1967 Pontiac Firebird V8 400. The car I’ve always wanted and now I have it. I rule!
I decided to start this blog thing to keep a record of what I do, what I spend, what I mess up and what I learn about my car. I tried doing the same thing with the BSA I was restoring, but came up short, so wish me luck.
On Thursday, I was able to win the bidding on eBay for the car of my dreams. The bidding ended at $8211.14 and would have been cheaper if one asshole hadn’t kept upping it on me. Oh well, it’s worth every penny of what I paid, considering that a crusty, rusty rolling frame with no motor goes for around $3-4000 and the motor itself runs about the same. Here’s what caught my eye and stole my heart:
I suckered my buddy Joe to drive the 160 miles each way on Saturday morning with me (we had to leave the house about 5:30am). We picked up the car ran it around a little and I was both scared of it and impressed. There were things that were much better than expected, and some things that were worse – tires especially. The guy I bought it from noticed that I was a little put off by the tires, so he kicked some cash back to me and made it an even $8000. I was down for it and after a gas run, we were on the road.
The bird drove great on the highway and I was smiling the whole four hour drive back to Indy, except when we would pull in for gas and have a tough time starting it, and it started idling high and flooding it. I was starting to get really worried at this point, that I had just gotten scammed or something, since I know a little about motors, only whatever theory can be brought over from motorcycles. We stopped by a Pep Boys and I bought my first part for the car, a replacement air filter for about 11 bucks (total cost of car $8011). It was definitely needed since the old filter looked like a used cigarette filter, but over the next few hours of riding it around, didn’t really seem to help.
In the end, after a few grumpy swears and a few sweaty beers, we found the problem – a sticking throttle valve dumping too much gas into the engine constantly, which was flooding it and making my afternoon a pain. Lesson #1 learned – Always carry around a can of carb spray and a decent tool kit.
Over the weekend I also made my very first modification to the car. I replaced the stock nut that was holding down the air filter with a wingnut, since I was taking it on and off more than a excitable stripper.
Unfortunately, the gas gauge doesn’t work, so I rounded out the weekend by running out of gas a block from the house, and pushed the car down our alley. Of course, I’m used to driving a 1999 Tacoma 4-cyl, so I never think about running out of gas, ever. Lesson #2 learned – If you think you can make it another day without stopping for gas, be prepared to push.
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Ben\'s 1967 Pontiac Firebird 400 Rod & Restoration 