[njsteve]

blue71ta: Here's a shot of my Grandmother's 1975 Firebird with the pre-restoration honeycombs and the same BFG 235-60x15 tires. You can see the fender gaps in the photos. The car is an unrestored (other than paint) 65,000 mile car, my Grandmother bought new in '75.

I bought the OEM honeycomb paint from www.classicindustries.com.

[2blue71TAs]

Your Grandmother Rocks!

Thanks for the paint info.

Are you going to the TA Nationals?

[njsteve]

I might go when I finish the T/A, whatever year that ends up being!

[blue71ta]

"blue71ta: Here's a shot of my Grandmother's 1975 Firebird with the pre-restoration honeycombs and the same BFG 235-60x15 tires. You can see the fender gaps in the photos. The car is an unrestored (other than paint) 65,000 mile car, my Grandmother bought new in '75."

Wow, beautiful! Very clean looking. Can't wait to get the stock springs back in mine to level it out.

[superdutybob]

blue71ta

The correct tire size for a 74 T/A would have been GR/70-15. The metric equivalent to that will be 225/70R-15. A 235/60R-15 will indeed be too short when compared to original, making the car appear to sit too high.

[blue71ta]

Originally Posted by superdutybob

blue71ta

The correct tire size for a 74 T/A would have been GR/70-15. The metric equivalent to that will be 225/70R-15. A 235/60R-15 will indeed be too short when compared to original, making the car appear to sit too high.

Right, I just meant that the 235/60R15 looks small on the Honeycomb wheel in general, not necessarily when installed on my car.

[njsteve]

I took a ride over to the body shop today to see the progress on the Trans Am's body parts. We have to replace one door skin (I found a correct NOS one on ebay pretty cheap - a miracle since it is impossible to find the 70 to 75 style with the correct longer door handle opening) Anyway, here are some shots of the door. He had already prepped the edges for the new skin by beadblasting the mounting areas (the shiny silver areas). I guess this settles the question of whether the doors were loaded (minus glass and sliders) when they went into the primer dip.

[njsteve]

And here's the door skin. Heavily infested with the dreaded "Bondo Worms." Gotta love 1970's dent repair. Drill a few hundred holes, use the dent puller and then smear the Bondo on til it squeezes through the holes.

[njsteve]

Ok, since it's been raining cats and dogs outside for the past four days and it looks like I'm not loading up to go to Musclepalooza in a hurricane I thought I'd reupholster the front seats. I took over the dining room table, laid out some carpet on top and made myself a workbench. (It sure helps when the wife is visiting her relatives for the week and I have the house to myself). I ordered the PUI seat cover set last week and spent the past few days tugging and pulling and hog ringing til my hands were numb.

[njsteve]

I found the best way to get the covers on with the least amount of wrinkles was to asemble them onto the foam backing and hog ring them on. After that's done you can slide the metal frame into the seat cover (this works for the seat back far easier than for the seat bottoms) Here's a shot of the hinge assembly: those chrome push-on retainers are bear to get off. You have to pry them into oblivian before they release. Amazingly, Home Depot had the exact ones in their hardware aisle for 45 cents each. (Note to self: when you do the other side don't try to hold the cap in place while hitting it with the large wooden mallet pictured in the previous photo. OUCH! )

[njsteve]

Here are the finished products. The seat on the right has the original upper material (this was originally the passenger seat back cover. I was able to pull the upper cover and foam off of the passenger side frame and switch it to the driver's side frame since the cover was nearly perfect. Both seat bottoms and the left seat back are the PUI pieces. They still need some heat gun time to smooth out the pull marks and wrinkles but they look pretty decent. Here's a close up of the material differences in the 1972 Tetra grain inserts used on the 1972 deluxe seats. You can see that the PUI cover on the left has slightly larger perforations than the pin-sized holes on the original material on the right.

[njsteve]

It's finally sunny out so I have the seats cooking in the mid-day sun on the driveway. Had some spare time (family still away) so I bolted up the nose brackets. I am definitely learning something about Pontiacs. -They must have had some Rube-Goldberg type engineer thinking this stuff up: if one bracket would work on on a Chevy, Pontiac had to use three or four. If you have ever seen how Pontiac designed the a/c compressor brackets you'll know what I mean. There are support brackets bracing other support brackets that hold other brackets in place...Well anyway the front bumper/grill brackets also brace the radiator support, each with its own adjustment, hence the masking tape to protect the paint for the time being. Oh, and the horns now work, too!

[blue71ta]

Steve, lookin' great as usual - keep the pics comin'.

[njsteve]

I purchased a plastic welder from www.urethanesupply.com and had some really good results fixing the original plastic front valance (See link: http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...d.php?t=498815 )

Here is the process I went through which was remarkably easy. These valances are made out of polyethylene and once I figured that out, it was just boiled down to following the directions in the kit and using the right plastic welding rods. This contraption is basically a soldering iron with a special tip that you feed the polyethylene rods into. The first step of course is cleaning the area as best as possible and the using aluminum tape to hold the cracks together. Once that is done you use the hot tool to melt a groove in the crack halfway into the plastic. You then apply the flat face of the iron onto the crack and while melting the base material, you feed the rod material into the melted area. You do about an inch at a time and them massage it in very well. Once you get the entire length done you take a strip of stainless steel mesh and apply it onto the repair and melt that into the repair for added strength (preferably on the back side of the panel). When that is done and cooled off (apply cold water to speed things up) you can turn the valance over and remove the aluminum tape, groove the other side's crack and do the same only without the mesh. Once it is cooled you can sand it down. The face bar portion was a little trickier since it was very hard to get into the rear part of the crack. I heated up the area quite a bit and placed the mesh and a bunch of extra polyethylene rod into the area for added strength.

The process and the tool was amazingly easy and I just saved an irreplaceable part for about $90 in material and 3 hours of work.

Here's the main crack before repair:

[njsteve]

After taping and grooving:

[njsteve]

Here's the welder in action feeding the polyethyene rod into the heated area with the stainless steel mesh already melted into the repair. They actually have rods of all colors as this tool is used primarily to repair kayaks which can't be painted so they weld them with the same color plastic.

[njsteve]

And here's the opposite side after repairing it:

[njsteve]

Here's the major break in the front face bar:

[njsteve]

Here's the section taped up and ready for welding and then after welding and a lot of extra material for strength was added.:

[njsteve]

And here's the final result before and sanding or shaping. I still have a bunch of little cracks to deal with but these two major ones were the big hurdles to conquer first.