FIELD FIND Pontiac Firebird Rescue! Can we make it FASTER? Pt.3

what is happening budget Builders and welcome back to the firebird rescue this is a 1978 Formula Firebird that had been forgotten in a field for over 21 years We rescued this thing about it dragged out we were able to get that 350 fired off and running again we threw some brand new rubber on this car and we got it cruising down the road now to say that 350 is quick would be a complete lie it is anemic to say the least but in today's video we're going to throw some power at us to that 350 and see if we can make this thing a true hot rod [Music] [Music] wow this is difficult with big reel in place originally this car would have been powered by a 305 Chevrolet but at some point of time somebody swapped in a 1972 350 so we do make a little bit more power over stock but not much and part of that is it is still running the entire stock top end which includes this little two barrel start with we will address that with a fresh four barrel intake with breathing in more air we have a very very restrictive exhaust on this car we need to help it a little bit [Music] it definitely has a definitely has a really neat sound but you can tell it's restricted it's actually just cast of course cast iron stock manifolds into a single collector and then back single into the muffler where it splits off into our duals here and every bit of that exhaust is tiny and that just tells me we're not getting a good uh a good fresh of breath air here and it's Not tooting back out the other end very well either really quick before we actually go and start tearing into this thing I do want to go ahead and get a baseline 0-60 or at least based off of the speedometer that we have here it won't be crazy accurate I don't have any of the fancy draggy things or anything just got a stopwatch so that's going to click when we get ready to go and we'll see uh a rough idea of what this thing puts down one two three okay wait wait let me I'm gonna load this a little bit you ready one two three one two three [Music] three it's awesome day this thing's a hot rod 11.76 one two three 11 35. 0-60 in over 11 seconds when I joked this thing was anemic uh I didn't mean that bad we have a lot of improving that we can do let's go ahead pull the distributor pull the intake and start freshening up from there we're gonna save some time doing that so it's odd is here we have the factory mark here we have a homemade I wonder this is probably the balancer off of the 78 here on the 72 maybe I'm gonna go ahead and just mark I'll mark both of them it'll be a little fun to see now we know with most of your Chevy 350s base timing is uh eight degrees before top dead center so that's what we're going to be looking for obviously we have to pull the distributor right out and reset it anyways but I just want to make sure we're not way off or anything to begin with here marks look good Advanced with no problem so we know that's not the issue and that's uh that's not why this car is slow this car is just slow because it's slow I have a feeling automatic you know crazy Highway gear in this thing and 350 that we're about to liven up yeah or more if uh that breaks the hoses then they needed new ones anyways okay we're here in the number one cylinder what we're looking for is those valves to be closed which are coming closed here so we know that we're coming up on the compression stroke we're going to watch as the cylinder comes all the way up smidge more smidge more smidge more smidge more smidge more a little bit more all right closed piston all the way up and lined up with our number one that's all you got to do all right here you go just hold it all right wow there it goes and we got everything cleaned up that motor looks awesome now of course there's more that I would like to do like a cam and stuff the problem is we're looking at some pretty tough restrictions here especially these are uh these are the 882 heads you know they're not very great heads you can't put a ton of power through stuff and once you do you start having issues and without actually yanking this out and going crazy plus we want to keep all the nice things that this car has as well as AC and everything and so we're just trying to hop it up make it a little happier not quite so pitiful and so we don't want to go too crazy but what we had was actually this really cool old school c3b Edelbrock intake and this is kind of neat because it fits on everything now the problem is because of all the crazy bracketry that this car has this won't work I wanted it to we had pulled this out of a barn years ago and we have nothing in it and it's really cool but it's just not going to work for us in this application thankfully Edelbrock does make an intake now that actually will work with everything that we need to and it's less than two hundred dollars which I wouldn't wanting to spend right now but it's what we got to do and so we'll go ahead and get it on the way it'll be here in the morning in the meantime let's go ahead and start pulling our manifolds so we can start working on this exhaust [Music] Ed thank you [Music] [Music] well there we go some nice stock exhaust as you can see being a 78 probably had a catalytic converter right here that is no longer in place but that is some small restrictive unhappy exhaust what sucks is yes it did sound pretty good but I think we can make it even better hopefully and these are our Marketplace special headers are they specifically for a Firebird I don't know the pictures looked the same they were eighty dollars they have this really cool crinkle finish that heat coat I think is going to look awesome on there and they're going to be so much better than that if they work so let's go give them a try [Music] wow that's about as smooth as it gets that is crazy the amount of room there is and what's cool is you still have all the factory heat coating for all the wires so we don't have to worry about the starter wires as you can see one little floor hole super solid everywhere else this one little spot that we will need to address when we have the carpet out the heat will burn the spider webs off [Music] [Music] got a line at seven and a half inches just getting some marks so what we're doing here you can see we've got a inexpensive tube kit which I was It was supposed to be aluminized it's not oh well but what we're what we're going to go ahead and do is I want to a lot of times I mess with six cylinders with the V8 the last one we did we did just straight out of both headers on our Comet which gave it a cool sound we want a little bit better raspier more even sound and so we're actually going to go ahead and make an x-pipe now so that's what Dad is setting up for so he's marking our lines here he's always got these creative little jigs that are they work out perfect I mean this is great and this is where it gets fun now we've I've always wanted one of these these things are pretty expensive nice ones are this is just a cheapy cheapy even so uh probably this is pretty Harbor Freight it might be a Harbor Freight one but it's old but I picked it up from a friend that had that had cleaned off a property we were able to pick this thing up for what I give them 50 bucks or something for it 40 bucks 50 bucks threw a new blade on I had to make some adjustments but this hopefully will make exhaust Building Life much better foreign [Music] [Music] and of course we're using some flow monster single Chambers like we stuck on the Galaxy I think these have just a great sound these are actually manufactured by Flowmaster which are one of both dad my favorite Mufflers they just have a great sound and so do these and so there's our this is kind of a tight floor under here so we're having to tuck everything in kind of crazy but uh I think this will work out pretty well [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] thank you there we go what a difference obviously you've got your manifolds there the headers take up a lot of room so that's why this is kicked back there's not much exhaust here but there's a lot going on that was a pretty complicated figuring out all the tips and everything maybe we went a little overboard it's not perfect but I think it's going to be really really neat and hopefully it'll have a good sound with that exhaust done here is our new intake of course is the Edelbrock intake manifold and what's kind of neat let me show you this part number here it's a 2701 it's less than 200 through O'Reilly's and what's awesome is it has all of the things that you need to mount your alternator your throttle bracket and your AC and so we can put this on here it's going to look pretty sharp I kind of wanted to keep this I don't want to say sleepers I'm just going to keep it stock looking it painted black but I don't want to paint that intake black but let's go ahead and get this thing thrown back down on the top of that motor you see we've already gone ahead and tacked in our end gaskets here now I know a lot of people don't like to use them these did have the holes drilled for them so I went ahead and installed them anyways but I gooped up the bottom and I am going to goop up the top so we don't have to worry about any kind of leaking and then of course something that's aggravating to deal with is the fuel we use today and how much heat has to do with how well a car runs so what I want to do is actually block off this heat transfer this is basically to use exhaust gases to heat up the bottom side of that intake which helps with leaded Fuel and we don't need that anymore so as you can see the hole is a little bit bigger than the head there so I'm going to take some exhaust gasket and kind of goop it up foreign plates that I've cut out they fit right there and that'll clamp down in between and prevent exhaust gases from coming through back on with our intake [Music] now starting from the middle and working our way out I'm going to torque the manifold here to about 33 foot-pounds [Music] with the intake back on we need to cover up that valve train these since we're not keeping it kind of stock looking old 10 valve covers aren't the prettiest but we've got this really neat old school set these came on actually a turbo 350 we had way back and we actually got rid of the motor but we still have these really neat valve covers the aluminum look is cool I think it's a little too much on this so what we're going to go ahead and do and let's get these cleaned up and then I want to go ahead and wrinkle coat black them and then we will sand off the fins I think it's going to be a pretty cool look on this motor here [Music] all right [Music] as we drop down in here you just want to kick back a bit and then Let It Rock to line up with your oil pump and all see where our number one lines up and this will plug in you see where I put the mark right here so we are engaged with the oil pump and back down where it was here you can see the little brackets extenders that Dad made here from the manifold from the header here so that we can still run our AC now it is dry enough to put on here but we need to wait about 48 hours before we can finish scuffing back down our fins but that's kind of the plan but pretty pretty happy with the engine bay so far I think it almost has an oem look except they're aluminum intake looks good hitters look great now we can put the carburetor on here in just a second here is our Holley 600 this was brand new in 1994. this was what was on top of the Thunderbird and we had issues with it overflowing when knowing it was the wrong carburetor anyways we scratched it but I took spent a good bit of time on it tried to rebuild it hopefully it takes this kid it may not but I want to go ahead and let's get it tightened down we'll get our vacuum hook up for the booster let's go and see if this thing will fire off before we go any farther [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Laughter] looks on there I just don't think it's going to do even with the float height closed off to the point where it's not barely running running in the fuel air mixture screws vacuum looks really good on it it still just does not atomize good it dumps fuel I mean the inside of the carburetor was basically brand new We just cleaned it put a kit in it made sure everything looked good and I don't know that's why we took it off the Thunderbird because it had issues thought we could uh maybe dial in on them a little bit but my theory stands that Hollies are great out of the box once they get some age on them I don't know there's not much you can do with it so whether I want to or not I think we've got about six Holly sitting on the shelf over there we're probably gonna run get an Edelbrock to put on this thing our loner little 600 CFM Edelbrock here let's see if this one's any happier [Applause] [Music] sounds right [Music] wow that's so much better [Music] that's what it's supposed to sound like [Music] so Snappy lots of really good condensation which we aren't hardly having before and that just tells you your condensation is a sign of a healthy motor let's pull this thing out of the shop before we uh before we pass out [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] that's what fell down in the fender remember and I heard it we hadn't been able to find it we're coming around that turn I heard we'll go for a spin real quick let's do it questions this is a it's a lot different cars you are darn straight oh sorry neighbors oh Bradley window that would I mean that was just goose and it's spinning tires we're gonna have to put Posse in this thing now oh it sounds good that's what this car should sound like it's better uphill than it was down there before [Laughter] [Music] dang [Music] [Music] you're driving yes it's we will be doing the interior next so don't worry [Music] it's amazing what a carburetor well I guess in a four barrel and headers and full exhaust and all that stuff too but you know what I mean which thing yeah that's good it's a different car [Music] wow what a different car I am ready to see a number difference obviously we're not yeah we're just doing it with our phone you know this is just for fun I'm feeling a little roadkill though I feel like we probably should have washed this first it's not normally our style to go doing modifications without cleaning stuff up you can tell we have washed the car and you'll see that in probably the next video and we'll be redoing the interior we have a full interior for this thing that we're going to be doing that will make this much nicer to drive we wanted to have a little bit of fun with it though but with that being said I'm gonna let it cool down a bit let's cover the motor up I want to go ahead and wash this engine bay and then of course for aerodynamics because that's going to affect us a lot we want to get the hood put back on here thank you [Music] [Music] thank you there's some of our interior [Music] thank you [Music] all right I guess it's time to see if it made any difference a few hundred dollars worth of performance parts you know we piece some of this together over time inexpensive headers did have an inexpensive intake and then obviously we have the carburetor on there miscellaneous exhaust pieces and those inexpensive mufflers let's find out what happened one two three eight six whoa it's almost as fast as it was stock got a lot of tires but let me see if I can clean that up just a little bit all right you ready on three one two three that first pass was eight six and it's about as good as it's gonna get well with the lack of traction that this car is now getting combined with that automatic we did have a big Improvement I did a little bit of research and it looks like real tests the 305 four-speed version of this car did zero to 60 in 10.1 seconds the automatic did it and at about 11.1 seconds so with that unhealth with that 350 with the two barrel on top we were slower initially and now we are quite a bit faster like I said with just a few hundred dollars of modifications that we were able to do here by ourselves it's not crazy performance stuff and I think we can dial it in even more I want to fix on the car quite a bit before we go too crazy we do have a four speed that we might just put in this car and it obviously needs some kind of track lock or posi traction because it is just one wheel peeling as soon as you lay into it which is I mean it wouldn't break the tires loose before so I'll give it other than on the gravel obviously so I'll give it to it this thing is a blast it is a ton of fun and it was sitting in a field for over 20 years but that is going to wrap it up for this episode I really do hope you all have enjoyed the rescue at this point are excited to see what is to come with this build and our other rescues we currently have going and the ones here in the near future and if you are be sure to subscribe button notification Bell to keep up with our uploads and if you have been a part of the channel we appreciate it so incredibly much Dad and I have such a blast bringing these things back to life but that's gonna wrap it up peace out and catch you all on the flip side [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Budget Buildz

Views: 157,296

Keywords: willitrun, sitting, barnfind, fieldfind, oldcar, classic, budgetbuildz, drive, garagefind, woods, buried, dirt, crazy, bringbacktolife, scrapyard, crusher, save, rescue, gas, fun, crush, crushed, crawlspace, dirtfloor, pontiac, firebird, formula, laredobrown, rockfordfiles, bird, screamingeagle, performance, upgrades

Id: mDdKAesJseQ

Length: 32min 37sec (1957 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 26 2023