Anyone own a early 80s Trans Am, or have the haynes manual?

[bigger=better]

OK guess I had a huge brain fart the day of my last post.

1. Pontiac's T/A racing engine was the 303 not 301. they built about 25 engines for the T/A series in '69 but they could't get around SCCA regulations as these engines never made it into production cars. These engines were accepted by NASCAR but that's a whole other story. The 303 came with RAM AIR V heads-the pinnacle of Pontiac flow research. They actually flowed TOO MUCH for the small disp. of the engine.

2. You could get the 455 in a '71 model not '70, that was the GTO. Don't know what I was thinking there.

3.The 301 actually first appeared in '77 as the base engine in the Formulaor as an option in the ESprit.

Chevy engines came under the hood starting in '77 for firebirds as an effort to cut cost, an easy way to meet California emission standards under which the Chevy was already certified.

The T/As always got the the Pontiac block or at least the Olds 403 (ending in '79) up until the end of 1980. '81 was the first year for a chevy in a T/A.

The OLDS 403 also was first used in '77 - for California T/A
cars.

Pontiac engines became the victim of corporate downsizing as the trend of smaller engines became GM's mandate, alot of the Pontiac engine assembly line was taken up by a by a four cyl. Olds I believe. I read somewhere that the 400s in '78 were just what was left over from the '77 build run.

In '77 you could only get a 4 spd behind a 301, 400 or 403 Olds block. Other engines offered that year for the firebird- 231 Buick, 305 Chevy, 350 Pontiac, and 350 Olds.

In '78 and on you could get the 4 spd behind whichever chevy block was offered in areas where they had trouble meeting federal emissions mandates.

In '82 the only Pontiac block you could get was the I-4 woohoo(not) in the base model.

No I didn't remember all this crap. I did have to look up a couple of things.

Maybe I got it all right this time.

[DennyB]

Originally posted by Russell
....
I guess I just figured that all car manufacturers made a small and big block for their vehicles...

FYI
AMC V8s are another like pontiac, Theirs were all cast from the same basic blocks. ie: 290, 304, 360, 390, 401
If your not fimilar with AMC they made Jeep before chrysler bought them out, also they made the Matador, Ambassador, American, Pacer,Hornet, Gremlin, AMX & Javelin.
And probably a few more I can't think of..

[76HighSierra]

Originally posted by bigger=better

no chevy engines until 1982.

Not so. I've seen several un-molested late seventies-1981 TA's with 305 small block chevy's installed. Read 5.0 on the shaker.

[bigger=better]

Yeah , momentary loss of sanity read my last post