Dirtiest Car Ever! First Wash in 20 Years Lost Pontiac Trans Am Rare 455 HO

[Music] so all right we're going there we go so last week i received an email with pictures of a forgotten trans am asking me if i could come inspect the overall condition in hopes of salvaging some of the original parts for an eventual rebuild and restoration finding the place is almost harder than finding the car that's it when i pulled up to where i thought i was supposed to be i saw a glimpse of a 1985 iroc z in the back so i just assumed i was in the right spot joe i'm joe i'm larry all right thank you john i chatted with the guys a bit and inspected the vehicle which i have to tell you was pretty rough there was a lot of mold on the doors the armrest the back seat and pretty much everywhere the outside once again mold rust door dings and dents so i wanted to know more about the story past and how joe the guy who emailed me found the car what we have here is a 1975 pontiac trans am high output 455 four-speed car cardinal red is one of 857 made that year pretty rare uh pontiac actually didn't offer 45 and 75 until may june of the end of the production run that's why they sold little of them so it's pretty rare to find a pretty hard bird to come by my son was riding his bicycle in the summertime came across his car in the back of a driveway and they says dad you gotta look at this trans am i saw a really cool trans am down there and um took some pictures from my dad he says dad you gotta buy this car and i was like you know we got enough going on we got too much uh projects as it is uh we don't need another car a few months later i got a call from my friend john hey john what's going on he's hey um i got that trans am um i have to get rid of it what happened because i lost my spot i got three weeks to find another garage otherwise it's gotta go i've known john my whole life i grew up with john um back in the 80s 90s he's always into cars remember when john first got this car sometime around 92 closing back two days before a month ends to joe i got no taker so far no one wants to come look at it if you don't buy the car off me it's going to the junkyard sorry i'll buy the car uh where's the car at so it gives me the address and then i put two and two together oh that's the same car that my son saw in the summertime it's my friend john's car yeah i do have one picture of the car uh i'm not a photographer kind of guy so you know i don't i don't take many pictures but the one picture i do have is when i had to fight a parking violations bureau for giving me an issuing a ticket for not being able to affix a plate to the front of the vehicle why can't you fix it from the vehicle uh there's no there's no set space there's no frame there's nothing that you can attach it to so i had to put it in the front window and that is not acceptable in the city of new york once we found out it was john's there's no way we're gonna go to the junkyard we have to keep it in the family we're gonna preserve it get it running and drive it and enjoy it because of the rush to get it off the street before it got towed to the impound lot joe tucked the car away inside his man cave among the collection of parts manuals and of course old pictures of he and his father working on cars so i knew it was going to a great home to be restored [Music] with that we first moved the chevy 350 and some equipment out of the way to push the ta outside with of course some help from the next generation of car guys which was pretty cool outside in the daylight i got a better idea and the true condition of the material and realize there's absolutely no way that this can be restored safely without removing all the mold first and of course zapping the interior with chlorine dioxide so at that point we tried to get it up onto the trailer while blocking the street in downtown queens so that was quite the adventure and of course a nice exercise break to say the very least the third time was the charm [Music] [Music] once up and out of the city we dropped it off at the studio to start the decontamination [Music] under proper lighting we began to understand just how bad the paint and the wheels were which makes sense because the inspection sticker was 18 years overdue and it was on its way to the junkyard crusher but the first step is just to get this thing safe to work on step one is the chlorine dioxide tablet that kills the smell and the bacteria similar to the bmw 3 series full interior removal and replacement due to that water leak shown in a previous episode while cooking inside for 20 minutes or so i used compressed air to dislodge all the leaves the dirt plastic baggies towels and so on from the 15 plus years of sitting outside in the trunk i found a spare tire that looked pretty good because it was safe from the elements which got me wondering about the current wheels so i facetimed my buddy george from performance industries to ask him if i could borrow his media blaster and powder coat booth to surprise joe at the end of the job more on this later now at this point i can imagine most of you are saying why work on this car you should burn it you should crush it it's a waste of time every comment you can imagine the answer is because the sentimental value far outweighs the effort involved in saving it from the crusher from a practical sensible and prudent perspective yes this is not a logical decision for most people but joe is committed to rebuilding this car and then passing it on to his son who originally found the trans am now that's hard to argue with especially being a dad myself so with that here we go so the first thing we did was removed everything from the inside of the car but the passenger side seat was actually rusted directly to the floor so we left that as is you know what they say live to fight another day [Music] next we used ammo lather a scrub pad and a steam machine to clean and restore the interior plastics in vinyl areas [Music] next we filled the pro foamer to clean the trans am while inspecting the integrity of the seals to do this fill up the two and a half gallon container with one bottle of frothy concentrate and you're good to go for up to 20 to 22 full washes or you can simply just put a few capfuls if you're only gonna do one or two cars at a time click the link above for a full how-to video on the pro foamer coming very soon once your desired ratio is set you can hand pump the pro foamer or you can hook it up to your compressor for continuous power as this unit is equipped with a psi gauge and regulator another kind of cool features you can actually fill it with your compressor then unplug it from the compressor and just walk around the car and you'll get way enough pressure to do an entire car so that's kind of cool or just stick it in your mobile van or put in the back your truck etc it's super versatile and the spray is actually six times stronger than the regular aerator due to the larger capacity and of course the more headroom which will create more pressure next dan added brute to a full bottle of water that he can use on the door jambs while i foamed the entire car to soften the years of dried on crud [Music] while i was agitating the paint with a microfiber towel we noticed the areas with the brush agitation were coming out way cleaner than just the regular wash so i did something i've never considered in 20 years of detailing okay at this point we washed down the car and i agitated with a microfiber towel and it didn't do a whole lot because this thing is completely filthy dan was using a small interior brush on the edges and a lot of the junk really came out quite well so let me just say real quick obviously this car wasting the time polishing it doesn't make a whole lot of sense but what i'm trying to do is inspire this guy when he sees it and it's got a little bit more pop to a little more shine i think he's going to feel better about restoring it which he is going to do but i can tell his legs and his knees and his he's just shaking he's like i don't want to do this i'm not sure is this worth it so we're going to have a little bit of fun and bring it back so what i'm doing now is something that i would never do on a car in this case because this was working so well i just increased the size and now we're using our interior it's very soft interior brush with a porter cable on the paint and you can see right here we did a spot it's very clean and this is really filthy over here so i'll turn this on in two seconds it's that much cleaner again we're having a little fun here but this didn't come out with just a regular wash and a microfiber towel but certainly comes out with this thing okay before you leave a comment understand that the paint is incredibly rough after years of exposure so washing in the normal fashion is like shooting bbs at a tank it wasn't doing anything so we upped the agitation to tickle the embedded junk to the surface prior to scooping it off now desperate times call for desperate measures so then we ended up power washing all the baked on grime once it was loosened up and the junk just poured off the surface [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] then dan and i polished the paint with a blue rupes foam pad and blue coarse compound to manage the extreme residue now we're polishing because he isn't planning on repainting the car immediately fixing the rust yeah okay that's definitely a problem but the priority is the engine the brakes the interior and so on and paint is way down on the list so i might as well just surprise him with a quick facelift [Music] once we wrapped up the paint dan then loaded the old wheels into the mobile detailing van and we headed down to performance industries to clean up the original wheels from time to time george allows me to borrow a few tools i don't have in the studio to get the wheels back into shape if you don't know performance is a full wheel repair and restoration facility they do absolutely insane work if you have an issue with your wheels and you want them repainted or powder coated or fixed these are the guys i first soda blast the rust off of each rim to remove all of the junk prior to putting them in the oven for 25 minutes [Music] once the metal was warm i pulled it out and pushed it into the powder coat booth where i laid down the positively charged material that will stick to the negatively charged wheel once done the wheels put back in the oven for approximately 25 minutes or so at about 400 degrees and the process is repeated multiple times for the desire and the look that you're going for if you want to see the step-by-step video on the entire wheel repair process just click the link above while the wheels were drying overnight and the car was basically done i did a little googling which is where i get into trouble and i found paint at a local body shop supply house and so okay we added a bit of lacquer and thinned out the viscosity filled up the reservoir and down the rabbit hole i went creating my my rusty picasso okay so yeah i know that's crazy but so is staging a house before people come to see it you want them to feel a certain way and envision themselves in the house same kind of concept here i wanted to push joe to fall in love with this thing again and see himself in the driver's seat speaking of the driver's seat it was a total loss nonetheless i removed the mold i steamed it and then i put white duct tape on the exposed cushion sort of like putting a band-aid over a bazooka blast but whatever i worked with what i had at the time just to get him home finally we cleaned the glass we shined up the trim a bit and then reinstalled the seat or whatever was left of it the next day we picked up the refurbished wheels and the new tires and put them and the freshly polished center caps on the staged trans am real quick on a side note to remove that blue protective coating on new side walls you can use plum wheel cleaner or your favorite cleaner and lightly agitate and then wipe right off before you power wash them clean and they'll come right off so before joe and buddy arrived i then removed the passenger side wheels meaning the side that they would come in on from the front door and covered up the driver's side so i could have a little bit of fun with them later on all right here we go what's up guys come on in take a look oh wow what are you doing oh wow holy mackerel man unbelievable right and after the quick tour i revealed the refurbished wheels all right well i got one other surprise for you as you can see uh we're missing uh two aspects of the vehicle all right come over here check this out all right so i got your blue towels what do you think of it no i'm just kidding uh-oh so underneath here we go yeah oh wow are those the originals those are the originals so we went down to performance industries my buddy george i've known him for a long time and we powder coated them and then we painted these little areas basically bringing it back to brand new put the new lips on put new coopers on so now now you have functioning it's out of control yeah now the only thing left to do is to really see if this thing could start after 15 plus years of just sitting there first buddy removed the old battery and install the new one 13 we have 13 with a gun which turned the hazard lights on so we were headed in the right direction next he removed the air box and the filter and squirted some gas in the carburetor now we're gonna douse this carburetor with a little fuel now i have to tell you in 10 years of filming car preservations buddy is on my list of favorite characters i've ever met he's a mechanic and he can get anything running but he is a riot to hang out with all right it goes it goes it goes it goes let that leaf be come on baby come on you can do it come on baby oh my gosh here we go here we go one more time we're gonna do it again we're gonna do it again let's go crank it over go ahead i got the fuel i got the fuel go ahead [Applause] [Laughter] wow i can't believe that turned over listen [Music] it's magic magic at this point with the paint a bit cleaner the inside safe to work on and now the engine turning over i could see joe and his son envisioning the next steps for a full restoration which makes me incredibly happy and it was well worth the effort if you think about it an old rusted out pontiac saved from the junkyard could become the best excuse to spend more time with a teenage son that's a price every dad would be happy to pay household bill is on me [Music] [Music] you

Channel: AMMO NYC

Views: 1,994,152

Rating: 4.8827286 out of 5

Keywords: AMMO Detailing Products, Larry Kosilla, Car detailing, car detailing, detailing, car cleaning, cleaning, detail, polishing, how to polish, how to clean, complete disaster, trans am, pontiac trans am, hagerty redline rebuild, first wash in, first wash in 44 years, first wash in years, dirtiest car ever, dirtiest car detail, dirtiest car in the world, Barn Find Pontiac, pontiac firebird barn find, disgusting car detail, disgusting car detailing makeover, disgusting car interior

Id: wnKcL_EiJ4w

Length: 18min 40sec (1120 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021