1984 Pontiac Firebird build thread?

[theking11863]

Updates as of 11/15/2015 Part 2

So the next day I was sitting bored in my dorm, trying to do homework (and failing) when I decided to run to the garage and get to work on my lights!

So I got to work. Re-ripped apart my dashboard and started tracing wires. After finding the ones I needed for the driver side (was wrapped in electrical tape, so when I removed the tape the wires were all sticky and gross) and began cutting and stripping, but the stickiness of the wires made it very difficult.

After crimping the wires together I got it to light!



I went to the passenger side and looked at it and realized I had no positive wire to work with for the light. For the driver side I had used the positive orange wire that ran up to the dome light but the passenger side didn't have that because the dome light obviously only need one wire. So how was I going to get the passenger side to work? I can't just have 1 side working!

So I threw all my tools in the passenger seat, closed the hatch, and ran off to the parts store and bought some stuff including some wiring. Went back to campus and decided to run a wire from the positive wire on the driver side, run it across the inside of the dashboard and into the light.

Went to go recut the wire and realized one of the wires had fallen out of the butt splice. :ybrick:
So I stripped the new wire, twisted it up with the wire that fell out, and recrimped it in the same but splice. This time it I made sure it didn't fall out.



I ran the wire across, hooked it up, and light!



Finally the Bird had light!



After a little cleaning up and throwing the dash back together I took some final pics of it!





Now for anyone whose paying attention obviously part 2 is way later than the date provided. Not much has been done since but the next update should come sooner!

 

[theking11863]

Update as of 12/29/15 Part 1

Well this update came much later than expected. Oh well.

Not much has happened since the last update. Thanksgiving week came and so I headed back to California. On the way here, I almost got into a pile up thanks to idiots taking pictures of an accident on the OTHER side of the freeway! :mad2: Luckily I had just switched to the outside lane and was able to skid into the shoulder when the freeway went from 70-0 without warning. If I hadn't, the Firebird would've met its end right there. This took care of my 1 near miss accident for the trip (I have an unfortunate course of having 1 every trip to CA for some reason) It was at that moment I knew I couldn't put my brakes off any longer. I had to get the issue with my back right locking up fixed.

So I got to work diagnosing the problem. After tearing a few things apart, I found fluid in the wheel cylinder, which isn't tsupposed to have any. So I went over to CarQuest and bought new wheel cylinders, new drum shoes, and a spring kit for around $20 and got to work in the snow...



Bad pictures, but they show the crappy (and dangerous) jack position I was using to stay out of the snow.



After hours of dealing with the stupid thing, I came to realize that the wheel cylinders I bought were not the right ones :redbrick: Unfortunately I didn't have time to go yell at the parts guy for giving me the wrong ones because I had to get back to Phoenix. So, I tore apart the old wheel cylinder and put the insides of the new cylinder in the shell of the old one to make it work.



Terrible pictures once again that don't show progress, but I was doing a very dirty job and was strapped for time this is the best I could do. This pic shows where I was at the end of the day when I called it a night, making me a day late for heading back to school.



Unfortunately, I never got a finished product pic because the next day when I finished I packed up and took off so I wouldn't be two days late. The whole trip wasn't a disaster however. Going back home meant I was back in the cold that I'm used to and with that the Firebird was exposed to snow, probably for the first time ever. It experienced overnight frost:



And a few inches of snow:




It was all fun until it came time to start it. Being a carbureted car, it already difficult to start the car in such cold conditions. Add the altitude and the fact the carburetor is tuned for Temecula still, it was mission impossible to get it going again. Once It finally started I let it sit there and run for awhile to melt the snow.



The Firebird however did not drive on any snow the whole trip. Any time I had to go somewhere I used my stepdad's Tundra to get around. This gave it plenty of time to just sit there and not rack up miles, as I had already put 3000+ on it since getting it in September due to all the trips between AZ and CA. Luckily with the brakes mostly fixed, its a little safer of a journey.

 

[theking11863]

Well this came way later than promised but better late than never I suppose.



So after the events of the last update, I headed back to AZ. Firebird was pretty dirty, so I decided to take it for another wash.

Before:

After:

I just love how this thing looks when it's clean! So shiny!



After that I got to work fixing my stereo. The stereo is really nice, but it had one problem.No matter what I did, the thing would not remember any settings after the car was turned off. After looking at the wiring connected to the stereo and some wiring diagrams, I was able to figure out the stereo wasn't getting constant power. For whatever reason, the hot wire that is supposed to be connected to the battery at all times had no power. Instead of back tracing the wire through the fuse block (which would've been a royal PITA) I decided to use a new wire with its own fuse.



Original wiring harness. Constant wire was supposed to be the orange/white wire with red being the ignition wire. Whoever who had installed the issue had split the red wire and had it operate as both the constant and ignition wire to make it work.

After doing some searching I wasn't having much luck finding a hole to run the wire through. So instead I decided to splice a wire off a connector that has constant power and doesn't seem to connect to anything. Wired it up, put in a fuse and bam! Constant power!

Couple weeks later I headed back to Big Bear for winter break and back into the snow. This time I came prepared, or so I thought. I bought a cover for the Bird, but it was unfortunately way too small. With a storm coming in I decided to use it anyways, worked pretty well with the car port.

Did get to drive the Bird around in the snow a bit and it kicked ASS.It was so good that you could rename it the Snowbird and it would fit. Even has it's own symbol lol