1st Gen Lunchtable Thread - General Discussion

Congrats man!

 

Sometimes I forget about the lurkers/guests as well. They could create a profile on all of us.

 

That's awesome, floor pans aren't particularly thick so you must have a knack if you did that successfully even with help.

My first dive was trail by fire at my first heavy equipment job, working the side door at a rental place. Customer brought back a trailer with the lift finally stripped out and instead of rebuilding it they made me cut it off and weld on a new one.... it was not pretty but the grizzled oldhead gave the nod of approval and it went back in the fleet.

I only worked there like 18months but it wasn't broken by the time I quit

 

I don't forget about em...

I am open and candid enough to share and figured they get off on it. Plus they gotta wade through @Wulf cranking it memes so I think they've earned their profile

 

The Trans Am was just really a 'trim' level up from a Firebird as they came with a few items standard vs a bird.

Going off of memory, if you ordered a dash from say 'Classic Industries' (where I got all my NOS parts), there were several variants such as "with A/C" or "with TACH" and yes they were interchangeable as long as you ran the wiring for said sensors.

Pretty easy to do really on those old GM's.

 

Had put in my 2 weeks notice, 2 weeks ago so yes.

 

Right?

THANK YOU BROTHER!

Finally get to breath holy shit

 

Congrats on the move, excited to see what you do next.

 

This is what he'll be posting

 

The bird has like no gauges at all, it really only has the speedo and the gas gauge. Did you ever do any upgrades to your cluster?

Also any cool upgrades to the car in general?

 

I had an 'Esprit' which was the underpowered V8 they offered out of all the bird cars. Really more of a base model type vehicle but not as base as an older Camaro of the time?

I put a cowl hood which I found sitting on a Firebird in someone's driveway. I had driven by many times as the guy lived not far from me, and so one day I knocked on his door out of the blue and inquired about the hood.

Got that, and went on changing the crappy blue interior to all black from Classic Industries.

Ordered the interior sound deadening and carpet (black), door panels (black), 'leather' (vinyl, black) seats, new foam cushions, and Trans Am exterior trim for all over.

Same friend that helped me weld the floor pan parts helped with swapping a 400 from an Oldsmobile, tranny and all.

Aside from all that, nothing 'cool' or 'new' with the exception of stereo, and some autometer gauges to replace what would be 'factory' gauges on a Trans Am dash panel.

This was just something I worked on after I got out of law enforcement, and had I dumped extra money into it that I didn't have, I would've gone stand alone and probably a whole new digital gauge setup.

 

I do miss that car but the biggest job we took on that car was replacing/fixing the subframe as part of it had cracked.

I had gotten the car cheap and put a ton of work+money into it to get it to be a daily driver.

Only thing that never got finished was getting the trunk completely lined up, and paint.

I sold it primer gray.

 

Whole new interior! Wow. My buddy has a 1976 ('76 is the first year of SMOG, so we can't touch the engine which sucks) and it's black on black. Fun fact, he had it repainted in the 2010's in Learjet Black. The shop he brought it to also painted business jets, and they had extra fuselage paint.

It's got a 90's Kenwood cassette deck, it's due for a more modern one. Can you elaborate on your autometer gauge setup? Did you swap the Firebird bezel to a Trans Am bezel to allow for the extra gauges?

He has some god awful aftermarket gauge setup and it's literally disintegrated, the plastic bits from the inside of the gauge are all in pieces. It's one of those Walmart tri gauge specials.

 

The gauges were attached by bolts/nuts on a metal panel that ran along the rear side of the dash.

Just analog gauges I ordered to fit the size of the 'cut outs' and running separate wiring+sensors to say, coolant temp, transmission temp, oil pressure, and so forth.

Nothing fancy, as Autometer analog gauges run no more than $100 each at the time.

 

Did you have the four hole bezel when you got the car? I think those came on the nicer Firebirds and Trans-Ams, the right most two were for AC vents. My buddy has nothing there, it's just blank with a Firebird emblem. I was going to find a Trans-Am bezel to use so we have gauge cutouts instead of having to use the god awful bolt on gauges from walmart like it has.

 

Yeah I recall only having like 2 holes, and I went with a Trans Am dash because they had more for additional gauges that the car didn't come with.

So I stuck Autometer gauges in them -



Not so much a "gold" tint as shown in the picture, but that's what I got used on ebay or something.

It looked similar to that of a gum wrapper foil, but it didn't clash too much since the interior was black.

Had a Grant steering wheel the previous owner left that I wish I switched to something else.

 

@BartMaster1234

Being over +12 years ago, I don't have many pictures but here are a few old ones -









You can see the big pile of new parts I had on top; had the car for some years as I spent some time replacing parts and turning it into a 'Trans Am'

 

Were you converting it to t tops? I see a black thing on the roof.

 

@BartMaster1234

Since owning that car, it seems Classic Industries has really expanded their offerings.

Check this out - 1975 Pontiac Firebird Parts | Dash Components | Aftermarket Dash Kits (classicindustries.com)