72 TA : New Project

[68 Vert]

[ QUOTE ]
Steve I was reading "Fabulous Firebirds" last night and it says in there that all 70 Firebirds came with a 12 bolt rear end no matter what model. Is that true?

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe only the Trans Am and Formula's received the 12 bolt rears in '70. The 'regular' Firebird came with the 10 bolt.

Mike

[njsteve]

More helpful hints from the toolbox: I was deciding whether to replace the carpet in the car due to it's overabundance of fuzz and pilz sticking up, when an idea lightbulb went off over my head. We have had this dog trimmer sitting in the cabinet for about 15 years now and no more long haired dogs to use it on.

I just spread the carpet out and gave it a crew cut! The trimmer worked amazingly well. No snags or pulls, it just buzzed all the extraneous fuzz that accumulated from years of using those floormats with the little rubber nubs and from normal foot wear. After that I used what remained of the vinyl spray dye and misted both the front and rear sections to blacken the sunfaded spots. So now I guess I'll keep this carpet set.

The next episode will be "1001 Uses for a Flowbee."

[mockingbird812]

Ah yes, the crew cut is back. But wait a minute....didn't MacGyver have a mullet?! Not sure he would approve. Surprised "he" got so close to the shears with all of those posteriorly positioned locks of hair.

[njsteve]

I made sure I had all of my protective gear on at the time: gold chains and a lot of duct tape!

[njsteve]

OK, being the perfectionist I am I wasn't satisfied with the way the reproduction wheel came out. Since it is a harder urethane material, the Plasti-Dip spray nicked rather easily and didn't adhere as well as I would have hoped. When I picked at it a little, the entire coating peeled off in one piece. That, of course, meant that I did not prep the repro wheel well enough.

I also wasn't satisfied with the fact that it still had a bunch of grain along with a fake outer seam that marred the surface. So I ended up hand-sanding it with 80 grit, then 200, then 400 then 600 until it became as smooth as the factory wheel. I was very careful to keep away from the fake threads along the inner seams. I then sprayed it with a flexible plastic primer and sanded that with 600, reprimed and resanded by hand until it was shiny and smooth. I also reshaped the edges where the urethane meets the spokes as the repro was a bit too angular in that area. Once I was satisfied, (I know, I've said that before) I sprayed the wheel in numerous heavy coats of the SEM Landau Black and the result was beautiful. SEM is the coating to use and it is great stuff, much better than Duplicolor or VHT or any of the other brands. Other than the black anodizing looking way too new, the wheel looks like an NOS wheel now. And it feels a lot better as well. I will be installing this one in the car and saving the original wheel for posterity.

[mockingbird812]

Freakin' unbelievable Mac!

[njsteve]

In my spare time I'm working on creating an NOS ZL1 engine out of Wrigley's chewing gum wrappers, maple syrup and Dr. Pepper cans. (You have to use Dr.Ppper because it has more caffeine than other sodas and we all know the ZL1 was a more highly caffeinated engine than it's iron counterparts.)