72 TA : New Project

[njsteve]

Even my 9-year-old daughter (here helping me assemble the short block) thought it was totally nuts.

[Mr70]

Sounds like it may be time for him to retire,for whatever reason.

[WILMASBOYL78]

Sounds like a really neat car, but the engine shop guy should be hung! Good luck with the project....

wilma

[njsteve]

Here is the latest photo. I am assembling the engine so I can run it on my engine stand. Actually I dont have an engine stand so I'm just going to install it back in the car just to get it run in and then pull it out and take the body apart for painting. I dont like letting freshly assembled engines sit. I had a cam go bad on my last project after the engine sat for a year without being initially fired up. So hopefully in the next couple weeks I'll have some noise to report on. You gotta love the baby blue color of the 1972 Pontiac engines. (I gotta hate the $24.95 a can it cost for the correct paint though)

[njsteve]

Well I just got the 455HO up and running in the world's most expensive run stand: I ended up bolting the engine and trans back in the car and hooking up the basic wiring and a tach, oil pressure and a temp gauge. No exhaust, just a couple of dump tubes off the exhaust manifolds. I tried using my mechanic buddy's rubber exhaust tubes (the ones you use in the winter to pipe the exhaust out of your shop). They didnt help one bit. In fact the exhaust coming out of the manifolds was so hot it set the insides of them on fire. Very scary for a few minutes -it looked just like a blown head gasket: billowing white and grey smoke out the pipes. I yanked them off the engine and the smoke disapeared (along with the crowd of neighbors who gathered to watch my garage burn down). I let it run between 1700 to 2500 for about 25 minutes, I changed the oil and no metal was on the magnetized drain plug. I let it cool down overnight and it started with a click of the ignition key this morning. So it all looks good for now. Now I can pull the car completely apart and store the engine til it's done. This thing was so loud I had to use my industrial ear protectors!

[njsteve]

So here I am snooping around the interior of my 72 T/A and I see two studs coming up from the rear floor. Really strange. Here's what I saw:

[njsteve]

I peel back the factory mastic sound deadener and I find a right rear side marker lamp bezel face down against the floor pan:

[njsteve]

Can you imagine how many technicians tried to figure out that rattle in the floorboard over the entire warranty period of this car? It was obviously put there by a disgruntled UAW worker just prior to the six month strike that shut down the Norwood plant for the rest of the model year in 1972. (as you may recall that was the reason there were so few 72 Camaros and Forebirds built)

[Mr70]

That became an option on the Delorean later on as well.
I believe it was originally RPO 0U812

[njsteve]

I just spent the entire day with a pressure washer underneath the Tran Am. The entire original floors are still covered in their factory red oxide primer with white overspray. Not a speck of rust underneath the car (other than the trunk well but that is standard on any 2nd gen F-body). There was no undercoating so all I was removing was the years of road grime. Just amazing! I found the factory paint marks on the suspension pieces, the part number tags on the coil springs. Even the leaf springs had the part numbers still stenciled on them in white paint. Now I know how archaeologists feel when they unearth a new dinosaur. I will post some detail shots this week after I finish removing 33 years of grease, oil and tar from my entire body. My wife saw me coming near the house and locked the doors. She said that was the dirtiest she has ever seen me in the entire time she has known me. I wore a full rain suit (which is now in the garbage, but still managed to get my face hands and hair totally blackened.) -I looked like a West Virginia coal miner coming home from work!