For the back covers I ordered some new clips from China. They're pretty close to the original, just needed slitting the base.

 

Needed to sand and repaint those battered hinge covers. Had great help from my son



For painting I followed a TGO member (luvofjah) from this link
http://www.knightfoundation.net/F0ru...hp?f=1&t=17168
in the hope that SEM Palomino color coat would be the best match to my 1991 camel interior. Well in short: it wasn’t. I didn’t realize that he didn’t have a direct comparison as he changed interior colors from black to - well - palomino. Sure looks nice when the complete interior is in the same color. But mine is all camel.
Genius as I am I painted a piece without comparing first. Palomino is way too light/yellowish and is nowhere close to the original color.



1991 Camel is quite similar to 1982 Tan though, with camel being a hint darker and more towards red. So I ordered a can of SEM Camel and that was a good choice. It's not a perfect match but I'd give it a 8/10.

Here's a side by side comparison. Anyways the colors look a little different on my computer.

 

Out with those old seats. Compared to the PMD seats the 1991 seats feel very cheap. The PMDs are so much stronger (and heavier).




I used the rails from my 1991 seats which were basically a bolt on. And bingo there it is - 1991 Firebird with 1982 viscount bucket seats! I think it looks sweet. Just crappy pic. Color of hinge covers look wrong. In reality it looks much better. Will get some better pictures tomorrow. Hope the sun will come out...

 

As I had promised here are some better pictures... we had nice weather this afternoon.

Next thing on my list is to finally get the power bulge functional and add some leds to the exterior.

 

Looks Great!

Dammit, makes me want to get mine done tomorrow!

Had my seats redone recently...
I picked out my own fabric and sent it to Acme...



What engine do you have?
You stated functional bulge hood...
I have the same hood, but TPI...
I got a screen for the opening (that the 82 to 84 had) chromed and I'm going to have a shift light shine from behind it

Rafael

 

BOAHH dude! Those seats look soooo CLEAN!!! Very nice!
Keep going, I wanna see those mounted!

I have an LO3 305 TBI - not much to begin with, but at least it should benefit from a functional cowl induction hood, so I hope. I'll post up when I make some progress.
Chromed screen you said? Must look very nice, hope to see that soon. Had mine anodized back to black. Are you gonna put lights for each gear behind the grill?

 

Progress is SLOW on my ride... Getting a new Astro Performance A5 Transmission (upgraded T5) in a couple weeks, then over Christmas, going to do a lot of wiring... stereo, speakers, amps, Car PC, shift light...

I have an EBL P4 Flash, so I can tune at what RPM the Shift light turns on, so I'm running a low voltage relay and an led shift light, not setup yet, but will be with all the Christmas vacation wiring

 

Sounds good!
Take my advice and get those seats in now! It's really a big difference when driving. Seems that you have the rails mounted already. It'll take you a 13 mm wrench, a Phillips screw driver and one hour max. I poked the head rests with a needle to find the holes for the seat belt guides - all in all a totally easy swap.

 

I have black guides, they're in already, check top left of pic (passenger seat)... My car was initially black interior, already done SEM for plastics (Palomino) and I'm going to keep the black seatbelts, I think the contrast will make it like more like a race car

I grabbed a driver's seat out of a 3rd gen in the yard an it's in the car.. My interior is totally gutted, no plastics, no seats, no headliner, no console, no dash pad, and just the MPH... I have so much wiring to do for Christmas holidaze, but then I have all new beechwood carpet etc...

Rafael

 

Haven't posted a while - I was extremely busy, and still am. BUT things are moving - slowly yet steadily.
Today my (sort of) christmas present arrived! YYEEESSSS!! It took me a while to decide which cat back. I fancied a GMMG but these are unobtanium round these parts and they're a problem to get approved, too.
So I opted for a Magnaflow. Can't wait to have it mounted and to HEAR it

 

Nice exhaust.... I did some work on mine over the hoidaze, but slowed down a bit, I got a cold and wife the flu... Astro A5 is in, I did a lot of wiring (not done) finished wiring console and need to build a box to hold it, then wire up all the stuff in the car... it's all just wires, no switches.... Once all that is done, do the stereo (working on door pods) sub box is done, I have all the amps, speakers, deck and wires, etc... then carpet, plastics, etc... goal is Dec 2015 painted and done!

Keep the updates rollin and pics

Rafael

 

great car and an even greater story. good luck!

 

Love your story and the car. You've clearly got a talent for the details, keep at it!

 

Sweet! I look forward to seeing that exhaust go on.

 

Thanks guys! I'll try to post a vid when it's done

 

Great thread.
love the steering wheel.

 

thanks Linson!

 

Just read your whole thread and I'm loving it! Good work man!

 

Thanks KR81!

 

Got the car back from the garage yesterday. He said that Magnaflow 16829 wasn't just a drop in thing, he actually had to modify the mounting so it wouldn't touch the bumper. Well anyway, here's a vid:

 

I think it sounds nice and deep. Anyone knows if it get's even better over time? I could still bear a little more thunder like rumbling...

 

Great thread!

 

Thanks by the way!

 

Haven't posted a while... Well I got myself an overhead console by 1MeanZ from this forum. It was in a really great shape. Still it did show its age and needed some cleaning up.




As the lens was missing I got one from eBay. This one was in a really awful shape. Nevertheless it's an original one, not a reproduction. And it can be fixed (I have grown to like sanding and clear coating ).

 

Here's how it turned out finally:

 

I may have to try that Palomino for my tan '85 IROC interior. I've painted my seatbelt retainers 4 times and haven't gotten a perfect match yet.

 

As for the console I cleaned it with soap, water and then ethanol. After drying I put on one coat of SEM Plastic Adhesion Promoter and then one coat of SEM Satin Black 15243. The leather pouch got a little treatment with shoe shine.



As I mentioned the lens needed some heavy sanding with 400 grit, then 600, then 1000, then 1500. Finally 3 coats of SEM Plastic Adhesion Promoter and 3 wet coats of clear. Turned out nice - I think. That swivel light also got the sanding treatment plus one coat of aluminum primer and two coats of black.



Hope I find the time tomorrow to put it in the car. Anyways the weather should be nice. I'll keep the pics coming.

 

Palomino is really a very light brown. Hope it works for ya. Colors are very hard to reproduce on a computer

 

It's a sunny day! So here's part 2:

I actually wanted to follow noahTHEpurdy's excellent overhead console installation guide https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/inte...d-console.html
- but the pics are gone

So I scraped together what I could find in my brain and on the site to still get it right. For those who also want to install the roof console here is the template for the t-top version (hard top version has a space of 2" (instead of 3") between the two smaller and the big hole, rest is identical):

 

It feels a little scary cutting through the head liner. But there was no choice if I wanted to get it done, so I courageously seized the knife

 

There was a white and an orange wire that had to be soldered to the respective wires on the plug. Ground went to ground and that was basically it. It was one of the simpler things I have done so far - thanks to the great instructions on TGO.



Now all I need is a pair of sunglasses to put in the pouch

 

Honestly this car is looking great. Every little thing makes such a big difference and yet it is all so subtle. Love it!

 

There are three more things on my to do list:
1. get the power bulge hood functional - I have all the parts ready, probably the next thing
2. exterior LEDs - everything ready too
3. one touch turn signal - all ready to go in

Unfortunately tomorrow I'll have to go to work AGAIN... Two weekend days are simply not enough.

 

Hey man, thanks! I'm happy if you like it!

 

It’s time to wake this thread from the dead!

Since my last post there has a lot been going on. For one thing I got the cowl induction setup installed. I put that in a separate thread here:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/hist...-trans-am.html

 

Another thing is I replaced all the exterior bulbs with LEDs, and of course the two thermal flashers (turn signal and hazard flasher) had to be replaced by LED flashers, too.

https://www.superbrightleds.com/more...c-flasher/779/

As a side note, the LEDs are much brighter than the original bulbs. That might be a problem when they burn away the retina of the people behind me when I have to brake at night. I’ll take care of that later. Maybe PWM is the way to go.

 

While I was at it: there’s a new law in the EU which requires daytime running lights (DRL) for every car, except for cars built before 1970. You’ll need to add DRLs – or drive with the headlights on all the time, lol. My country had to adopt that ridiculous law as well, oh gosh.

So what to do if not add some ugly DRLs?

I decided to use the turn signal housing and add a bicolor orange/white LED to keep the stock look.

 

I constructed a little circuit to switch off the DRL on the respective side whenever a turn signal would flash. Basically there is a capacitor that stores the energy of a single flashing and drives a relay coil steady until the flasher is turned off. There are two more inputs, one for the headlights and one for the fog lights. This will ensure, that the DRLs are switched off when either light is on.


Always ON when key in run:




With the turn signal ON, the respective DRL is permanently OFF and goes back to ON two seconds after the turn signal is switched OFF:




The law requires DRL to be OFF when head lights or fog lights are ON:

 

In case someone is interested, here are the details:

Part list

Rel1-4: SPDT relays, I used two Panasonic ACT512
D1-4: 1N4001
C1-2: 1000 µF (for LED) or 10000 µF (for incandescent bulbs)
R1-2: 10 KΩ

The PCB layout is attached as well as the Firebird wiring schematics for the wires to splice

 

And here is the schematics:





You can see where to solder the parts in the picture above. I put the board in a plastic housing. For the inputs I spliced wires from the engine compartment. The box was placed on the driver’s side in front of the vapor canister, where a little space was free.



As a side note: when the DRL function is not needed, I can just plug off the box and the system is working as it was before without DRL.

 

I consider the car finished – for the moment

Still lots of ideas (digital dash would be awesome, but still a little undecided).

 

Just a teeny-weeny update here lol.

I decided to add the digital dash to my Firebird. But that is some time-consuming work!!! So still preparing on that one.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/inte...dash-swap.html

Aside from that I took a stab at saddlering and made myself a keychain from leather haha, not really a car matter but fun anyway. I punched some open-pored leather with a stamp I had 3D printed in PA 2200 („Strong & Flexible“) from shapeways.

The cuts came out a little rough, but not too bad for a first attempt. What do you think guys?

 

Very nice!

 

Minor update: few days ago the left head light wouldn't go up anymore. It went down no prob but I had to manually crank it up again. The motors were both good so I followed the service manual which stated to measure resistance in the head lamp control module. Seems that one was broken. It has the GM part #16514174.



So I looked for a replacement, but as it turns out, that is unaffordable! A NOS one costs US$600 ???
So I yanked open the module to try to fix it. In other threads some suggest to check all the soldering connections, but mine were all good. And there were no brown/blackish spots as well. From looking at it I assumed that the parts that need cooling would probably be the first to fry. In that case those were the two MOSFET transistors named BUZ10.

 

I got myself a couple BUZ11 which seem to have very similar characteristics and were available for 50 cents a piece.



Hardest part was to pull off the nut for the heat sink and put it in the newly soldered ones. As it turns out: everything is working as it should again. What a relief.

 

Digital dash conversion still going on, not much no progress lately

 

Great work Cehbra. You're an electrical guru!

 

Thanks dyno!
That was more like a lucky punch I guess. But it did the job.

 

And you managed to get the Magnaflow through MFK?

 

Actually no. At least not yet. The guy from the inspection made me put back the original system - which I kept for that purpose. But there seems to be a way to do it. I'll post up when I find out.