Minor Details, Major Importance
- Anthony Wood
- Aug 30, 2022
- 2 min read
In the last post we mentioned that there were some "challenges" that needed to be addressed, at least for our particular build. So I mentioned in an earlier post that we bought the car from an owner in California. By coincidence, the car was also manufactured in California (see this blog post talking about how we figured that out). That was a good thing, and a bad thing. The good news - no rust. Benefits of not being born in Detroit. Bad news - being born in California meant that your engine was an Olds 403. Nothing against the Olds, its just known that this engine was placed in Firebirds in Cali specifically for EPA emissions. As a result, there is a LOT of items that are different from a 1978 TA born with a 400, vs one born with a 403. Here are just a few of those items:
oil sender wire length is different
Fuel lines need to be rerouted (different side of car for Pontiac 400)
Shaker & base is different
Exhaust downpipes are different
Motor mounts are the same (potentially depending on the year of the motor and the year of the car), but may need to moved to one of the other hole (or in our case, because we are using a motor from a 1969 GTO, we needed to use motor mount adapters - we got ours from Butler Performance configurations.)
Accessory brackets are different
Different vacuum lines
So as you can see, we have had some challenges. The good news - we bought a roller (a car that is motor ready). That being the case, we didn't have a whole lot to contend with regarding existing motor infrastructure. Basically, outside of the fuel lines and the Shaker, we were working with a clean slate. Nothing in the engine compartment. I mean NOTHING. One of the first tasks Ben undertook was grinding off the initial motor mount welds that the previous owner put on the car to install an LS (after removing the fenders, hood and nose of course):
Taking off the front of the car:
We had some other challenges along the way, but we will get to those in time. IN the next post we'll start to tackle some of the first things we began doing - including looking for parts for our block and finding a machine shop.
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