EPTWarning: Blog is going to be picture heavy and full of car jargon.
Writing like Torte does, I have decided that I shall write a blog to gather my thoughts on my newest acquisition. I also would like to mention that Torte writes in italics pretty often in his blogs. Ergo, I will write in italics as well, because then I would be like Torte. I also will explain myself ten times, as Torte does this too, just like he always writes in italics. Torte also likes to write in big paragraphs, but his paragraphs are not always in italics, however lots of his blogs contain italics. That being said, I will explain myself multiple times, but differently than the previous times, while being long winded. I also wrote in italics, because I felt like it captured the essence of Torte, mostly because his blogs have a lot of italics, and paragraphs, not not necessarily both together.
Right off the bat, here's the new car!
1978 Pontiac Trans Am
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jBJ9P.jpg)
Looks great! She's beat up, I only paid a few thousand for it, which included it being shipped over to me (got here at 11pm last night!)
I named her Justice, after RedJustice on TL, because she picked it out for me. Sort of, I gave her a list and she picked her favorite. Took me about 5 tries to finally get one!
It's kind of funny, getting old cars like this. It's kind of like solving a mystery, or a crime. You have little to no information and you need to figure out all sorts of things. My plan was to bring it back to 100% stock, like it rolled off the assembly line. Depending on the car club running the shows, some are more/less strict about what "stock" means. Some will disqualify you for having non-matching numbers...basically each car was stamped with a number, engine with a number, carb with a number...so on. Others will take off points for having a non-original paint color. We'll get to that in a bit.
Hopefully my 2002 doesn't get jealous.. same make/model, just newer. You can kinda see how the styling is mostly the same, just kind of evolved with the times.
v - Sup thumb, lawl
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/I3a1J.jpg)
The 78 gets the driveway priority.
The thing has seen many different owners, I think. The last person did an okay job of maintaining it and such, however he didn't really finish the job, nor tell me he didn't finish. There's a lot of stuff wrong or missing, or just really poorly done. I kinda of figured he was leaving information out or not telling me, you kind of have to assume that with cars this old, but it's in fantastic condition when you consider it's been on the road since 1978..
Here's a little walkaround, pardon my unsteady hand.
http://s199.photobucket.com/albums/aa80/Torenhire/Car Album/78 Trans Am/?action=view¤t=VID_20110703_160201.mp4
Here's what I call the "cloverfield edition" of the sound! I absolutely fell in love with how the car sounded...
http://s199.photobucket.com/albums/aa80/Torenhire/Car Album/78 Trans Am/?action=view¤t=VID_20110703_124138.mp4
The reason I call it the cloverfield edition is because I can't hold my camera steady for the life of me, and my stop button apparently broke while I was out there because pressing stop didn't stop...so that's why my thumb shows up for a moment, cause I'm like WTF how do I stop recording!?
So I've done a little research on the car, decoding the VIN number (which basically is a key that says your car should be this year, this is where it was built, this is the engine, this is the number your car was in sequence, so on.) and the Cowl number (which basically tells you what options your car came with. Color, auto/manual, interior color, that sort of thing.).
This is where things have gotten kinda confusing. So...when you look at my car, you see a black Trans Am, right? Okay. Now if I show you this picture...
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jb4WH.jpg)
You notice the red stripe...how odd, the car doesn't have a red stripe on it. So I concluded this...the car was black, then they put a red stripe on it, then it got repainted black. Maybe in between owners or something. HOWEVER - I didn't take pictures of this cause I suck...if I scratch away the black paint on like the engine compartment, the insides of the doors...it shows red paint underneath.
At this point, I am fully convinced this is what happened. Red car, someone painted it black but left a red stripe down the center - whoever did this paint job paid a LOT of money for it because they painted the car professionally, not just a crap shop job - and then the next owner didn't like the stripe and paid a cheap company to paint over it.
Seams feasible, right?
The Cowl Tag says that car came out of the factory with a GOLD paint job. This cowl is stamped into the body, and can't be wrong. Or it's 99.999999% never wrong. So...what the hell? There's not a fleck of gold paint on my car ANYWHERE that I can find. It would be under the red that is under the black. I'm really confused, but at this point I have no idea what the hell color my car is/was/is supposed to be, but I know it started gold.
It should look like this based on my findings, except I don't have the T-Tops option on this car. Otherwise it should look exactly like the picture below...
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LxS3h.jpg)
lolwut.
Anyhow, there's a ton more pictures in the album here, if people care to check it out..
http://s199.photobucket.com/albums/aa80/Torenhire/Car Album/78 Trans Am/?start=all
Still working on tagging all the photos with what they are and what's going on...this thing is a bit larger of a project than I anticipated it being, but it's going to be a lot of fun, and educational to boot. I had to call my dad up to ask about some of the older components I've never really dealt with...Also still unsure what to do about the color. The car needs to be repainted, whether gold or red or black or whatever, that's for sure...just need to decide if I want to do the all stock thing...which would require me putting in a new engine, as the engine that was put in there is a different engine than the original...haha.
Buying used classics is always a lot of fun.
PS: go STX.
