Ben\’s 1967 Pontiac Firebird 400 Rod & Restoration

Oh dear.  What a mess the wiring is.  I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.  I got the new center caps and got the wheels on it.  There’s even less clearance on the back wheel wells now, so I’m definitely going to have to put in new leaf springs, but I checked them out and they’re definitely multi-leaf, so that rules.  Now for parts and cost:

Center caps and lugnuts – 53.46
Wire connectors – 49.61

(TC – $9723)

Poop.  The weather around here has been so weird. Wet and humid and ugly.  It makes me not want to go in the garage, even though it went from low 30’s to 60’s in 2 days.  On top of that, the damn parts I got are a hair too small.  Fuck Chevy and Ford for have smaller cocks than me… I mean, smaller valve cover bolts.  That’s $35 blown – or the equivalent of 2/3 tank of gas.  I could have gotten about 30 miles on that.  I think I’ll go play videogames until the rain stops.

Before I forget, I need to do some math. $320 for the wheels and tire (with shipping, but still a fraggin’ deal) and $79 in parts from the show today is a total of $399 spent this week. Please don’t tell Michelle. (TC – $9620)

I bought the wheels and tires from Jim in Michigan. They should be here late this week. Fucking outstanding. Hoosier tires rule! Damn, that reminds me. I should have bought a Hoosier sticker at the show. No matter. Stickers were all about $4 and not very well done.

Now for the fun stuff. I bought new valve cover T-bar screws for $10, hood latches for $5, a shitload of wire and electronics stuff for the dash at about $20, a really cool spark wire separator for $15, a bunch of specialty tools, a digital caliper, shop rags, and most importantly, a big extendable mirror so I can see the block stamps and lay my worries to rest. I didn’t count about $40 into the total, cause I spent that much on stuff I needed for the shop anyway, but with any luck, in the next few weeks, I might sell some of my stuff, and that total should drop a little bit. I’m nearing the damn $10,000 mark, and I don’t know how to feel about that.

Now it’s off to the garage to play with my new toys, but one last quick note.  I checked prices for the wheels and tires I’m getting from Jim.  The average cost of the tires is about $750 and the wheels are about $400.  Add in mounting and balancing and you’re talking upwards of $1300 worth of wheels…  for $200.  PLUS, I can sell my old wheels and get a few bucks back.  Not bad, Mike.

FUCK!

That about sums it up.

I thought I was going to be super pissed.  The only engine ID I could find were these head castings, so I looked it up, and XO is a designation used for the smaller 324 engines.  I wanted to cry.  So I got on the forums, after taking a bunch of pictures and asked around.  After searching for a long time, I found the right engine stamp on the block.  It was almost unreadable, BUT I was able to see the engine code letters, “YB“.

What does that mean?  It means I don’t have to drive to Michigan and beat the living shit out of the guy who sold it to me.  It also means that it’s most likely NOT the original engine for the car, since the VIN doesn’t seem to match the block number, but who cares!  It’s still a bad-mamma-jamma 400 with a giant wang.

Thank zombie jesus for that.

I’m a little concerned.  There’s a marring on the hood where the old engine emblem was that appears to have had a 3xx size on it.  I need to ID my engine STAT! but I can’t find the damn stamp.  On the other hand, I was able to get all the body stamp ID stuff and here’s that:

Keep your fingers crossed that I didn’t get gypped.

I think I’ve solved my wheel problem. Jim from the forums is selling 15″ American Racing Outlaw wheels just 1″ wider than I was going for, but the back spacing looks good, and they have HOOSIER TIRES on them! That’s enough for me! Oh, and they’re only $200! Of course, I might be driving to Detroit this weekend to pick them up, but what the hell. I’m just waiting on a call from him, and hopefully I can get it all sorted out. Here’s a pic of them on his T/A (but of course they’ll look better on my ’67).