Why Was This Turbo V8 T/A SO SLOW? - The 1980 Pontiac Turbo Trans Am

by 1980 the muscle car era of large cubic inch engines making obscene amounts of power was long gone at small cubic inch V8s and tragically even smaller six and four cylinders took their place to cut back on a missions and get better gas mileage 1979 looked to be the end of the line for American cars when the fox body Mustang was first unveiled and it was a radical departure from its initial muscle car s styling which left the firebird and Chevy Camaro as the last true line of the original American Pony cars but not all was okay at GM either to make matters worse 1979 was the last production year of the 400 cubic inch big block V8 for the Pontiac Firebird leaving just the lower displacement V8s remaining in the 1980s as the last Bastion of performance that was at least before the mad scientist Z Pontiac strapped a Turbocharger onto their 4.9 L V8 Trans Am as one last Stitch effort for the remaining speed freaks out there and today we'll be talking all about the ridiculous 1980 to 1981 Pontiac turbo Transam and turbo Firebird formula when you think about the firebird or the TransAm you immediately think about the late 70s with Bert Reynolds behind the wheel of a t- topped black Trans Am from the cult classic smoky in the Bandit which helped popularized the last generation of fbody Trans Ams in 1977 and then again in 1980 with the new four-eyed facelift that Pontiac introduced to help generate some new hype for the final years of the second generation TransAm the redesign in 1979 for the firebird maintained the signature T-top roof design the same flares and very similar fenders and overall Body Lines from the 1977 cars but they were given a new aerodynamic front a revised rear spoiler and the entire rear end of the firebird was changed with a connected single taillight assembly while the front grill was lowered and repositioned closer to the front bumper to allow for better air flow into the engine bay this transition to the new more sloped front end design would be carried over into the third generation Firebird as well and these last second gen cars would serve sort of as a transition style for the brand 1979 was the last year that any 400 plus cubic in engines were available in the firebird Because by the time 1980 rolled around more emissions requirements had kicked in and the result was that there was only the 31 cubic in 4.9 L Pontiac V8 available which made a mere one 140 horsepower in stock naturally aspirated trim but even the team at Pontiac knew deep down that this wasn't going to be enough to excite anyone on the basis of performance alone they needed another engine option that would slot above the naturally aspirated 301 Leo hilk who was pontiac's chief engineer of induction emissions and exhaust noted that they were struggling with fuel economy and Emissions requirements and came to the conclusion that they were going to either have to turbocharge the 301 cubic inch Pontiac or have to use a Chevrolet engine to squeeze all the power that they wanted out of these last top tier Trans Ams and at this point for Pontiac uttering the c-word when it came to their engine Choice I'm pretty sure was blasphemy in it of itself so they went with the turbocharged route keep in mind that the idea to turbocharge charge engines was pretty much limited to large diesel engines and various lower production imported cars at this time this had never been done mainstream before by any American automaker and let alone done to a V8 naturally the engineers at Pontiac decided to use the 301 cubic inch V8 as the platform to begin to attempt to build the first turbocharged Firebird now the 301 initially was created as an emission friendly design for the 1977 production year and it was one of the last engines that Pontiac would actually fully design in house before the engine duplication happened at GM across the brand and to prep the 301 for a Turbocharger they would have to do a lot to it starting with the engine block extra material was added to the bearings webs and top deck while the bearing cap bolts were increased a/ in in diameter the crankshaft fillets were also giving a pressure rolling treatment to help help them resist fatigue the compression ratio was lowered from 8.1 to a very low 7.6 as well as the addition of a mild cam shaft meant for low-end torque to help match with the Boost and make the turbo mesh well with the 301 another major component that was added was a highpressure oil pump to ensure adequate oil being sent to the oil cooled turbocharger that they would be using Pontiac also added a balanced crank a baffled Oil pan and and a highpressure fuel pump to accompany the single plane intake and turbo specific exhaust manifolds the engineers of Pontiac also added an electric spark controller that worked off a knock sensor to timing if any detonation was detected overall at face value you can see that the turbocharged 301 mil was definitely way more complicated than the natural gas brated one was which did mean for lots more things to end up potentially going wrong sitting at top the 301 was an 800 CFM Rochester 4 barar carburetor that was unique to the 301 and was fed by a Garrett TB 305 turbocharger that was making 9 lbs of boost out of the box the turbocharged 301 was able to make 210 horsepower and a whopping 345 ftlb of torque which is a major step up from the abysmal 140 to 170 horsepower and 240 ftlb of torque that the naturally aspirated 301s could make plus it included the cool factor of a Turbocharger now this engine may not seem like a lot of power by today's standards because it's not but at the time when sports cars like the Corvette were barely touching over 200 horsepower from the factory this was regarded as a fairly quick production car especially considering such a small displacement behind the turbocharged Pontiac Mill sat a three-speed automatic as the only transmission offered with the turbo Transam and turbo formula Firebirds and it was backed by a freeway gear equipped 308 rear end with the option for an LSD this combination ended up giving a 0 to 60 time of about 8.2 seconds and A4 mile time of around 17 seconds at 86 mph the turbo trans am's Flatow could achieve a top speed of 116 which was well not fast I assume the gearing selection was a function of emissions and fuel economy reasons because a 308 rear gear is criminally low for a performance car a set of 373 gears and a four-speed manual would have undoubtedly changed the characteristics of these turbo cars and made them more lively but not everything was sunshine and rainbows when it came to the new turbocharged 301 one issue that the TransAm had which was another product of the late 70s and early 80s was that it ran on higher octane fuel and at that point fuel shortages were a big issue and gas stations in lots of places misled customers by pumping out regular fuel out of Premium pumps because they just didn't have premium gas and this would cause a drastic drop in power and caus the knock sensor to work overtime in keeping the engine from detonating in short a lot of these cars ended up running like absolute garbage because of bad gasoline and lots of other sort of Kinks that were not worked out when it came to the noock sensor and the entire Turbo System owners of the turbo Trans Ams today note that the cars run much better on today's higher octane fuels as well there's no other way to describe it than these cars with the turbos were very finicky and lots of the times did not run correctly but when they did it was definitely an interesting experience as mentioned before the turbo 301 was available in not only the transs but also in the Firebird Formula for those who wanted a little bit more of a subdued version of the Brash Trans Am both cars had bolod subframes in the front end that featured heavy duty springs and front and rear sway bars plus AET leaf springs out the back power steering also came standard along with front discs and rear drum brakes with the option to add rear disc brakes if one so chose to keep passengers more comfortable and to feel like they're Bert Reynolds the Firebirds interior largely stayed the same from the prev previous years and came standard with oxen vinyl bucket seats vinyl door panels floor mounted shifters and they also matched the iconic machine polished aluminum Dash bezel that surrounded the gauge cluster which included a rally clock a tachometer and a speedo that went up to 100 mph even though the turbo cars could exceed that and the turbo cars also featured one extra special super cool gauge the hood on the turbo Trans Ams has a slight bulge on the driver side side to account for the location of the turbo and charge pipes for the carburetor and since they have this rise in the Hood the designers thought of a novel way to show boost for the driver and that was to have three yellow light bars that would illuminate incrementally as boost was built in the engine starting at normal going to medium and then high boost levels all of them were labeled turbocharge this was a cool way to incorporate the Boost into the digital gauges and also pay homage to the hood mounted tachometer of pontiac's past cars and the firebird fever following smoking the Bandit was still very much alive in 1979 alone Pontiac sold over 21,000 Firebirds with the new 4y facelift setting their alltime record high and following the release of the turbocharged Firebird Pontiac made sure to proudly declare that they were the world's only turbocharged V8 between 1980 and 1981 the entire Firebird line sold a 178,000 cars with 39,9 120 of those being turbocharged Trans Ams including a mere 2,254 turbocharged formula Firebirds a 1980 turbo TransAm y84 special edition was also featured in the movie Smokey and the Bandit 2 this particular car was also outfitted with nitrous to help give it the desired performance during different stunt scenes and one of the high marks for these turbo Trans Ams was their inclusion in to Racing for the 2 years that they were produced in 1980 upon its initial release the turbo TransAm was selected as the official pace car for the Indie 500 that year which prompted Pontiac to release a pace car Edition to commemorate this high honor each pace car was painted white and had special charcoal gray two-tone and an oyster hob nail interior special striping and mirrored t-tops for the 5700 pace cars sold that year in 1981 a similar design was made for a limited 2 th cars as the turbo Trans Am was selected as the pace car for Daytona this model featured a blacked out roof and super trick raro race seats but alas the end of the turbo Firebirds came at the same time as the end of the second generation Firebird Pontiac along with other GM companies stopped using their bespoke engines in favor of unilaterally using Chevrolet based engines and renaming them to fit The Branding when needed along with the new engines came a new generation of fbody cars the third gen which would Breathe new life into the iconic bloodline the turbo Trans Ams of the early 80s were somewhat of a test to see what the American public thought of a turbocharged engine application in a time when big cubic inch engines were restricted and no longer an option they by no means were that fast or record setting cars but they were an Innovative design and still one of the few American V8s that was produced in Mass with a turbo and the last few model years of one of probably the most recognizable and beloved American cars of the late 7s the turbocharged Pontiac Firebirds will always have a place in muscle car Enthusiast Hearts as a focal point of 80s car culture and action movies alike oh and this wasn't the end of the turbo Trans Ams either because in the late 1980s Pontiac would give the turbo Trans Am another go with the infamous Buick turbocharge 6 which if you want to learn more about that please click the video on the screen here thank you all for watching another episode of our rare cars 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Channel: Rare Cars

Views: 172,891

Keywords: rare car, vintage race car, unique cars, unique car, le mans race cars, vintage racecar, world's rarest cars, world's most unique cars, car documentary, 1960's racecars, rare cars, rare racecar, racecar, le mans 1968, daytona coupe, Classic cars, pontiac, pontiac trans am, trans am, turbo trans am, pontiac turbo trans am, 1980 turbo trans am, 1980 trans am, 1981 trans am, 1981 turbo trans am, turbo trans am 1980, turbocharged v8, firebird formula turbo, muscle car, ws6

Id: hML8gPLwZA4

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 16 2023