After dreaming about going on the Hot Rod Power Tour for over 30 years, I finally signed up to do the long haul. I always wanted to take my 87 IROC on my first one. But I'm not getting any younger and the restoration of that one is moving very slowly. So I am going to take my 92 B4C on it this year. I have had the B4C for about 5 years now. It is an ex Indiana state police car and has about 200,000 miles on it now. It had the engine, trans and rear end rebuild at some point in its life. But they have many miles on them since that was done. I have been doing some small upgrades and repairs along the way since I got it. But it has needed a lot of bigger maintenance and repairs since Ive owned it. So now is the time to tear into it and prepare it for 3000 miles of driving. I also have some cosmetic work I will be doing in between the major mechanical stuff.

It needed a lot of maintenance to start. The transmission is leaking heavily and the converter is way too tight. The rear end is leaking and has a bad whine from a poorly installed 3.73 gear. The fuel pump is weak and whining pretty bad. The front sway bar end links are shot. The upper strut mounts are bad. Shocks and struts are blown out. Tires are mismatched and the wrong size on the front. The car has Edelbrock headers that are leaking where the tubes weld into the header flanges. I welded them back up to stop the leaks but I could only weld so many of the tubes in the car. The exhaust was terrible as well. It had muffler shop exhaust with a Magnaflow muffler with some really ugly 3" straight cut tail pipes.

Here are a few pictures of it before tear down.

 

Sounds perfect for power tour! You will enjoy yourself. I've been going for roughly 10 or more years now. Hopefully you have your rooms booked. Each stop becomes a mini car show in its own right.

 

Glad you are getting this bucket list item checked off.

 

I have a lot of friends who have gone and they love it. Im really looking forward to it. I'll be going with 2 of my best friends. One will taking his 95 Corvette and the other will be taking his 92 B4C or possibly his 86 Monte Carlo SS. It just depends if he can get the B4C straightened in time. It all of a sudden started running rough and dieing. All fuel delivery and ignition components have been address (even an NOS GM distributor and module) and still no luck. We are looking into ground issues now. I booked all my hotels the day registration was announced thankfully.

Thanks! I cant wait.

 

The first project was a simple one. I did the head lights about a month ago. I rarely drive this car at night. But my stepdaughter and I took it on a little road trip one night that took longer than expected and we ended up driving at night and I realized very quickly how bad the headlights were. 2 of the stock headlights were cracked and corroded inside. Unfortunately the worst part about this car so far is all the mismatched and Chinese hardware. So I replaced the headlight trim screws with factory pieces and installed a set of Octane glass housing H4 conversion headlights. The difference was substantial over the terrible, damaged stock lights.

The turn signal housings were absolutely terrible too. Being an Ex State Police car they had cut holes in the factory housings for the police lights. When they decommissioned the car they just left those holes open to the elements. It did a number on them. I installed a set of GM licensed reproduction housings I have had stashed away for about 20 years. They were surprisingly nice. I compared them to an NOS set I have for my 87 IROC and they were very similar. The reproductions did have some debris trapped inside the light tho. You can see it in the picture of the new driverside light.

 

The first thing I needed to do was get the terrible muffler shop Magnaflow muffler and tips hacked off and get the rear end pulled so it can be rebuilt. I am real fortunate to have a local guy who has been building rear ends for over 50 years. I am having him install a new set of Motive 3.23 gears to replace the 3.73s. I feel like the 3.73 is just too much at interstate speeds. It just feels like its struggling to maintain 75-80mph. Im also installing a new Eaton LSD and Moser axles. With 200,000 miles I didnt want to take any chances with the axle bearing surfaces on the stock axles being worn. So we are just going to cover all the bases and replace everything.

While the rear end was out I went ahead and pulled the tank down and replaced the fuel pump. Unfortunately I didnt get any pictures of that because I was covered in fuel and fighting the tank in and out was less than fun. The car already had an old Walbro 255 in it. But whoever installed it didn't put the insulator sleeve around the pump so it was rattling against the bracket on the sending unit. I installed a new Ti brand (they bought Walbro years ago) 255lph pump and installed the insulation and pump isolator to keep it quiet. Along with a new filter sock. Fortunately the inside of the tank was clean and all the baffles were still in place and in good shape. I am going to install a hot wire kit to boost the voltage to the pump. You could hear the old pump whining intermittently when the turn signal was flashing. Unfortunately I hate aftermarket wiring hanging around. So I am going to have to get creative with the routing on the hot wire kit.

 

My biggest struggle with this whole project has been the urge to clean and detail everything. Posting pictures of the car dirty and leaving it that way is embarrassing to me. But I am really bad about taking things apart and turning it into a perpetual project trying to make it perfect. I have to really keep reminding myself that this car will never be perfect and honestly I dont want it to be. The history and all the bumps and bruises are what make this car special to me. And the fact that is it already dirty means driving it wont ruin it. I just want to make it mechanically sound, run a little bit better than stock and continue to drive the wheels off of it.

 

Nice ride!! Our B4C is painted in about that color (along with decades of exposure on cheap paint). I keep flipping between 'restore it and detail it' and 'it's a survivor, so enjoy it for the awesome-to-drive car that it is'. So far a little of both have won out. We cleaned up the interior and have some better-condition spares to install, but I'm getting too old to do a complete restoration. It's probably worth more to my estate as-is, anyway. Ours IS a GAA car, though, so I do plan to get the paint restored to the original black-and-white scheme it rolled off the assembly line with at some point in time.

 

Good Luck! We are on our 5th HRPT and 4th with the 88 GTA.