'73 Firebird - Knocking off the ugly

[raggedjim]

Well, due to an incident with the oil gauge line in my Firebird I have been neglecting the 68 stepper build. So I decided I should start a build thread for the Firebird. It's not so much a build thread as it is an exercise in knocking the ugly off of a fair car to start with.

[raggedjim]

The Trans Am thing started for me in high school. I was one of the lucky few who was in high school in the late 70's. My first car was a '72 Plymouth Duster. I drove the wheels off of it and then this happens.

[raggedjim]

So I bought a '79 Trans Am (yeah, a 403 car, but most all of them were). Nice car but nothing special.

[raggedjim]

After high school I joined the Navy and during my first cruise I saved up enough money to buy a (used) car. It was a '77 Z-28, again a nice car but nothing special.

[raggedjim]

As I was visiting a friend I would drive past a black Firebird sitting in the trailer court he and his wife lived in. After never seeing it move for over a month I stopped and asked about it. Well, I ended up buying it. It turned out to be a Trans Am that someone had painted black in the early eighties. It had a 455 four speed and was ridiculously fast. No, I don't know if it was a super duty, back then I never cared about those things, I just wanted a cool car. I drove it for about 6 months and, to my everlasting shame, ended up trading it for a '40 Plymouth coupe ( in my defense the TA ended up blowing up on the freeway and got towed to impound never to be seen again, I hope someone bought it and put it back on the road...) No pics of this one that I can find.

So a few years ago I got the itch for another 70-73 Trans Am. The one's I wanted I couldn't afford. The one's I could afford I didn't want!

[raggedjim]

I was about to give up the search when I ran across a thread on Performance Years forums making fun of this car ad on Racingjunk for this '73 Firebird. It wasn't a Trans Am but it was kinda close...

Yes, the previous owner had made some dubious decisions, but something kept drawing me back so a conversation with the owner turned into a deal being reached.

[raggedjim]

First thing I did was get rid of the cheap chrome wheels that were on it. Nothing makes a car look like crap more than this style of wheel. If you have a set of these SELL them to someone else! Life is too short for ugly wheels.

[raggedjim]

Some 15" rally's fit the car much better. I'm a no trim ring kinda guy.

You'll notice a hole in the hood, more on that later.

[raggedjim]

What in the Kid Rock ,mullet tugging, dope smoking haze had inspired the previous owner to do this??? I like to think it was a late night drinking Jim Beam, but, it had to go.

[raggedjim]

So I took the sawzall to it.

[raggedjim]

A few Coors and late nights later and I had a poorly patched hood back in place. I also added a few decals, I've liked stickers ever since I was a kid.

[raggedjim]

I have been gathering parts and pieces I need to clone a Trans Am. I know, people hate clones, but it's not like I'm trying to misrepresent the car, I'm trying to build it into something I want. So I have gathered up a few Trans Am items that one day may or may not be installed.

One of the things was a 1974 Trans Am gauge package because my car has idiot lights and some poorly hacked in aftermarket gauges for water temp and oil pressure.

[raggedjim]

Well, a couple of weeks ago I was driving to the gas station to add gas to the Firebird and the plastic line going to the aftermarket oil gauge split. Car pumped about 3 quarts of oil into the interior before I got to a place I could stop. Luckily I was close to a friends house who has 3 second gen Camaros. He happened to have a plastic line kit in his garage and gave it to me. I got the line replaced in about 30 minutes and got the car back to the shop.

Pulled out the seats, carpet, dashpanels, gauges, radio and front wiring harness to try to get all of the oil out of the car. Not many pics because I was kinda busy.

[raggedjim]

Radio, wiring harness, and ashtray were full of oil. The harness was a huge mess and I untaped it, cleaned it with acetone, and retaped it up.

[Tempest67]

Nice work on this car, and I like the upgrades you are doing.

Keep it going, and thanks for saving this car

[raggedjim]

Originally Posted by Tempest67

Nice work on this car, and I like the upgrades you are doing.

Keep it going, and thanks for saving this car

Thanks, I appreciate it! It really wasn't a bad car to start with, just not my idea of what it should be.

[raggedjim]

When you change from idiot lights to full guages on a Firebird (or any car or truck) it's never a plug and play, there's always a few wires that need to be rerouted. On the Firebirds it's really not too hard if you go step by step.

I started with the tach wiring which will be new wiring as it is a separate harness from the main harness. It's just 3 wires- a 12v that is live at key on and start (IGN), a ground (actually the ground doesn't have a wire, it goes to a nut that grounds to the circuit card on back of the cluster), and a TACH signal from your distributor. I used pink for the 12v and white for the TACH signal (These colors match the factory colors). Sorry, I didn't take pictures of these before I got it all together.

You can order these harnesses on the internets but I have lots or wire (and a bunch of old harnesses I stripped out of parts cars).

I need to add, I bench tested all my gauges before I installed them. There's tons of info on doing this on the web but if anyone is interested in my method let me know.

[raggedjim]

Next I worked on the wiring for the fuel gauge and the voltmeter. I used oem Trans Am gauges for this. You can use just about any year of the second generation gauges (70-81) if you aren't concerned with originality. I'm pretty sure mine came from a '79 but I swapped the fuel gauge with the one that was in the Firebird cluster so it would read Fuel and not Unleaded Fuel Only.

For the fuel gauge you need a 12v IGN (pink) and a wire that runs back to the fuel level sensor on the gas tank (tan). I used the tan wire that ran to the cluster plug by pulling it out and splicing in a wire to go to the new (old) fuel gauge.

[raggedjim]

Now, just a brief primer on pulling pins from the gauge cluster.

Since the pins on the gauge cluster will have to be repositioned you will need to pull the pins out. I use a small flat screwdriver and insert it on the inside part of the pin where the locking tab is located.

Push the wire into the plug, use the screwdriver to push against the locking tab, then pull the wire back out of the plug. Once it is out make sure to gently bend the locking tab back out so it will engage when it is reinserted to it's new position.

[1970cstblazer]

I too had a 1973 Firebird Formula. It was a 455 with a column shifted TH400. It had sat in a garage since 1987, and I picked it up in 2019, then sold it in late 2020.

[LS short box]

Pic of my 73 TA clone I did many years ago. 455/400 turbo combo. Was a subframe off resto. Was a great project.

[raggedjim]

Originally Posted by 1970cstblazer

I too had a 1973 Firebird Formula. It was a 455 with a column shifted TH400. It had sat in a garage since 1987, and I picked it up in 2019, then sold it in late 2020.

Nice! was it Admiralty blue?

[raggedjim]

Originally Posted by LS short box

Pic of my 73 TA clone I did many years ago. 455/400 turbo combo. Was a subframe off resto. Was a great project.

That car looks very familiar... Did you post it on any of the Firebird sites? It looks great to me, and sometimes the clones are more fun because you don't worry so much about keeping them original!

[raggedjim]

For the voltmeter I ran an orange wire for the 12v and a black for ground. Not rocket surgery...

[raggedjim]

Next on to the cluster connector. The 70-71 cars have 12 pin connectors and the 72 up have 16 pin connectors. One of the best resources I found for Firebird wiring was American Autowire's website. They have tons of information for almost every car or truck.

In particular I downloaded their gauge kit installation instructions doc#510079. this has great info for all of the second gen Firebirds.

Using the information in the instructions I repinned the connector to look like this

Pin 1 - Gray - Dash lights
Pin 2 - Black - Seat belt light ground
Pin 3 - Yellow - Seat belt light (not shown in pic)
Pin 4 - Tan - Brake warning light
Pin 5 - Pink - 12 volt keyed
Pin 6 - Dark Blue - Right turn signal
Pin 7 - Green - Hi Beam indicator
Pin 8 - Dark Blue - Oil pressure gauge