1984 Pontiac Firebird T/A

[Zenobian_84]

Greetings all; it's been quite some time since I've really posted here to a good degree.I blame that on the normal things; life, new jobs, the MJ not breaking down every other week, etc, etc.

 

However!

 

As with my MJ, I came into possession of a rather unique car, that I have thought to make a build thread for not only for my own sake, but so that one day someone might learn something useful that they wouldn't have otherwise learnt on their own. Well, with that out of the way, I can move onto the good stuff.

 

Now, before I begin, allow me to set the stage with some rather appropriate material, complete with synth-wave and questionable fashion for your listening (and viewing) pleasure.

 

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As is with every car people come into possession of, they usually have a colorful story behind them; this one is hardly an exception to that rule.

 

About 10 years ago or so, a good friend of mine had a pretty nice car as his DD to the dealership he worked at, and what would eventually be the place where I got my first job.  :wrench:

 

I remember the first time I had ever seen it, and was I ever floored by it. A slick, gold on black Firebird Trans Am, but no, not just any old bird, mind you! It had all the niceties that Pontiac had to offer it for the 1984 model year: Lear Seigler front bucket seats, a ram-air "power bulge" hood, aero-dynamic ground effects, a factory, top of the line Delco audio system, a "High-Output" 5.0 litre V8 mated to a Borg-Warner 5-speed manual transmission... I could probably go on, but you get the idea.

 

 

At the time I remember him driving it, it was starting to lose a little of it's luster from over 20 years of hard-earned service, but as a wide-eyed fourteen or fifteen year old, I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever seen on four wheels. I thought that this vehicle completely resembled the pinnacle of everything "cool" in a car; it had the looks, the sound, and the performance (cough) to match. Now, at the time, I usually was pretty keen on admiring it from a distance and going to go over to it and "ooh" and "aah" at it the times I came up to get something from my old man (who also worked at the same dealership).

 

Although, as time went on, I eventually got a car of my own (a '96 Pontiac Sunfire) and sure enough, he started driving the old Firebird less and less. Eventually, I decided to ask him if he ever had any plans for it, and if he'd ever want to sell it (not that 17 year old me could afford such a car, mind you, at the very least, entertain an idea of having something like it) and he was acceptably iffy on the response. He joked around and said that he'd probably hang onto it for a while, and that it was still up in the air about going to his daughter when she finally came around to being able to drive. :driving:

 

Like it or not, I didn't think much on it, and not long after that I remember hearing that the old reliable "High Output" Chevrolet 305 gave up the ghost. In its stead, he decided to go the route of putting in the typical replacement for the "Corporate 305", a 1979 350 block (truck variety, not car, for whatever reason; I can only assume because it was possibly due to being a 4-bolt setup on the bearing caps. More opportunities for power gains to be had, as the engine can stand up to more abuse, or so I've been told) he purchased while he was at the dealership,

 

At some point in the year or two following the old engine being scrapped, the 350 took it's place, and everything was alright. Eventually, I guess he decided to stop driving it, and it sat up at the dealership for a good 2-3 years or so in various stages of assembly. It was during this time I took to pestering him about selling it to me, only to have it rebuffed every time. After much of this, more than I'd probably care to admit, actually, he moved it back to his house and decided to tinker on it, and in turn let it sit around for another 5 years, IIRC.

 

So, after all that time, it seemed that my dream of owning the cool Trans Am were not to be had, and in turn, I ended up getting my MJ and moving along in life.  . :MJ 1: .

 

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It was at this time about a year or so ago that I got a phone call out of the blue from my good buddy, who brought up the question on whether or not I was still interested in buying the T/A from him, all these years later.  :eek:

 

As you can probably imagine, I was pretty quick to assure him that I was still interested in buying it from him.  :laughin:

 

But, as you can also imagine, after 7 years of sitting around, the car had lost a lot of the luster it used to have. Well, not as much as you'd think, but it was in a sorry sight, needless to say. Instead of being the cool car I knew and loved, it instead became delegated to storage shelf status. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, mind you, but it was a sight for sore eyes, to say the least when I came to first look at it again after all those years had passed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At first, I kind of had a doubt or two as to whether it was still the same car, because of how radically different it looked now versus how it did the last time I had seen it running around on the road. Suffice to say, all the doubts I had went away when I brushed off the dirt and dust from the old emissions label on the front support. When I saw the corner markings and the bottom emissions year rating, I knew it to be the same car that ran through my teenage memories.  :banana:

 

 

 

Needless to say, we talked about the car for a while, settled on a price, and I gave him my first of many small payments. I'll be grateful to him for all of eternity for letting me get this car from him. It was pretty tough seeing something go after owning it for 20 years or so, but when I made the last payment, he was happy to know that it was going to someone who'd take care of it after seeing the fruits of the labors with my Comanche over the years.  :thumbsup:

 

As it stands, I've done a lot of work to it since paying it off, but I'll leave that to another post, another time, perhaps. It's been it's own unique adventure, much akin to those that I've gotten from working on my own Jeeps over the years, and the various cars I work on every day at my shop.

 

I thought I knew a lot about cars before this, but it still goes to show that you don't know as much as you think you do when you decide to go about buying something this old with the intent to restore it. There's been plenty of times I've found myself cussing this thing out and swearing up and down I'll scrap it, but at the end of the day, it's been a fun car to work on, and I will always be thankful that I decided to give it a "second lease on life".

[RAH66]

I love it! Firebirds have been in my family for years:

1. Mom had a '73 Firebird

2. Dad had a '77 Trans Am (That my uncle now has)

3. They had an '01 Firebird when I was around 11 or 12 years old

4. My first car was '92 Firebird

5. My second car was a '99 Firehawk

 

I still daydream about resto-modding a third gen some day, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for 'em.

 

Awesome car, man! It's nice to see someone else who appreciates them.

[Guest]

I still daydream about resto-modding a third gen some day, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for 'em.

 

Awesome car, man! It's nice to see someone else who appreciates them.

Nice to see other Pontiac fans out there! I originally got the bug from my old man, who owned a quite large number of them at one point or another while I was growing up. I know blame him for my desire to listen to synth-wave with the t-tops down on my Trans Am.  :yes:

[Wiggilez]

nice, I've never been much of a GM, but i'll always liked the 3rd gen trans am, mostly because of the headlights though... I mean come on v8 5 speed AND headlight that go up and down you can go wrong with that.

[Guest]

Went through most of the initial concerns of cleaning up the car and getting it moved over to the other unit. Found a bunch of parts and the like laying around in and around the car. 

 

First order of business was to check what was wrong, and get it going to check out the vitals of the engine and the like. Took the AC-Delco battery out and brought it up to the shop for a slow charge; brought it back and threw it inside with a gallon or two of gas in a direct feed to the carburetor. Also went and changed the oil in it, as well as the coolant for some fresh stuff.

 

Sure enough, got it to fire up and ran it for a bit. Had the usual issues of a car that hasn't started in forever with smoking a little, and running a bit rough. Smoothed out.... somewhat, although it wasn't what I'd call a "lean, mean 350". Another issue I ran into (that I'm still getting around to working out) is that the battery will drain down after a few days of starting, as evidenced by this video. Still need to do a parasitic draw test to verify what's causing the drain, but I'll get to sorting that out in time.  :crossfingers:

 

 

Decided to go with getting myself another set of wheels, because if you've ever seen these cars, E V E R Y O N E has the polished aluminum 16s. I very rarely see anyone stick with the factory sized 15's and when they do, it's only a temporary thing.  :no:

 

My first problem with the performance 245/50/16s  is that they're expensive to replace, and you can no longer get any sort of "Gatorback" tread like the old Goodyears used to have. Not to mention the fact the front rims are different offsets than the rear, so a simple tire rotation is a big headache (unless you go side to side, which I don't like). So needless to say, they aren't the tires / rims for me. Besides, I rather like the 15" rims offered by Pontiac, because they're infinitely more aesthetic than the offset 16s.

 

I talked to the P.O about it, and he dug out some OE turbined 15's for me. Not completely unlike the KITT "bowling ball" style rims (see picture below) but another similar type Pontiac made for a few years before they switched to the stamped cross-hatch style for the 15's they'd later use (second picture below)

 

 

 

 

 

A free afternoon with a spray bottle of Simple green later, and....

 

 

 

Got to thinking that since I had three good rims and one $#!& spray-painted fourth, I'd just paint all 4 in a flat-black with clear. Here's one I did a test on mounted up on a 255/60 Cooper Cobra just to see if I'd like the look or not.

 

 

Well, was set on the tires, but not on the look, so I got creative and further painted it to test some theories. First, with gold accents on every other spoke. The OE style for this kind of rim was polished silver aluminum, or gold inserts on polished aluminum. Since I the car is gold on black, I figured that if I couldn't get OE gold brushed aluminum wheels, I'd go with this. But I didn't like it and kept testing.

 

 

Now with silver lip. Although after I got to this point, I did 2 more like this, needless to say. However, after I did 2 complete ones, I thought about the fact it looked gaudy, and I also didn't like that the gold didn't match. Since I couldn't source a paint close enough to the "bronzed metallic gold" the car had unless I ponied up for some duplicate paint to be made, I decided to paint them all bright silver with four coats of clear.

 

 

Shiny.

 

 

Now with ratty old 215/65 Michelin Harmony's on board. Better rollers than the dry-rotted 16's, anyway. 

 

 

Found a set of hubcaps in the back, so I threw 'em on the two fronts that are currently on the car.

 

 

As far as tires go, I wanted to run 235/60's, but the only decent ones I could find were of the Cooper Cobra variety. I settled on those for a while, and then thought about going back to the OE tire size of 215/65/15. Of course, being an oddball 15" size, there weren't a lot of choices out there on the market. I can still pick up a set of Cobra's, although I've been leaning more towards a Firestone or a different Cooper tire altogether.  :hmm:

 

Ideally, I'm wanting a US made tire, but those are getting hard to come by (sadly). In the end, I'm not sure what it'll have on it; I'd get BFG's, but can't justify their $136 a piece price verses $90 or so for a Cobra or Trendsetter. Another big problem is the fact I want it to be a factory looking tire (tread design), so the Cobra's are out, and Goodyear no longer makes a "Gatorback" looking tire in a 15" size. 

 

SO, the number one choice right now is this beaut. Put enough of these on cars for the last few years, and although they're slowly going out of production, they're dependable enough for what I want to do with the car itself. Not a bad looking tire, IMO, and a decent price to boot.  

 

 

I've searched high and low online and in person at other places, and it's generally come down to this, or a house brand Firestone tire itself (because for whatever reason, FS doesn't make the Firehawk Indy 500 tires anymore). :fs1:

 

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Moving along... I got bored one night and took a picture of every decal I could find on the car, including the build sheet and door jamb stickers. Been going through and making repo-decals like I did for a lot of the MJ stuff on here. Just to put out a few; I think I did alright, considering what I had to work with.

 

 

 

 

 

Now, for those of you savvy enough to gaze through the build sheet, you'll see that the car sports a "WY6" production code. As I'm sure some of you know who've owned or seen these and the fourth generation of Firebird advertised, there was a performance package you could order for these, being the "WS6". Although this badge is off of a 90s era WS6, it still basically has all the same goodies they've used since the early 80s, albeit, updated. The 80s variants had no such badging, other than the RPO codes on the build sheet to indicate it's a WS6 variant. 

 

 

 

Since mine is a WY6, what that means is that it has all of the WS6 handling and performance options except for the limited-slip rear end. As the story goes, during '83-early '85(?); the WS6 package was a very sought after thing, and if you had a Trans Am with the WS6 package, you were basically, in no uncertain terms, pretty hot $#!&. Now, there were other packages, like the WY6 and the like, that had pieces of the WS6 package except for certain crucial things. I've read that there was a shortage of limited-slip units for the rear ends at one point, so certain cars would be deemed WY6, or WS5 (WS5 being a discount RPO for the WS6 and Y6 packages).

 

So, with all this being said, the car itself is quite capable with the factory options on it. Although I doubt it'll see a lot of action once it's up and running fully again. Time will undoubtedly tell though. I've still many decals to make for this thing to get it to where I'd like it, appearance wise. Might even make a WY6 decal to put on it somewhere, although it might be a bit tacky. :dunno:

 

I mean, you know, unless I decide to go all out and do something wild with this thing. Like, turn it into it's ultimate point of existence and creation purpose....  :brows:

 

[yellaheep]

Old Amish women love 'em too...........  :yes:

 

 

 

 

Momma Mary from the TLC channel show "Return to Amish" just got herself one as an F-you to the church that shunned her......... lol.

[Guest]

Old Amish women love 'em too...........  :yes:

 

 

 

 

Momma Mary from the TLC channel show "Return to Amish" just got herself one as an F-you to the church that shunned her......... lol.

Who doesn't love an amish woman with good taste in cars?  :brows:  :laughin:

[Pete M]

nice!  my family has a fraternal twin to your car, an 83 Z-28 HO.  :D even has t-tops!   :rock on:   

 

take extra good care of the intake ducts, they are not the easiest to come by. :(  

[Guest]

nice!  my family has a fraternal twin to your car, an 83 Z-28 HO.   :D even has t-tops!   :rock on:   

 

take extra good care of the intake ducts, they are not the easiest to come by. :(

Funny you say that.... I actually broke the tabs off of the driver's side one trying to get it out. I really don't know how they expect you to get them off without taking the entire fender off to get to them.

 

Luckily I had a few laying around that came with the car. Unluckily, the 82-84 ducts are completely different than the 85+; so I guess I can thank GM for great hindsight.

 

I was eyeing a Z-28 a long time ago that a friend of mine had in H.S; luckily I didn't get too attached to it like I did with the Firebird though. :yes:

[Pete M]

 

 

 Unluckily, the 82-84 ducts are completely different than the 85+; so I guess I can thank GM for great hindsight.

 

 

good to know!  I've seen them on ebay occasionally but our are... ok.. for now at least so I never pulled the trigger.  didn't think to check the year.