat. Everything went great, I even became acquainted with the characteristics of the cruise control on a highway. There aren't many.

We arrived safely to our destination, did our thing and went for a little drive in the countryside with our other pal:



As You can see, they look just silly next to the real deal. Even with those angel eyes. But I don't want to provoke them, they could kick my five liter *** any time ...

We came back where we were staying and my coolant was boiling. I was affraid the fan or relay gave it up. Even in A/C position on the heater control panel it wouldn't run. But I soon found out it was just a blown fuse. I replaced it and encountered another problem. The passangers window wouldn't go up. I had a little time, so I took the carpeting down and measured motor connector to exclude switches and wiring. I don't know why It occured to me that it would work, but I had my buddy to hold down the power window switch and I punched the motor with my fist.

I put it back together and celebrated. The next day we went home. In the middle of the journey I noticed that the turn signal is somewhat slower than it usualy is. But I kept going until it didn't flash at all. That was a first clue. If You know the cause, don't tell it out loud, yet.

I was focusing on the fuel gage because it passed the quarter and I learned that it goes fast in the last region. We were on a highway and my pal gassed it and went for an overtake, so I did the same, stepped on the pedal and it coughed. I immediately eased off and cruised carefully for I thought I was running out of fuel. I just missed a sign that read "FUEL 2500m". I went about 100 kmph when it started to get serious, so in an atempt to collect as much fuel from the tank as possible I turned the steering wheel from side to side for the sending unit to suck the rest of it. I made it to a hillock from which it was just another thousand meters. My heart was beating faster then the sparks were being ignited but I made it and it died just as I pulled over to fuel station. I gave it 25liters and went like a king to get back on track. Of course some of You already know that I couldn't.

It wasn't the fuel, It was the battery. The alternator is connected to the same fuse as the fan. And the fan fuse had blown yet again. I gave it 25A instead of 20A and for the rest of my soul I connected te L terminal of the alternator to a permanent positive (through a bulb). I called my buddy to get me and we jumpstarted it. I got home without further setbacks.

I reconnected the L on alt to F on plug and haven't had a problem since. I was very very disappointed with myself. Finally a propper car with all the relevant gages and I omited one of the most important. And I didn't even distinguished the flasher hint...

Anyway, I cruised a bit back home in the city before I filled it to the brim.

More than 500km on 70/30 mix. 700km total and the fuel consumption was 21.1 MPG, which is pretty good, I think. Highway got it way down for sure, but most of the time I spent on country roads.

LHernandezJr

...

m2rtin

Thank You very much, I appreciate it. You're a great inspiration Luis!