Hey there peoples,
Here is the project thread of my 1978 Trans Am that I picked up in December. I'll start at the beginning of my adventure to its current standing. After a few months of searching for a solid car to work with I found this 78 W72 (possibly WS6) on Ebay, some of you might remember seeing this on there. These are the pictures that was listed on the auction.
I thought the price was a little steep so I contacted the seller and he accepted a lower offer. I had a friend of the family drive up to bring the car home from New York. The car was put in the garage while I made preparations for a light rebuild. Of course I ran the numbers on the car and found it to be an original Cameo White car with the Carmine Red interior. It is a real W72 package car that from the looks of it, could be a WS6 (rims and large sway bar hinting towards that idea). Here is the car the night it came home after a bath.
All is well,.. for the most part. Here is the nitty gritty on the machine. Lets start from the view walking up to the car. The car is pretty solid, paint is a 10 footer. Wheels have seen better days but not unmanageable, someone sprayed them black and kept the machined lip. Interior is in good shape overall. Someone replaced the factory seats with racing buckets (I've seen worse but I still hate them). The carpet is new but the center console needs replaced. Dash is in good shape with the exception of a very minute crack. As for under the hood, there is the T/A 400 that has obviously been rebuilt and modified. Unfortunately the Quadrajet has a gutted choke and has a rough time starting. So with the carb needing rebuilt it leads to the intake, it is an Edelbrock Torker I that has also seen better days. The next visible attribute is the heads, #16 heads with a date code of J257. And that takes us to the block which actually made me sour for a day. It is no longer the XX block, but a weaker 1976 400. Needless to say I was a wee bit disappointed. but onto the next piece of equipment. The Borg Warner 4spd is definitely in need of adjustment but I was told it was all rebuilt recently. Now for the brakes, someone converted the rear brakes to disk and since then lost the calipers and pads on with a few small pieces. I have not idea what the brakes are from so buying replacement parts is kind of difficult. I'm just relieved that the car is as solid as I hoped it was.
Now for my plans. For the financial aspect of it, I am going to get the car running with a new carb and intake on the current engine. I purchased my father's spare '72 400 he had but didn't end up using for his 67 Lemans. Over the summer I will buy new internals and get everything prepped for when winter hits again use the #16 heads and the new intake/carb combo. I would like to see approx 400hp and about the same in torque. (I am by no means a mechanic or engine builder so I will definitely be on here asking for input and advice on the assembly). As for the interior I found about a week ago some seats on Craigslist from a 77 Deluxe special ordered seats. They are pretty beat up but they are leaps and bounds better than racing buckets I currently have. I couldn't pass up the price on them though. My final goal for the car is to buy the Scat Rallye seats from Summit Racing and recover the rear seats in vinyl that sort of match the Scat Rallyes. Way down the road I would really like a nice performance break set around the car but I am way off affording that upgrade any time soon. For now I plan on using the 15x8 snowflake rims for now until I can buy some Torq-Thrust-D rims with some BF Goodrich Radial TAs wrapping them up nicely. The paint is definitely good enough to use for now until I can get it resprayed. In the meantime I purchased the SE style decals in flat black to make a subtle but cool change of scenery (no offense to anyone but there are way too many black birds with gold birds on the hoods, and even though I love that bandit look, I want something a little different). But enough of my blabbering, here are some new pics of the car and the engine I picked up the other day. Enjoy! Please remember, any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Mind the dirt from sitting in the garage all winter, I wanted to show what the graphics are going to look like!
Once the weather breaks a little more I can go full steam getting the car fixed up, I will definitely keep everyone posted!
Thanks for reading! Love the site.
TJ
