"Shadowfax" - Jeremy's 15th Anv. Trans Am

[DynoDave]

Glad to hear she's alive and kicking, and on track to be at the Meet and Greet.

[Jdseibe]

Hey All, its been a few months since I've given an update, so here it is (and its a good one!)

I have finally been buckling down and getting stuff done to the T/A, while I have been making progress, I have also been running into a few issues a long the way, for the tl;dr version, the car is driving, plated, insured and on the road, needs a few more tweaks, but all in all doing pretty awesome. Below is a list of all the stuff I accomplished since my last update.

- Swapped on new Holley Street Warrior
- Base adjustment on Carb / Timing (still needs some tweaks)
- New throttle bracket (cheapo ones just weren't working for what I wanted)
- Hooked up electric fans (motor polarity was wrong and fought overheating issue for a long time)
- Plated / Tagged / Insured the car
- Replaced front struts (bought all front suspension parts to replace, still need to do)
- Installed the carpet
- Installed front seats (found out the front seat belts are missing the shoulder part, had to order replacements)
- Fixed jacked up radio wiring harness (every wire was cut)
- Installed radio (this needs work, radio might be bad, speakers missing, etc)
- Installed torque converter lockup kit (still need to wire in to brake switch)
- bought 4th gen seat belts (will have to do a bit of sill magic to make them look ok. Color is close-ish)
- bought new door lock cylinders / keys (old cylinders were junk, keys lost)
- ordered all new exterior light bulbs (headlight, signals, reverse lights, markers, etc)

Things I need to do still (before M&G)
- look into the radio wiring pinout to see whats going on there (radio display shuts off when headlights come on, i think it also blew a fuse when the headlights came on)
- replace all bulbs, flasher unit, old fuses
- install new 4th gen seat belts (up front at least to start)
- install rear seats, look into why front seats wobble a bit (brackets not tightened all the way?)
- finish installing torque converter lockup stuff
- adjust carb / timing a bit more (running a bit rich, cold idle runs weird)
- install door lock cylinders (don't like leaving my car unlocked all the time, ha)
- cleanup some extra wiring in the engine bay
- install interior rear view mirror

so all in all, car is running decent, not the fastest thing in the world, but still fun to drive, hoping to get some miles on it soon so that I can really work out the bugs to get it up to the M&G

hopefully some more updates to come very soon!!

[DynoDave]

Excellent! I look forward to seeing it.

[Jdseibe]

so I decided to stop messing around with the holley 600 I rebuilt and decided to just go ahead and buy a new holley 600 street warrior carb, i put it on, let gas fill the bowls and cranked it over, and immediately the car ran better, significantly better, throttle response is great, smooth idle, etc.

I'll get a video up soon, just have to do some adjustments to the idle and timing first.

This is finally the year to have the car at the M&G!

[Jdseibe]

So... I think I have officially decided to sell the 84

I came across a 77 T/A project that I fell in love with, looks to be a very solid start, it needs a lot of work there is no doubt about that, but i just don't have the time or money for 2 projects, so I think the 15th anniversary will have to go. I will be taking lots of photos and putting it all together and listing it up soon, so if you have anyone in mind let me know. no solid price has been set yet.

[Jdseibe]

Sucks about the parts, anything else missing? Sure you didnt just place things?

How is the car running now with the holley?

I had an intake manifold and my holley bracket which im pretty positive was laying on/in the intake, those are the only things I have noticed missing, they were also the things that were probably the easiest to snag too, I have a shelf thats right next to the garage door and they would have been pretty visible, I think it happened when i swapped tires on the car, I pulled the T/A half way out of the garage so I could get to the other side of the car and ended up not thinking it though very well so I couldn't shut the door all the way, so I had to leave the garage door most of the way open while I did some running around, they were parts I was trying to sell so they weren't anything that I paid all that much attention to. as for anything else, I was trying to see if i could see anything missing, I don't know off hand but I think that might have just been it really, maybe tools? but I am not very organized with them right now so it would be hard to tell haha.

as for the holley, it seems to be running a lot better, the throttle response even seems better, so hopefully after i get a new bracket I can take it for a test drive.

[DynoDave]

Purrs like a kitten!

[Darren]

Sucks about the parts, anything else missing? Sure you didnt just place things?

How is the car running now with the holley?

[Jdseibe]

small video of the car running with the holley.

https://goo.gl/photos/bTMzWe9jUX6U6wEa7

[Jdseibe]

So i fixed the intake threads with helicoil, and since I am using the holley now, I can reuse my old holley throttle bracket.. so i thought.. until i started looking for it.. and couldn't find it.. and realized a bunch of other parts were missing to.. looks like someone was in my garage and stole a bunch of car parts yay.

On the bright side, the car starts with the holley.

[Jdseibe]

So previously I had an edelbrock carb on the performer RPM intake (that I bought used) and I am trying to now swap on the holley, only problem is, the 4 bolt holes I used for the edelbrock carb are not the same 4 that have to be used for the holley (dual bolt pattern), 2 of the threaded holes to mount the holley are stripped.. ugh! so I went out an bought a helicoil kit to fix it, hopefully I don't run into any other major issues.

[MP81]

Looks much cleaner!

[Jdseibe]

And rebuilt...

carb-clean.jpg

[Jdseibe]

Another Small Update:

over the weekend I picked up the Holley carb, So I ordered all the parts for the rebuild kit and started tearing the carb down.. and to my surprise, the inside of this carb looks like has never even run.. its really strange, its SUPER clean, the outside is another story, very grungy and dirty.. makes me wonder if they ever actually used it or just put it on a shelf and it just got gross for sitting so long. The vacuum diaphragm is shot so I ordered one of them too, but all in all this looks to be a pretty straight forward rebuild. it even comes with the proper bracketry for the 700r4 kickdown cable.

I soaked the carb in cleaner and it came out looking pretty good, going to finish up rebuilding it tonight and put it on the car. I'll post another photo of the finished rebuild.

holley-carb.jpg

[Jdseibe]

Small update:

I finally took a timing light to the 305 and get it dialed in. I tried messing with the edelbrock carb again and it just does not want to run right under load, I have no idea what the deal is. If i give it any real amount of throttle while driving it bogs, dies, or shoots fire balls from under the hood.. Ive swapped springs and tried adjusting the accelerator pump, something seriously wrong is going on with it haha. so randomly I found on a local garage sale facebook page a holley 4160 600 cfm vacuum secondary electric choke carb for $25, they just pulled off their sons truck, so I am going to pick that up and see if I have any better luck with the holley.

I also ordered a simple fan switch kit to turn the fans on, assuming i get the carb issues figured out, I should be good to go!