New guy in CA with a 69 Firebird

[anguilla1980]

Thought a proper introduction is in order. My name's Alex and I'm in Bakersfield CA. I bought a 69 Firebird and drover her home from Texas back to CA on Oct 31st. Broke down 4 times on the way back, such an awesome trip tho, I've been missing old cars since selling my survivor '56 vette.

Pictures and mods are at the link in my sig. She is my daily driver/project car. I never plan on painting her. I've been doing a few repairs and upgrades here and there. I'm going for a car that will take Hellcats on the street, run a 9.99 1/4 with slicks on the track, run in Optima events, and have the look of a vintage Trans Am series race car.

I have the engine in a good place right now so my next focus is suspension. Then my rear end and better heads and cam to finish her out. Right now I'm only at about 435hp and 550ft/lbs because of the stock heads and conservative cam. My goal is about 750hp and 750ft/lbs N/A plus a 200 nitrous shot for the track. Just wanna get a legit 9.99 with the nitrous on the track with slicks then I'll call it good :D

I'm going to keep a full interior, she has a new Vintage air setup, dynamat, etc. so I plan on keeping her for daily driver duty as I have done with all of my old cars.

[Spiffav8]

Welcome to Lat-G Alex! Lot of good information around here and a few good people to boot.

Hopefully you'll start a build thread so everyone can see the progress as it happens.

:captain:

[anguilla1980]

I thought about it but it's about done. Maybe I'll do one for the suspension.

[AMSOILGUY]

Welcome Alex. That body style get lots of love around here. I like the 9.99 goal in the 1/4. Please post up your videos as that is fast for a street car especially for a DD. Best of luck!

[anguilla1980]

Will do! A good friend of mine is the local track photographer (Famoso Raceway) so I'm sure he will get it, I usually never bother with things like that. This summer will be the suspension (Hotchkis Stage 2 TVS, etc) and over next winter will be the final head/cam and other small upgrades to complete everything. I just now have about 4,000 miles on my new 461 since Oct.

Fortunately where I live driving around town is a piece of cake, compared to like LA or other major cities. Plus keep in mind I won't be much if any faster N/A compared to many factory cars like a Hellcat, ZL1, ZO6, etc. I'll be depending on the spray to get me to the 9.99, at which point I will be banned from my local track haha! I do some street racing tho, but for that I won't spray and I'll just run drag radials. I don't plan on ever spraying again after getting to my goal, just to save my engine, so I'll just be running a cheater wet plate system.

I also haven't settled on which rear to go with yet, I still need to investigate if the various IRS setups offered can support that kind of drag strip abuse or if I need to stick with a GM 12 bolt. Which would suck because I want the ride and handing of IRS for auto-x. So if an aftermarket IRS won't take the punishment of 9s, then I'll forget about my 1/4 goal and just go for handling since that is more important to me.

When my trans guy went thru my TH400 and made some changes to my re-calibration kit recently, he wasn't happy with how loose my converter was and now that he points it out, I'm not either. But I planned on getting another one made to better match my new heads and cam anyway.

Alex