NEW Trans Am 400-H.O. | 1 of 1

we were literally finishing the very last Superduty in the Run of 50 in that Edition I received a phone call earlier this year the voice on the other end said look I know you're phasing out the Trans Am you're moving toward the chevel but would you consider doing one more when I was young my daddy said got to keep one eye open and your cuz a lot of sentiment in the transm name on this Alpha platform that all the TransAm star life has is a very very high performing extremely comfortable platform that we've gotten used to over the last couple of years so to see it go is going to be [Music] hard an idea occurred to me what if we did something we've never done before we do one time and that's it I approached him about doing an ho R out got run keep on till the sun goes [Music] down now ho is an acronym for high output and it was an engine package that Pontiac started back in the early 60s that was in the 421 cubic inch in subsequent years they used it in the 426 the 326 to 350 and in 1968 and 69 they came out with a 400 cubic inch h [Music] dis and that was when it made it into the firebird series and later the [Music] transan you ain't [Music] youin you [Music] Ain the ho is probably at least for the transm lovers most wellknown for the 455 ho which appeared in 1970 I thought if we're ending a series why not go back to the beginning and we'll do it as a 400 cubic inch which is of itself as a first for us because all the Trans Ams that we did for the last 14 years were either a 6.2 or 7.4 so this is a chance to do a oneoff ho 6.6 L 400 cbic in TransAm he loved the idea as you can see uh this initi a corporate blue pays tribute to the homage of the ho TransAm from back then still sticks to the Common Core American math One cam eight cylinders 16 valves build it bigger build it stronger build it for Boost now okay let's go measure on the car my immediate thought was we're going to do something totally different in terms of Graphics going with a unique font that we've never used before on a Trans Am So this is cool cuz it's something no one else has it's a block font but all the letters are like touching each other and I like it we've used a Gothic font on some of them we used a standard font on some of the other ones and they just decided to go with something a little bit different nothing's ever flat and flush everything's always got a shape to it and if you think you can just make things parallel to the ground you do that and it doesn't look right once you get it that's why I'm measuring it on the car sitting on the ground with the fender on the car that's 317 and that's 317 I'm going to put it in the exact same location the lower part of the line to the bottom of the fender think I'll split the difference you wouldn't think that 2 mm would make such a big difference but it does we're going to go with 316 this deck lid is curved this way and it's also curved this way and I've got a flat stencil I have to split this stencil in two make a little pie piece up here and bend and both of them downward like that so they're parallel with this line if I don't do that it'll look like the trans am's curved ooo splitting hairs and you can see there's a little pie piece right there cuz if I didn't cut this in half and make that little opening right there this thing would be bowed awesome he said it's got to be black with gold stripes and I want you to use carbon fiber if we're going to have an exposed carbon graphic on a car Chris McMahon it runs the carbon Department we have to let him know ahead of time this customer wants a full carbon look and transan were made with resin infusion instead of the prepregnant Chels are made out of but it enables us to get the look to lay the grain down like this particular one when you look at the car in the front the carbon is going to go away like the bird does give him enough information to know what sections are going to be exposed carbon and what aren't where they have to pay particular attention to making sure that the fibers are running in the right direction then I follow through with the whole car de with the roofs sea Toops whichever even the door panels on the inside of the car go with the flow for the bird so they have to kind of treat it with kit gloves and work their way through it all the way through and then after I've got that set it's where I want it it looks good it's down and then I go for the the bulking of the for the strength I'll put this other material called B AC it's carbon fiber he said give me a healthy engine oh yeah I'm big speed head man doesn't have to be over the top I don't want my wife to be intimidated if she wants to drive it but just give me something help this starts life as an l21 block which is what the donor car comes with we go through clean up the cylinder walls we get the whole new rotating assembly all calies cranking rods stuff that's made to handle a lot more power than what we're even throwing at it currently have to Market Brian to the cam shaft as well as their valve tram components all built around boosted application stuff of course because we're trapping a supercharger on top of [Applause] it voila one mounted blue engine it's about it she's a Beed One of a Kind too I'm excited about this one this is the 2650 from Magnuson it's a very tried and true unit this car will be making around 14 15 lbs of boost about 800 wheel horsepower on 93 octane fuel no special race gases no nothing like that it's also going to utilize a 9-in rear diff upgraded suspension arms as well as some coilovers really be able to manage that new found power with the coilovers had a little adjustability so we could adjust the ride height a little bit and The Stance of the car that turned out to be a really good idea and another first for us being the last of the transm series we wanted to stand out from all the other ones I wanted to take the bird and fractionate it the thought was we separate the wings from the body and we use some of that negative space integrate accents of the carbon fiber in the hood rather than an in your- face carbon fiber Phoenix put a stencil down we sprayed it Black by spraying the black and pulling the male stencil off that left a carbon fiber bird and then I had to work my way inward from that point I have to put gold on I have to put masking tape and cover all the gold almost every Black Transam we've ever done has been with a gold bird so I approach him about doing the bird with a red outline then I have to put red on and I have to manually mask over all the red and then I put a last cover lay over it and I spray the black into the center of the feather so this will be black here having that red in there really makes everything Pop I knew the color well because I actually used it on my Gold Edition trans now when we did the exposed Graphics I did something I've never done before I blacken the center of the carbon bird out and do a fade out from the center outward look how it fades in and out but leave a carbon fiber Ridge exposed all the way around the outside that was whole purpose was you Ed the carbon fiber as an accent was something custom I've never done before and I wanted to challenge myself see what I could do it and it came out really well I'm real proud of it it gives you the impression the birds floating feel like you could stick your hand into it I'd say there's 70 80 hours of prep in doing that particular Hood black red and gold look really good together and so now we had those three colors plus the carbon and we decided to put a red stripe across the carbon splitter at the bottom of the spoiler and also around the headlight doors and when you open up and you looking inside the interior there's red accents inside the interior too we already talked about doing carbon fiber on the interior of the door on the birds we would do that to match the Hood then we chose to take the black interior that he wanted and trim it with gold thread it's subtle you put splashes of a color and you could go way too far real quick we wanted to just have nice subtle touches on the interior that match the exterior and it all came together really nice he loved the look of the wheels that we did on the Superduty he has a Superduty so we came up with the idea of doing a 19 in something we've never done before we used a black Barrel we put a gold insert to match the gold on the accent of the exterior of the car then we put as much meat on the back and the front as we could 11in Wheels on the rear 10in on the front putting the white letters on just gave it a really nice touch and that sporty throwback look we'll get a Bas tune from Elite tuned we'll load that in get it up and running get the fluid levels right make sure everything's operational and then start driving and testing dialing it in breaking in this [Music] engine [Music] once you strap it down in the Dole we'll make a series of poles dial in air fuel ratios get everything where we want it before we start dialing up the spark 800 rear wheel on that car is probably just over 900 at flywheel so plenty of power and manageable yeah I mean you know a lot of our customer base I aren't quite sure what to expect at something so powerful just the sheer brute strength that something like this is able to produce so it's extremely surprising to them that's something that is so timid on the street ways you get 15 MP gallon with but when you grab a hold of that gas pedal man it's like it's a whole different experience walking that thin line between something that could achieve greater power greater strength but still maintain ease of drivability if you got a manual car it's not a heavy clutch pedal if you got an automatic car it's not some surging you got to drive with two feet to keep it alive type deal it's accomplishing both of those goals at once is what we strive for and it's a hard line to walk but we always manage to accomplish it it took a long time to get all this stuff figured out many years ago when we first started doing the Trans Ams and I came on board we we were just doing them like the factory did and we were putting stickers on them and I brought up to Todd that we could paint that stuff on and he was very intrigued to hear that we could paint them then he sold 77 Bandits and every single one of them was painted Graphics so we went from doing two or three to all sudden okay you got 77 to do so it was like wow so I kind of honed my skills on doing the birds on all of the Bandit models that we did responses would be a timid way of putting it I mean it could get scary sometimes you know cruising down the road the person driving the car next to you with a phone trying to record you while they're driving 2 feet away they think it's acceptable to record on their cell phone uh in other Realms like eting at gas station stuff like that there's not a time I stop you know whether I got the laptop we be making updates from our guys at Elite or just doing some final tests and I got people coming up hey that's awesome what you're doing and we love your guys' cars or somebody that has no idea on the platform of what we're doing here like what what kind of car is that you know I've never seen a car like this the response is always positive in person I think it was a fitting trip tribute to the entire series to end on a note that hearkens back to the beginning this car is a series of one youin going you ain't going you ain't going you ain't going [Applause] to oh better [Music] run oh yeah I say you better run boy oh you better run oh yeah I say you better run

Channel: Trans Am Worldwide

Views: 708,022

Keywords: Trans Am, Pontiac, Burt Reynolds, Burt Reynolds Bandit Trans Am, Trans Am Worldwide, Carbon Fiber, 400 cubic inch engine, automotive design, custom car build, muscle cars, engine performance, classic cars, retromod, high horsepower, vehicle customization, car enthusiasts, New Trans Am, 2024 Trans Am, HO Trans Am, 2024 HO Trans Am

Id: rM4e9my2kzQ

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 23 2024