To get this trainwreck rolling, this is my 1989 Bird.







It's a Base model Firebird, factory T-top car, originally Maui blue but repainted with a darker DuPont blue. L05, WCT5, 3.08 open. The owner had slapped a goodwrench 305 in it ~40k before I got my mitts on it.

Saw it on the side of the road and bought it on the spot, These are all pictures from shortly after getting it. The previous owner had done some questionable work to the car. Including the hack special wiring, shifter handle that was taped on, partial A/C delete, and many more nuances that I slowly discovered.

 

Here you can see the beautiful wiring. There were wire nuts, wires twisted together with duct tape or electrical tape, poorly installed crimp connectors. The car actually came with good speakers, but the wires to them were just twisted on, so the audio was horrible. The car had a Flexolite radiator fan, with no relay, no fuse, just a battery lead and a switch on the dash. You can see the rats nest of crap wiring where all the old smog and A/C connectors were just left hanging around to burn on the exhaust manifolds.

The first things to happen to the car were new bearings in the axle and my brother re-built the drums. I cleaned up the wiring a little to make it less of a fire hazard and cleaned the engine bay a little.


The car started to run really bad, so I re-built the TB, did a tuneup and cleaned up the wiring a little more. Then I got a fiberglass A/C delete box and tossed some blue paint and chrome at the engine. Still looked really bad. . .


About that time, my brother had pulled the carpet up and found a few rusty spots. A hole under the gas pedal and 2 drip marks from the leaky T-tops. No welder at the time, so we epoxied some patches over the holes. "I'll fix that right, Domani"

The car got all new carpet, a chrome steering wheel, my brother made a set of door panels, removed the center console, and painted most of the interior panels black.


I got bored of TBI after a few months, so I ditched the setup for a street Demon 625cfm and an HEI dizzy. Decided to ditch the heater, too, so I made a new set of block off plates for the firewall holes. Ran like a champ, but it would grind the gears if I bang-shifted 2nd and the one wheel peel 3.08 was Mucho-No-Bueno.

After school one day, with no idea what I was doing, I crawled under the car and pulled the trans out. I couldn't help but notice that all the bushings were shot, the tie rods were bent, and everything was filthy.

 

First thing I did was rip the front suspension apart, This was about the time I bought a welder, so I welded some gussets into my control arms and boxed the rears. New polyurethane bushings all around, new Ball joints, tie rods, fancy UMI billet adjusters, new end links, rear shocks, The front struts and all the springs were OK so I just cleaned them up.

I found a 3.23 posi 4th gen disk axle on CL, so I grabbed it and cleaned it up.



Here is one of the interesting features of the car. There appears to have been some sort of wreck, so someone cut the front off a different car and welded it on. There is evidence elsewhere, such as wrinkles in the subframe.
While I had it apart, I cleaned up the spindles and K member and put on a set of fancy brakes.

 

The entire core support and steering box area was all rotted out so I chopped it all out and made my own version of the same.





The clutch was quite abused, and the flywheel was all sorts of colors, so I got a new clutch, resurfaced the flywheel, new clutch fork pivot, new fork, pilot bushing, TOB.



Cleaned up the trans, opened it up to be sure the grinding was a clutch problem, and sealed it back up with new seals and re installed my pro-5.0 shifter and cool custom handle.

 

 

Yeah, I talked to a guy who parts out these cars and he said he never saw one as rotted out as the front section on my car. Makes me wonder why it was chosen to graft on.

 

I finished rebuilding the suspension, then put in a 4 pt roll bar and made a 3pt strut tower brace.





Made a fancy cradle to hold my radiator



Cleaned up my gas tank and sending unit



You can clearly see where I had to patch the floors. . .




I threw in a set of Alston inner subframe connectors and made an outer set that sort of copies the UMI ones.


Again, more extensive rust repair, and you can see where my SFC'c tie into the front.


I converted the car to manual brakes with a strange aluminum mopar style master cylinder, adjustable prop valve and big bore calipers up front. All the line is 3/16" The pedal is very firm, but it stops on a dime.

 

There was a local cruise I wanted to go to, so I threw together a crappy side exit exhaust and boogered the rest of the car together just enough to go. while trying to tune the carb in the parking lot before the cruise left my radiator split a seam and puked all over. The parking lot was next to a lake, though, so I filled it up with lake water and limped home.



Shiny Ebay coolant overflow tank






Some pictures when I was firing it up for the first time in 6 months


Battery disconnect

 

Little bodywork over the summer




Made a lower profile radio pod



Got a set of seats out of a subaru imprezza to jam in there


Camaro spoiler

 

Converted the front to coilovers, which required a new strut tower brace.






Made an A-pillar gauge pod



So far I'm liking the coilovers. I like the adjustability, the ride is great, It is so nice being able to take apart the entire front suspension with no special tools. Max 1 hour and I can have the whole thing apart and on my bench, I couldn't do that with the coils.

 

Made a new panhard bar brace


Got a set of stainless chinezium headers for $75. 20 minutes with a die grinder and they bolt right up





So, when I installed my coilovers I noticed that with the front jacked up the driver side door was slightly harder to close than on the ground, so in my twisted mind that means I have to stiffen the chassis more. Hence the door bars and triangulation on the main hoop.



My exhaust plan was to have a pair of short pipes off the headers with a v band clamp on the end in an easy to reach spot, that way, I can make multiple exhausts and swap them quickly with the car at ride height.

First one I made was a home made set of pos chambered mufflers. They are just pieces of tubing split to make a triangle with "V" shapes welded inside. They sounded like crap, so I built something more legitimate. dual pipes with 2 1/2" ebay chambered no-name mufflers. I found this piece of stainless pipe at the scrap yard, and it made a perfect set of tips, just haven't cleaned all the mud out yet.

I found these exhaust hangars (like the one in the picture below) off some honda in the junkyard, and they are loose enough to let the exhaust wobble a bit.





Obviously you are thinking right now that I no longer have any ground clearance, but it actually isn't much worse than if I had ground effects.

 

Got the seats back in with the roll cage. I decided to ditch the ~15 lbs of adjustment mechanisms of the driver seat and just gave it fixed mounts like the passenger side.





With the seats in I was all set to go for a test drive. The exhaust sounds absolutely angry, and it is a blast to bomb around in. Runs terrible, however. I have to tune my carb now that I have headers.

I did take the opportunity to detail the engine bay, because everyone knows, it doesn't matter if your car runs well, as long as the carb is polished.

 

After polishing up the engine compartment I did a little tuning and got it to run sweet, did a little light to light racing with a buddy and his 67 440 satellite. That satellite mopped the floor with my stock L03, so the next thing to tackle on my list is moar power . I'm taking an 89 Tbi 350 block .030 over with flat top pistons, a stock hyd. roller lifter setup, stock powdered rods, some kind of blower cam, Blueprint aluminum heads, and to top it off, my Crossfire power tower.



I also tossed on my new KYB gas adjust rear shocks courtesy of Tootiepang.

 

I'm going to shave the gas door, so I made a new filler neck that puts the fuel fill behind the driver side tail light housing.

 

Cool build! I'm really digging the gas fill mod. I've never seen that done before.

 

Thanks!

 

To me this is all around cool. Regardless of what you end up with it’s people like you that inspire us to imagine, and this is where great ideas are born. 👍🏻

 

Made some progress on the gas door. Got it wired up and put a latch on.

 

Re- worked the fill door a little and got the fuel system together.

 

Hack job or not, it's good to see another F-body being saved.