Rebuild already underway! I have a replacement fender off a white 87 firebird in the mail as we speak😊

 

With the unfortunate “incident” I forgot to mention that there was another third gen at the event. A 700 HP twin turbo Camaro on Race slicks!

 

Very cool, I really dig your track-day reports. There's in event in Homestead, FL not far from me in January that I'm think of doing, even if my car is not set up for the track. Great that you're already doing the repairs to the fender.

 

As 2Slow5.0 said, rebuild better!

However, it looks like there are some clearance issues with my master cylinder brace.

I’ll take this type of problem any day...

 

Yay!

Thank you Franks Pontiac Parts!

 

trust me, you wanna tie that brace to the cowl....

 

it is a 3 point BMR. Do you think the included mounting plate for the 3rd points are strong enough? I had planned to bolt and weld the mounting plate to the cowl. should I reinforce it?

I planned to bolt the main bar to the shock tower Top Hats so that it can be removable for easier access to the motor. But I’m certainly not against welding it in if you think that makes more sense. If I do need access at some point,That’s why God made angle grinders.

 

 

its not parked in my garage,right? do i win the car......pleeeeeeze.

 

Rigid triangulation is the most stable, but it doesn't have to be welded for that. If it's bolted to the firewall and welded to the bar, it'd be really good, that way you could at least unbolt the whole bar when you need access.

 

Notice any difference with the brace? When you gonna swap that intake?

 

it’s sometimes strange how one thing affects another. You’re going to think I’m nuts but what if I told you the steering actually feels a little bit sloppier?

What I think is happening that the rigidity of the bar is now amplifying the flex in the steering box, bushings, ball joints, etc... but I only have about 50 miles on the car since installing the bar.

also, my passenger side front tire is now rubbing on the fender liner pretty badly on tight turns out of my driveway. I am not 100% sure what this is about. This is not the side that had the friendly encounter with the wall. but my toe was knocked off pretty badly on the other side.

before going to the track I had dialed in a bunch of camber and it was already pretty close. I’ll just have to play around with it a little bit. And I’ve already pulled out the fender liner on the driver side it’s not that big a deal to pull it out on the passenger if necessary.

With regards to the intake, my intent is to fabricate a cold air intake box similar to the single SLP. I put that off for now because it’s winter. 95% of my radiator is already covered with cardboard now just so I can get some heat in to the car as it is. Lol

And why does driving around with a slightly mismatched white front fender (And dents in my hood which you can’t see in the picture) bother me more than when I was driving around with a blue nose and red bumper?

 

I was talkin about the actual intake manifold. Seems like alot on the table with the stock runners. The intake tube looks pretty good on that.
maybe the nose pushed over a bit from the wall tap? I know my 91, the passenger side tire will rub at full lock if its on an incline. Im gonna have it put on a frame machine to make sure its all straight before I do the subframe connectors. I see no sign of damage, even after it was stripped down for paint

 

i love this car,man i really want a 91-92 nose car....it would make a good stable mate to this one!

 

I have a set of first GEN SLP runners that I am slowly in the process of porting. However, that project has been put on the back burner right now.


Before

After

 

OK. I figured out why my passenger side tire was rubbing. When I replaced the driver side fender I remove the wheel liner And have not replaced it yet. What I have come to find out, is that the driver side wheel liner was affectively acting as a bump stop limiting my turning radius. Therefore, removing the wheel liner allowed the passenger side wheel to turn further than normal and hit the wheel liner.

Some of you guys might be wondering what the hell is going on with my car and why my front tires rub so much. Well I have aftermarket coil overs and have dialed in a bunch of positive caster and a ton of negative camber.

 

looks like it’s going to be a busy winter! And those strange inserts in my tail pipes are silencers held in by vice grips (to keep wife happy).

 

looks like the drivers side tailpipe needs to be bent down to get it off the bumper.is it melted?

 

Not melting the bumper but cooking/staining the paint. As much as I can, I try to be proactive with cleaning the residue off the bumper. However, the paint is certainly starting to yellow right above the tip.

And the tip is not actually touching the bumper it’s just the heat and soot.

I have started playing around with the air fuel ratio to try and lean things out a little bit at idle.

 

Quick update. Partial winter teardown is underway. Finally getting around to modify my driver side y pipe which sits really low and rubs really bad.

oh yeah, and a set of Alston‘s inner subframe connectors while I’m there.

 

May want to think twice about the Alston's I have them on my 87 they did make huge difference but they hang low and scrape - since you already have the perimeter bars I don't think you'll gain much - just my my 90 Formula has perimeter connectors but its still not driving so I can't compare both are WS6 cars I read through this thread a while back : 2 sets of SFC
I guess we will find out your opinion soon

 

So what you’re saying is that I may fix the problem of my Y pipe scraping the ground only to introduce an entirely new problem...

that’s the story of my life! LOL

 

Could be, these cars work good with everything but a good exhaust not saying it cant be done but it wasn't a big concern when they built them -achilles heel if you will factory exhaust was horrible I'm doing SLP 4-1 with DynoDon 2.5" Y-Pipe and 3" 2OTL not great but wont drag pipes

 

Mine has Hawks long tube headers to a Magna Flow exhaust. Clearance is great everywhere except for where the driver side y-pipe meets the collector. As the pipe leaves the collector it takes an unnecessary downward angle before coming back up to combine with the center exhaust. I will take a picture when I get a chance.

 

I finally got around to welding in my subframe connectors and fabricating a new driver side Y-pipe section to replace the one that was dragging.




I find PVC pipe helpful for the mock up stage.

If you don’t have a pipe bender you need to use pie cut sections of pipe to create the three dimensional angles.

 

Quick story, when my wife and I got married my entire family wanted to meet her so of course they required us to drive to New York for the holiday (they seemed to have no interest into driving down to Virginia). So we showed up, unannounced, with all three of our dogs. all of which are poorly trained and Two of which you aren’t really housetrained...

Long story short, we’ve never been invited back🤣


Since I have a lot of time on my hands.



This bent up subframe has always really bothered me...

Decided to take out the grinder and clean up the y-pipe section.

 

with time on your hands you could finesse that sub frame section back to "closer to stock" position at least visually.use a steel plate and bolts,washers through that hole to pull it back down then carefully adjust with channel locks/adjustible wrenches and or prybars.give it a quick chassis black touch up .it might not end up perfect but im sure you can make it close to undetectable.

just a thought....

this is kind of a mental note to me as well,ive got to straighten out my pinchweld/fender seams before my sub frame connector install and i need to also do this,lol.

ps,that t56 looks delish....my t5 is jealous

 

I was looking to go on undetectable. But then I noticed I had some 4 inch bar stock lying around...😎

 

you could've got all creative with a grinder(kidding,who is gonna see it) but hell,this will work and be super functional and can be a jacking point.

 

And now with the Alstons inner subs the car is RIGID! In the past I would fear any train tracks and the resulting gnashing of teeth.

Now it feels like a modern car. The difference is amazing!

Last night I realized I forgot to reattach my fuel line brackets so jacked it up and placed it on 4 jackstands. As is normal, and I shook the car to make sure that it was solid on the jacks. Then if I walked around I accidentally kicked one of the jackstands and it fell over.

Yes. The car was rocksolid on three jackstands! It would never do that in the past. My 370Z (with a welded six point roll bar) does that.

of course, I slipped the jackstand back in place before I crawled under just to be safe.

 

Yeah, most of the damage done to those subframes was from placing jackstands under them.

 

never the less,its a wicked car and is coming along wonderfully.i wish i lived in a more southern environment and had more room to work.single garage in canada with 3 sbc's,my trans am a rear end and a bunch of other stuff leaves me almost no room to maneuver (doesnt help im 6'4" and 285+)keep it up!!!

 

I was looking at an old bring a trailer auction and I came across this 90 race car. Looking at the underside pictures I noticed a little similarity to my recent chassis work.

And it makes my welds look like they were done by a master welder! Lol

 

Nice work, keep it up!

 

I just went through a Third GEN Firebird right of passage. The rebuilding of the headlight motors.

And if you look closely you’ll see the bad trunk hatch drive gear I replaced as well.

Using the winter to finally get to some of those back burner to do issues.

 

Wow, you have been busy! I like fixing the little things (except headlights- my 2 fourth gens wore my a$$ out!) its nice to have everything as the should be I'm curious how the street manners are with the double SFC both my cars have each type but not both on one

 

A lot of it’s called not having kids LOL!

I am loving the car with both inner and outer subframe connectors. Of the two, the inner really made the biggest difference.

The car really is solid right now.

But when you think about it it makes sense. If you have a ladder and cut out the middle section what’s the best way to strengthen it so that you can climb up on the roof? Would you weld in a bar that connects the very bottom to the top of the ladder? Or would you just replace the parts you cut out?

and I’ve had zero ground clearance issues. And this is with me lowering the rear of the car (I adjusted the coil overs).

 

Still runnin the torque arm on the trans tailshaft? Id be thinkin that would be on the list

 

only makes sense
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/engi...-throttle.html

 

i’ve been on a pretty steep learning curve learning the suspension of these cars. I haven’t gotten around to understanding the concept of mounting to the chassis rather than the transmission. Although, as I write this it seems self evident…

I think BMR makes a torque arm relocation bracket? You wouldn’t happen to be able to link me to any other custom fabrication examples?

 

I also recently adjusted the coil overs and lowered the rear of my suspension and it has thrown my handling all to hell (although the .5 inch total toe out I dialed in is probably not helping).

But I still have to adjust my panhard bar and check my torque arm angle to see how off they are.

 

Love this thread.

Awesome formula keep that car I’ve had my 91 for 15 yrs and doubt I’ll ever let it go and atleast around my area you don’t see em pop up for sale anymore.

 

thanks, I’m loving every minute of having this car. Except for, maybe, hitting that wall...

I finally figured out what was going on with the handling of my car. After spending too much time trying to understand the effects of lowering on a solid axle third GEN I remembered the words my father used to tell me.

“If you hear hoofbeats don’t go looking for zebras“.

it turns out I was running into my bump stops. And of course, 33-year-old rubber makes a poor replacement for springs and shocks. So I pulled out the old saws all and fixed the problem by slicing 2/3 of the bump stop off.

 

Was I really contemplating using a piece of exhaust hanger as my bracket? No. Really… Let’s just say it’s a mock up for the aluminum piece I ended up using…



Why does this make me smile? Could I have come up with a less elegant but more functional solution? I don’t think so🤔

 

Been a while since I posted a picture. And I don’t think I posted one since she’s been lowered. Still wearing my back up front wheels (I flat spotted the $hit out of my other pair).

 

That mean its time to change up the wheel game? 17s or 18s? Nice progress btw. Id love to roll around in around in any nice vehicke this time of year without it goin to chit. My step bro moved down to VA years ago. Maybe he was on to somethin....

 

Funny how one thing always leads to another.

I lower the car and The handling goes to crap because I keep banging into my bump stops.

So I cut the bump stops in half. And that doesn’t fix the problem.

I cut the bump stops even more. That doesn’t fix the problem.

Replace the bump stops with some low profile pieces and that kind of helps the problem.

So ultimately I’m only left with two options. Either I just raise the car back up or I need to replace the springs with heavier units.

 

My wife got our golden retriever a pretty cool new Dog Tag (although I realize the lines are for a second GEN I did have the artist re-draw the spoiler and nose).

 

Quick update on my suspension tuning journey. I upgraded my springs from 130 lbs to 170 lbs. This helps but I am still hitting the bump stops on larger bumps. My new bump stops may have been functional (ie. they are stopping metal on metal contact) but they are not very pliable creating a fairly jarring impact. And this does not lend it self to predictable handling...

I could try and go stiffer on the springs but that leads down another road that I really do not want to travel (over steer, less traction, harsher ride, the need to balance the front springs, etc...).

Of course I could just raise the ride height. But I am not there yet. I am going to try some different bump stop options.

 

So bump stops Version 3 have arrived. These are made of a closed cell neoprene material so hopefully they absorb impact better.

However, they are almost twice as tall and will necessarily reduce suspension travel.

I should get a chance to install them this weekend. I will post on the results.