Pontiac Trans Am GTA Rally Raced THROUGH A FIELD!

hey welcome back to vice grip garage well some of you just never left that's fine with me i'm getting ready to rally cross tomorrow in my 1988 pontiac trans am gt of an a i think it's like grand theft auto edition or something i don't know you guys have never seen this car before actually so i'm going to give you an in-depth tour let you know what's going on with that rig and then we've got some work to do we've got to change out the fuel making happener swap on a different set of wheels and there's some general mountain ants i've got to do as well so let's dig in [Music] [Applause] it's raining like cats and dolphins outside so we're stuck indoors completely and i apologize we're tight on room and it's a mess in here this is the aftermath from getting independence ready for indianapolis and then i went straight from there to arizona and did some filming with this so i literally have not been in the shop for about four weeks and it's you know it's it's starting it's showing is what i'm saying i just can't believe the mess but any hooves this is known as the freedom hawk it's a 1988 pontiac i raced this down in arizona with alex taylor uh was a lot of fun and it's kind of in an odd configuration right now i mean the paint is obviously glorious but we've got wasota 35ws on the rear which is a dirt track tire for like 3 8 clay stuff like that for minnesota wisconsin and that's where they come up with the name with soda and then we've got just some radials up front that i took a tire groove or two and open them up because the last race i did i'm not sure i'm even supposed to say much but it was asphalt and mud and then dirt and then sand so you kind of just had to figure it out but she's a pretty solid rig actually there's no rust in it well there was a little bit in the floor but andy patched that up for me so it's a pretty solid unit and i can confirm freedom hawk does fly and sure enough it lands hard but let's start in the trunk i can't remember i think i got it fairly loaded with stuff here oh yeah there's no oh no gas shocks on it right now this is pretty much everything that we used to work on the rig there's the air cleaner oh beep dipped well i got to get all of this stuff out of here you can't have any loose items but as you can see already interior stripped it's caged it's got seats in it let me bring this down a little bit whoa too much a little bit oh shot one of the bolts out so it's got a eight point cage in it i guess technically and then it's got of course the bars going in the back there these are summit racing seats summit racing covers brackets and then these are simpson harnesses oh that worked pretty well you can see i got a big boy in here and then we got that tiny little one over there for passengers we got the bnm pro ratchet shifter and yes this car does have nitrous and i've been using it it's it's a little addicted to it be honest right now the plates off of it but we'll get there in a minute but other than that it's not all hacked up i mean all the gauges are still in it and everything like that i took off the boop horn button that's where all your stereo controls and stuff like that was back in the day that was a cutting break or e-brake that uh didn't work actually long long story to that so i just took the handle off we don't need that where we're gone but there's not much to do in here the work we got to do is really under the hood so i'll get you under there so this is my first ever blueprint crate motor that's a 374 horsepower 350. it's a direct replacement to the engine that was in here which is also a 350 some come with the 305s but this one was a 50s 33 350 it was a bigger one that's what i'm saying not the 305. and long story short you guys will get to see a lot of this this summer but we didn't have the time to go through and dingle ball on it rebuild it put head gaskets in and stuff like that so we ended up with this blueprint and it bolted right in which is great all the accessories and stuff went on it but any hooves this little devil here has just given me fits uh it's got a leak out of the front bowl the secondaries are shot you can see it's it's blowing fire and it's basically it's like a dang old dragon it just does what it wants and shoots fire and all sorts of things and i want to get this off of here and we're going to go to a completely different carb setup without the chokehorn choke blade and also get me some four corner idling so i can really just dial this thing in you know this is the nitrous line here so that would come over there and with the plate on we'd have the nitrous solenoid here and then this is the wiring for the relays and everything that bolted in here and then there was a t here for the fuel cylinder there uh it is running an electric pump it's a holley blue pump i'll show you in a minute and then we've got a regulator set up there it's got the stock electric fans and you know i wired them in them are wired in you know that's just that it's expert i mean i would show you but you guys don't want to see that stuff so this is pretty much it the transmission's a used transmission out of a 86 camaro i believe it's a 700 r4 unfortunately but this one bites and shifts and goes and does the thing for now anywho nothing else exciting under here to be honest i'll see if i can show you that pump really quick i just hang a ladder that off down here yeah there she is and then that goes back into a fuel cell that's sitting right in that little cargo area it's a tiny little five gallon and i foamed it as well so there's foam in there to help with dual slash so it actually only holds about two and a half gallons which is perfect for long distance driving nope that's the opposite it's perfect for racing so i think where we're going to start is let's get this fuel make it happener off get the other one on and then i do need to change the already changed charging whirler because the one that's newer than the old one is better than the original one which is no longer good so i need a new one and i think it's the exact yup 111838a so that gives me an idea that there's something else wrong for on the second one already or she just doesn't have enough amperages from the lightning storm now that we're running digital pumps and fans and buttons and boot bops and solenoids and i don't know how electricity works i'm saying the storm might not be big enough and it's causing issues you know i suppose a guy could just take this holly off and trim on it delete and scosh it a little bit and modify and rebuild and fix her up but you're going to have quite a bit of time and money in that and i just ain't got it i race at 8 am tomorrow or at least that's registration so what i'm going to do is i took this carb and a couple others and i called the carburetor shop in forest lake minnesota it's my go-to carb shop and they're going to let me trade this stuff in basically and then put some money down on this brawler over here and this is a beautiful car by holly but basically you can see right away this is a performance and race application there's no chalk horn assembly or flapper in here none of that stuff and it's also got the four corner idles you could idle control adjustments all the way around here this is a 750 it's got 74 main jet 84 secondary they've roughed everything in including the floats and everything so it's one of the things i like about that shop is 99 of the time the stuff i get from them i bolt on and she's just ready to rip so we'll do the same today we'll bolt it on just double check things but we're probably going to be just fine if you call the guys they're going to say what's the weight of the vehicle is it automatic is it a manual what kind of cam shaft they're going to ask you a ton of questions that you normally don't get when you call carb shops but that's why they can dial them in so good for you so i'm just going to take this here and just knock her off quick and throw the new one on by the who and way jessica asked if she could ride a shotgun tomorrow and she may even wheel this thing she's actually really interested in getting into motorsports specifically rallycross and burnout so that should be a lot of fun one of the reasons i really want to get this thing dialed in i'm used to fighting and patterning around but i want to make it fairly drivable just in case she wants to wheel this thing tomorrow we're good to go [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] oh yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] of a pie basically all right what were we doing next tires or was it lunch cold snack tires lunch as much as i don't really want to because it involves physical effort i think i've got to address this hatch and get those chocolaters back on because she's heavy about 100 and some pounds maybe interweb says 65 lies it's heavier my arm meter said so we took her off to shave some weight you know but i got to get her back on filling this thing up would be a bugger jam and a shovel in there every time although stylish not convenient wow [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] got the rig all loaded up here getting some diesel fuels and they just added these pumps and we get ethanol free 91 which is a new thing gonna fill both these up and that should hopefully give us i don't know three maybe seven runs hard to tell brought the canopy so the kiddos can hide under there but nothing else really one spare and a harbor freight tool kit hoping we don't need to do too much ranching today that would be nice [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well we just got pulled in we're setting up the camp for the day quite a crowd here actually it looks like there's 25 to 30 cars registered nice big track i think it starts down there and ends way up by that suv crossover thing but a lot of nice big sweeping corners a couple hairpins over there it looks like a big giant turn down here with a little bit of a straight away just glancing at it a lot of folks walking the track right now i'm gonna go walk it here in a minute and kind of just get a feel for it here's what's going to make this really fun and interesting for a guy is this is really soft and quite a bit of moisture in it yet so there's going to be some heavy ruts roots i guess it depends on where you're from but it's going to be a ton of fun lots of sliding today i'm predicting which is excellent andy showed up in his mercedes what do you call it merc sleazy yeah i guess i mean that's what's on the window yeah so he's gonna show us how this is done we're just talking about look at this just from cars driving through here they're five inches in i don't know if they have any discs or drags out here but i might legitimately get stuck and there are a lot of stalkers that i don't know if they're gonna get to go around too you got people like andy that they ruined it for every one of them yeah but i'll still be able to keep going oh yeah i think you got the most clearance here i'll just jump in your passenger seat we're driving this is a big track actually so if you're not familiar with these columns basically whatever direction they're pointing that's the side you got to be on and then two cones like this is like a gate essentially so you gotta figure your way through the center hopefully yup fire area they're already predicting a bunch of understeer with these cones so this will be a huge rooted area here coming off this hill with some speed i don't know if i got clearance with that transmission pan remind me later i'll show you but i won't because i'll forget it's not good that's what i'm saying well somehow we end up back here still this must go up around and then all the way down the backside this is going to be a lot of fun actually apparently here they basically want you to shut it down and just go this way i don't even know if i got the turning radius for that yeah i need the old cutting break we're thinking they're going to do a couple parade laps get all the cars out here if you get 30 cars two laps it should pack this down fairly decent we just made her through tech inspection i gotta put some electro digital tape over the positive cover i had a little rubber one but she flew off at some point helmets of course went through uh so now i gotta do is put some numbers on the door and andy was nice enough to bring me some so i'm gonna put the old number 52 which is my number for everything except of course if i'm racing at the freedom factory 1776 or the triple seven because guy can't change that but put these on quick and then i think it's almost driver meeting time silver so you can barely see it perfect that'll work rules just say you got to have a number you got a number doing the parade lap right now so we'll go around the track get a feel for it and we're also packing it down here i didn't make it i had the hot wire the windows and the freedom hawk there to get them up looks a lot bumpier once you're out there look at that dirt already coming up wow here comes andy [Music] mercedes she's under steering that's going to be my issue too these big passenger cars that's the corner i'm not going to be able to make it's like mud bogging i'm gonna get stuck out here guys i ain't kidding you right there i think the track conditions are only gonna get worse which is fine it's just gonna be funny when i'm the first one to get a firebird stuck on a scca course [Music] first group is done just cleaned off the old windscreen and we're getting ready to go stage jessica's riding with this time you excited and if all goes well i think you might be doing this on a regular basis but driving right so this is a good way to get used to this stuff is just ride shotgun with a friend or family member or something like that and it's a great way to get into it anywhose we're going to crawl down here with this group of cars it is hot today so hopefully we can survive maybe we'll bring some waters or something huh good idea i'll grab some now they put us in the stock class so these are technically all stock cars this is rear wheel drive prepared this is a frayed lamp let us see the field there's some really deep roots in here and we're definitely bottoming out like right here all right you ready [Music] [Applause] so so what do you think of that [Music] wow you got nervous one time one time was on the back straight that very first the very first like sharp turn we did oh didn't think we'd turn yeah did you feel this thing bottoming out yeah yeah all right you could tell every time i was going to happen because those deep roots i was trying to put my feet over these holes too starting 707. that seemed really really really really crazy fast as well it's more intense in the car then we'll see the times but i don't think it was that good [Music] it gets so hot down there it feels like there's a freaking fire yeah the header is right there they'll piping later is just burning your leg off yup well now you gotta vacuum this out when we go home there's so much dirt on now that you had your first turn this time passengers watched so if heat gets above 230 or oil drops below 40. okay then just higher than 230 lower than 40. yeah and then just tap me and planet engages i mean i look as often as i can but clearly i'm yeah you know so i forgot to tell jessica about the hole in the floor over here to cut that in to work on the transmission and we're bottoming out so much that it's just but that's what they make face shields for right and i got my helmet taped up because i hit this violently quite a bit cars are starting so we're gonna get belted in and get ready here so [Music] [Music] let's do that that's the corner i'm not going to be able to make i'm going to get stuck out here guys i ain't kidding you it's gonna be funny when i'm the first one to get a firebird stuck on a scca course thank you so we just tried to go we got high centered on like the fifth turn we're gonna try it one more time and call it quits we're just bottoming out too much and i don't want to hurt this transmission or the engine anymore the pans are just get beat so so um [Music] [Music] good boy 52 done for day two rutted sandwich lunch time put it straight on the trailer i think we're i think we're done we just uh it's a ton of fun but man all we're doing is pushing dirt out there i mean it looks like tractor took a drag through there getting ready to put some seed down you know we're just plowing near the front it's just scooping it up and then i can't steer because the front end just floats passenger floors got 19 feet of dirt in it so i think that's gonna be it i have no idea what the times were i think my first lap was definitely the fastest because it wasn't as rutted yet but looking out here now i mean if you look like in that corner it's probably a foot and a half deep on the outside so i can't even get off the start line without bottoming out really fun track but you definitely need some clearance for this one so instead of tearing it up we're just going to shut it down a lot of fun though save freedom hawk for some other adventures i don't know what we're doing yet maybe some drag racing maybe some autocross not sure but thanks guys for watching appreciate it very much see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Vice Grip Garage

Views: 510,954

Keywords: motortrend, roadkill, vice grip garage, vise grip garage, vgg, rally cross, racing, dirty, dirt, rally, scca, gta, trans am, firebird, pontiac, camaro, blue print, off roading, dirt track, race

Id: w7BCzUz7cbQ

Length: 33min 30sec (2010 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021