|
---------------------_--------------------------------
In this Issue
1a. Internet Buyer Beware Part 2
1b. Top 10 ways to tell when your Pontiac engine or
Firebird has been worked on by a certified mechanic with no experience
on a Pontiac Engine.
2. New Project Cars
3. New, re-pops, and discontinued parts 4. Show Room 5. Shipping, Credit Cards 6. Top 100 Muscle Car Site, e-mail and site-search 7. Tee Shirts and Bumper Stickers 8. What's new at the shop?
+ + + + + + + + + + +
Stand by for NEWS!
2004 marks David's 13th year working on 1/1
scale Second Generation Pontiac Firebirds, and this is the 13th e-mail
newsletter. That's got to be good luck.
1a. Internet Buyer Beware Part 2
A Second Gen. Trans Am purchased through the
Internet was brought to our attention recently. Upon close
inspection the VIN plate was stamped with a number code that did not
correspond to a true Pontiac scheme. The first tip off to a
problem was that the tag was stamped (embossed) from the top of the
plate not reverse stamped (raised embossed) from the bottom.
This warning is not meant to discourage buying from an Internet
Auction or Classified Ad, just to alert our loyal readers to warning
signs.
1b. Speaking of warning signs when buying a project car, here are our
"Top 10 ways to tell when your Pontiac engine or Firebird
has been worked on by a certified mechanic with no experience on
a Pontiac Engine".
PS: Don't get us wrong we love Chevy engines also, in fact it's what
we have in most of our Chevrolet cars and trucks. We just really
like Pontiac engines in our Pontiac cars.
+ + + + + + + + + + +
2. "The Privileges of Membership"
Welcome to new member # 397 "Airframers", and "PatrickGTR1"
from France, "Ryan81CA" from Toronto, Canada.
Newsletter subscribers get first notice on rare parts and new
project cars.
And now a word on "adoptions". Some companies sell
project cars. Since we consider our 'birds more than just
cars, more like part of the family, we prefer to put them up for
adoption. Generally "adoption" implies not
ownership but continuous care and feeding as a loving
caregiver. When you adopt a car, you pay the
adoption fee and you get the bird and its papers (in other circumstances
it would be called the title). You take possession of
your bird and it is yours to do as you see fit. Hopefully
you will provide a loving home for it, until it is
passed on to the next generation. From our family to
yours.
- NEW OFFERING :: 1979 White 403 Trans Am with gold decals and
Camel interior. Great dash board, no visible rust!
Power windows and door locks. Strong Olds 403 with headers
and dual exhaust. Runs and drives! Transmission was
serviced recently and carries a service warranty. Call
David about adoption. 79white403ta80
- 1979 Y84 Black Special Edition runs and drives, 403
automatic.
Canadian car: Speedometer reads Kilometers Per Hour and no Air Conditioning. 79bla403ta015 http://www.texastransams.com/projects/79bla403ta015.htm
- 1980 Brown Formula Runs and drives great, Fisher T-Tops, 15 x
7 Snowflake wheels. Pontiac 301 engine with 4-barrel
carburetor, Under 100,000 original miles, Paint and decals
available
http://www.texastransams.com/projects/80pr301fo10.htm
- 1979 Black Trans Am with a '78 nose. 403 Automatic.
It has some rust spots in floor, decent quarter panels. http://www.texastransams.com/projects/79bla403ta013.htm
- 1979 Blue Trans Am with Hurst T-Tops - No Engine
http://www.texastransams.com/projects/79blu000ta014.htm
- 1977 Firebird black with yellow flames and snorkel.
STILL AVAILABLE It has a sunroof and good seats. Good body, needs engine. This car is desperately looking for a "B" movie to star in. "Two Lane Blacktop 2004"? The snorkel and paint job alone is worth an extra 100 HP, even without an engine. http://www.texastransams.com/projects/77bla000fb58.htm
ADOPTED - '74 Esprit to a loving home in California.
If you are interested in one of these great project cars, call
David at 817-563-2121
- 1966 Ford Pickup, reasonably straight, big block, with A/C.
- 1958 Chevy Apache long wheel base step-side pickup truck.
NEW PARTS CARS
- 1977 red T/A parts car 400, automatic transmission, all but
carburetor and hood shaker.
- 1975 Buccaneer Red T/A, Great Hood, 400 block complete motor. - 1976 Yellow T/A, 400 block complete motor. - 1975 Burgundy T/A. - 1980 White Turbo T/A, 301 Turbo with 4 wheel disk brakes, 308-positrac rear end with brake booster, master cylinder and proportioning valve.
The previous newsletter can be found in the articles and news
section, but only upon the sporadic mailing of the following
edition. As a subscriber, you get the cars, parts and
"scoop" 4 weeks (approximately) before anyone else.
http://www.texastransams.com/articles/2003november_newsletter.htm
+ + + + + + + + + + +
3. New, re-production, and discontinued parts
Hood Shaker gaskets for 1977 - 1981 (Non Turbo) Trans Am
New Reproduction Air Conditioning Hoses for Second Gen
Firebirds
http://www.texastransams.com/parts/ac_hoses.htm
SOLD to a fellow enthusiast in Connecticut - Red and
Black Recaro Seats
2 NOS (New Old Stock) Honeycomb Wheels. Never
mounted.
We are strengthening our relationship with Ram Air Restoration
Enterprises, Inc. the makers of the Ram Air style factory
headers. We prefer to use their Ram Air exhaust
manifolds rather than tube headers to avoid ground
clearance and flange warping issues.
Our plan is to cross sell and cross promote our TexasTAMufflers
with their reproduction exhaust manifolds, X-Pipe and full
mandrel bend pipe system for second generation Firebirds.
+ + + + + + + + + + +
4. Show Room
Progress on the show room sort of stalled out while focusing on the 67 Camaro and Larry's polish and re-assembly.
Directions and map to the Texas Trans Am shop / showroom
available here:
+ + + + + + + + + + +
5. Secure on-line ordering: We are gradually adding
standard items for sale like the mufflers on our
http://www.TexasTAMufflers.com site and http://www.PontiacChick.com More secure ordering coming soon on the Parts and Stuff page. In addition to accepting Visa, MasterCard and American Express, We can now accept Discover Card. We are shipping parts nationally and to many other Countries around the world.
+ + + + + + + + + + +
6. "Top 100 Muscle Car Sites"
Still tied for #1.
David's e-mail
David gets HUNDREDS of e-mails each week and tries his best to respond in a timely manner, but sometimes it takes a few days to research the answer and find time to respond. I guess that's the price of being "your basic famous." Remember if all else fails and it's a Firebird emergency give us a call at 817-563-2121. Due to e-mail virus we don't open e-mail attachments.
Site Search from "WhatUSeek.com".
What are visitors searching for on TexasTransAms.com? Site Search helps us to tune the site based on what you are looking for. The following were the most popular searches for the last 30 days:
Count, Search Phrase, # Results
7 'fenders' 19
6 'wheels' 100 5 '1981 turbo trans am' 13 5 'Camaro Pictures' 5 5 'info on restoring trans ams' 24 4 'hood scoops' 100 4 '1979 hoods' 43 4 '1970 trans am' 12 3 '1980 trans am' 18 3 '85 trans am' 6 3 'hood' 104 3 'engines' 106 3 'shaker hood' 92 3 'vin decoder' 0 3 'Sale' 9 3 'snowflake rims' 3 3 'rear window spoilers' 11 3 '80 trans am floor pan' 3 3 '1983 TRANS AM'
If you don't find what you are looking for, try changing
your criteria. For example if you search for:
'1978 transam' there are no results, '1978 trans am' yields 11 total results, '78 trans am' yields 72 total results. Also check your spelling or word selection 'rims' yields 1 page, 'wheels' yields 51 pages, 'wheel' yields 4 pages, 'weel' yields no results.
We also use Site Search results to learn popular new
spellings. Sorry there were no results for 'vin
decoder', 'how many 78 gold ed ta were there', 'retint
bezel'. So here goes; We put a text based VIN
list here:
http://www.texastransams.com/articles/vin.htm
There were 1,267 Gold SE 400 4-Speed cars, 6,519 400
L78 automatic cars, and 880 403 L80 automatic cars.
This adds up to 8,666 total Gold Special Edition Trans
Ams built in 1978. For other options
check out our Pontiac Firebird Second Generation Production
Numbers page:
Yes, we can have your gold Special Edition dash bezel
re-tinted.
e-mail us at david@texastransams.com
or call us at 817-563-2121. This month's
"searches not found" remind us that this is TEXAS
TRANS AMS, not Texas 'commaros' or '10th anniverary'.
+ + + + + + + + + + +
7. Shirts and Stuff
Tee Shirts are still HERE!
http://www.texastransams.com/images/stuff/txtas_t-shirt_b.jpg
While editing the website recently I dragged the mouse
across a picture of the white Texas Trans Am Service
T-Shirt which turns the picture into a negative image. At
that time David walked by, looked at the image and asked
"Do we have a black t-shirt like that? Maybe we
should."
Baseball Caps available
http://www.texastransams.com/images/stuff/txta_se_cap.jpg
PontiacChick.com tank tops with the firebird logo.
We have one Child's Large (Women's Xtra Small) left.
New heather gray PontiacChick spaghetti strap t-shirt with
red piping, coming soon a Baby Doll T with red cap sleeves.
Check out our friends at PontiacChick.com, these women love
their Pontiacs!
We would love to have more articles from our female readers
about why the love their Pontiacs old and new, even
restoration, modification and racing stories. This
hobby is for everyone. Please post related notes in
the Message/Forum section of PontiacChick.com:
http://www.pontiacchick.com
Send picture attachments to webmaster@pontiacchick.com
TexasTransAms.com bumper sticker version 1.3 is in stock and
available for $2.00 each, plus shipping and handling.
They will be available with full white background.
http://www.texastransams.com/images/banner-txta-1-2.gif
Also available TexasTAMufflers.com sticker version 1.
+ + + + + + + + + + +
8. At the Shop Recently ...
Service and shipping
Recently we tested a refinishing technique on '79
"Turbo" style wheels. This process includes patching
scratched alloy, milling the surface to original finish
specifications. Then the "Turbo" wheels are bead
blasted inside the spoke openings, milled on the flat surface
and polished in the cone.
Recently David installed sealing strips, lubricated window
tracks, adjusted the windows and installed new door handles
for a local '77 TA.
We shipped refinished Turbo Wheels to California, Auto Custom
Carpet to Canada and Pennsylvania, '79 tail lights to Iowa and
spoilers to Pineland, Texas
'67 Camaro Un-Tubbed - Almost finished.
Tail light panel is welded in with a little grinding
remaining. Trunk latch is welded in place. the trunk
lid is on and aligned along with the right rear quarter
panel extension. Now in the process of replacing the
rear floor pans, which were removed for the previous tubs.
The under-part of the rear seats was rusted out of the donor
Firebird and has been cut out for reproduction pans.
Larry S's '79 T/A - DELIVERED!
Once the paint was dry on the spoilers and front and
rear bumpers re-assembly went smoothly until we tried to put
the nylon push-in rivets in place under the crash bar and
found the nose skin 3 / 8 inch to far
forward. Upon close inspection we found that the impact
absorber (the plastic form between the steel crash bar and
the urethane nose skin) was missing a rivet behind the
passenger side grille. This allowed the impact
absorber to sag and push forward the length of the middle
locator tabs. We pulled the grilles to re-align the
locator tabs with the crash bar and inserted an
oversized sheet metal screw with washer to hold the impact
absorber up and in place. With the nose and hood latch
release secured the car's black acrylic urethane received
three stage buffing process. If you want to know if
the body work, guide coat work with 9 inch wet block, color
sanding and buffing process paid off, see if you can tell
what we had for lunch.
Dano's '79 T/A Special Edition TA
- Progress is about to start back up, now that Larry's
car is delivered.
Kerry's '79 SE T/A -
Since the 4 speed cratered recently, Kerry replaced it with
a different unit. This tighter unit brings
to light a bottoming out problem with hard second gear
shifts. We found that the 24 year old leaf spring
bushings were crushed over 1 / 4 inch and the rear axle
snubber is missing.
57 GMC Panel Wagon - soda blasted and primed with "Rust
Bullet" a new rust inhibitor that David is trying out.
This newsletter was broadcast with a 5 second delay in
case we experience a "wardrobe malfunction".
Thanks for reading!
Your friends at Texas Trans Ams
817-563-2121 david@texastransams.com transams@flash.net webmechanic@texastransams.com COMING SOON!!!! Vacuum Lines on Mid '70s 400
High School memories of a Pontiac Chick.
|
