The life and times of UPO 69, my 1968 Pontiac Firebird.

Lashout_UK

Lashout_UK

Lashout_UK

Soldato
Joined
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Location
SE England
Finally got around to taking a few proper pictures of my car. It's probably about time that I made a decent thread about it anyway.

It's a 1968 Pontiac Firebird, one of the first generation of F-body cars from General Motors.

Here it is, as it stands at the moment:

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... and for those who haven't heard it before, it sounds like this:


I'll be putting more details and updates in here as we go along but if anyone's got any questions feel free to fire away. Just thought I'd get the ball rolling, as it's something I've been meaning to do for a while.
 
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Behemoth said:
Amazing, like that a lot :D

Love a bit of old school Pontiac, what size engine is that running 6 litre?
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Thanks. It's got a 6.6-litre (400ci) Pontiac V8.

Originally the output would have been 330bhp and 430lb.ft. The 0-60mph sprint would have been dispatched in around six seconds, it'd do the 1/4 mile in 14.2 seconds at 100mph and the top speed was about 120mph.

Some factory adverts quote as low as 5.5 seconds to 60mph but I feel that was probably done on a very cool day, down a slight slope, with very sticky tyres. :p
 
You say 'original' output, but what's the actual output of this beast? :p

Edit, and I hope you drive it with your loud shirt half un-buttoned, chest wig blowing in the breeze and medallion swinging left to right as you swagger out to the car each day?
 
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Puppetmaster said:
What sort of mpg do you get out of it ?
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At the moment it runs quite rich, with sooty black plugs, so I get around 10-12mpg. Driven as gently as possible. :D

That should climb to about 15mpg once I've sorted the jets out.

Fuel injection is on the cards in the near future though, which would hopefully see that climb to more like 18-20mpg. Much more reasonable.
 
Batf1nk said:
You say 'original' output, but what's the actual output of this beast? :p

Edit, and I hope you drive it with your loud shirt half un-buttoned, chest wig blowing in the breeze and medallion swinging left to right as you swagger out to the car each day?
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If I had any chest hair, maybe. :D

The engine's been fairly extensively modified. It's got:

- +30 overbore
- Keith Black forged pistons
- Eagle H-Beam steel rods
- Edelbrock Performer RPM aluminium cylinder heads
- Edelbrock Performer RPM aluminium intake manifold
- Comp Cams roller rocker conversion
- Comp Cams XR276HR performance camshaft
- Doug's hot-coated tubular exhaust manifolds
- Performance exhaust system
- HEI distributor with MSD trigger assembly
- MSD Streetfire HEI ignition system with inbuilt rev limiter
- Summit Racing ignition leads
- NGK R plugs
- Edelbrock 600cfm four-barrel carburettor (for the time being)
- Holley carburettor heat shield and spacer
- Adjustable fuel pressure regulator and gauge
- Competition Moroso sump with increased capacity
- Alloy performance radiator with integrated transmission cooler
- Mickey Thompson rocker covers
- Aftermarket PCV system
- Aftermarket fasteners
- Uprated chromed alternator. Worth at least 30bhp.

When the fuelling is sorted it should be cranking out somewhere in the region of 450bhp and 500lb.ft.

When I've checked over a few other things it'll be going down the local rolling road to see what it's actually making.

Originally it had a 750cfm Barry Grant Speed Demon carburettor but I removed it as I was having nothing but problems with it. The Edelbrock is just to get it up and about so I can get used to it and enjoy it. :)

Voila:

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Here it is with the old 750cfm carb, not long after I bought it.

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:)
 
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tigerstyle said:
Purchase price if I made be so bold as to ask?

Looks great, turns a few heads when out and about right? :)
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Less than it was probably worth, if that makes any sense. There's only a handful in the country. The DVLA puts the total number of '68 Firebird coupes here as three, but no doubt there are others out there. I know the whereabouts of two others, at least.

Mine was originally advertised at £9,000, when I saw it:

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It sounded too cheap. Usually these go for around £15,000 in good condition, if not more. They're rapidly appreciating as people are moving away from the more commonly known Mustangs and Camaros, because the prices of those have just got silly.

There was a reason for it being priced so low though - there was a lot wrong with it. Nothing overly major, that stopped it being driveable, but enough to put off most buyers and drive the price down.

Because the build of the car had effectively stopped two thirds of the way through, the rest of it had been thrown back together. It all still needed setting up, tightening and lots of finishing.

Putting it all right, if you couldn't do the work yourself, would cost quite a substantial amount. The major stuff would be easy to account for and price up but the odd jobs like refurbishing the rear light clusters and wiring could prove costly and time consuming.

Fortunately I don't mind doing work like that and had budgeted for fixing the larger faults, so I could get on with using the car.

To give you some idea of how costly these things can get there was another '68 for sale at the time I was looking at this. It was priced at £10,000 and looked in good order, in the pictures, but lots of things about it caused me concern.

After I bought mine, I went down to my local specialist and - low and behold - on the ramps was the very same one. The chap had bought it and the engine had disintegrated, the suspension and brakes were found to be lethal, and the bottom half of the car was made from filler. Easily spending another £10,000 on putting it back on the road, without dealing with the vast majority of bodywork issues.

Eep.

Think I got the better deal, especially when you consider all the money that had been spent on uprating mine. Still, plenty of odd jobs left to be done.
 
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Appreciate the info packed reply! Not at all in a OMG you could've bought XXX other car style of way, I'm wholly with you on the commitment to driving such an awesome beast!

A friend is into his Camaros, and mentioned sometimes the best way into ownership of one is to buy someone elses project, which by the sounds of it you roughly did, and got the pricey upgrades for little outlay, but knew you'd need lots of finishing time to make the rest come together.

Still dreaming of a a similar era truck Apache/S10 etc etc here :)

Look forward to hearing how this goes for you. Few more photos of the interior?
 
I think I've asked before, but can't remember the answer. How do the gearboxes work on these, are they full auto slushboxes or something a little different?
 
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