Hey all!

I was fortunate enough to be GIVEN a 1969 Firebird 350 and will be building it up to a good driving muscle car with some modern touches for comfort and drivability.

I was very torn on what to do with the car at first as it is a VERY low mile and option car. 1,040 miles to be exact. Ordered new as a Stock Eliminator car for Biener Pontiac in Great Neck, NY. It raced with them until about 1971 as far as my research tells me and was sold as a roller after it was given back by the race team that ran it. Somewhere in it's life it was painted and outfitted with a RA-V motor and was set up for Super Stock but I'm not sure how long it ran like that. My father's friend bought it in 1976-8 or so and took it apart to paint it and sadly it sat since then due to life and other interests.

Recently he wanted the storage space and told me "Get it out of here". Time was not the best to it, leaky roofs, raccoons and being picked for nice parts for his other '69 Bird (T/A Clone) that he bought as a driver in the last few years leaves me with about 60% of a Firebird to work with.

The bad is that it's obviously pretty stripped, the dash seems to be the only part that was never removed. There is also the rust in the floor pans, they're toast thanks to raccoon...droppings...gathering mixed with the water from the leaky roof.

The good is that there isn't much rust other than the floor pans. Wheel wells, 1/4s, roof, fenders, doors are all near mint, save for surface rust (he had it sandblasted and primed in the early 1980s)

The RA-V is still around and nowhere near for sale, not that I could afford to buy it.

Long term plans are to make it into a good driving and road tripping muscle car. The original drivetrain is long gone and there aren't any drag strips within a reasonable distance from me, so I'm steering away from a day 1 car. I'm not planning on doing anything that isn't reversable if I change my mind down the road.

I would like to run a 400ish HP 400 or 455 with a Super T-10 and a Gear Vendors Over Drive bolted to the back. Mild suspension upgrades and a power disc/drum setup. Stock body, stock interior with a hidden bluetooth receiver to keep the look (radio delete car baby!) of an early muscle car that I won't hesitate to drive daily in the nice weather. Verdo Green is my color choice (not keen on the yellow it was originally)

Here's my starting point and after the holidays I'm going to get going with phase 1 which is fix the rust in the floors and get it back to sitting on its own suspension.


Before you ask, no I did not put the car on that sketchy trailer, my tow guy is a SAINT for helping me with that rolling pile of sketchy, unfortunately I do not have the bolts for the front suspension nor a rear axle (have a GM 12 bolt located though) so taking it off the trailer was not an option with the few days notice I had to get the car out of there.

The picture of that motor is pure sexy. Sounds like you have a plan the one thing I would suggest is to go 455 if you can it will be easier to get the numbers you are looking for and you can do it with a lower state of tune than a smaller cube motor. By the way Ames performance engineering will have just about anything and everything needed they are out of New Hampshire and specialize in Pontiac only. I know the rust in the floors is disappointing but here in the North East that body would be a major find in that good of condition.

WOW. thats a project lots of work there to do. the biggest problem is finding the hardware to assemble it.
i know they make hardware kits for camaros and chevelles not sure about firebirds. i kinda digging the white,red and blue.
as raced look now that would be cool to put it back to. those lakewood roll bars come up for sale from time to time.



Chris

The plan is 455, but a 400 at the right price will fill the need. Honestly I have a buddy with a free running SBC that I'll probably run while I build a nice Pontiac motor. I find restorations you can drive move faster for myself and knowing the SBC will be temporary is clearing my conscience.

And I am in the Northeast, so I know the rust pains very well, as my name implies I am big into Broncos and well...yeah they rot.

I originally was thinking of going with one of the race paint jobs, but with no race track to race on within reasonable distance the tribute drag car isn't as appealing. And as you can see the only original parts remaining are the body panels, so I'm going to treat it as a mild resto-mod.

Here's it in it's original livery from Biener:

Goldenrod Yellow and T/A Blue Stripes and lettering.

A 69 is a cool looking car in almost any condition, and that one has a very cool history.
In one of the photos it looks like you’ve got a lot of the front end parts, I’ve seen most of the rest on this site from time to time. Keep us updated!

Hi,
New guy's 2 cents here. First I like the plan for a super T10 and overdrive. Wish I could have the same. Also my opinion you should consider a one piece floor. Also if you do a 400 build you can always go the stroker route. Good luck have fun. I am also trying to do a super slow mode resto myself

I do like the idea of the 1pc floor pan but it's overkill for what I need. I did 2pc floors in my Chevelle and my buddies Mustang and I was able to get them to where it was unnoticed. Lots of measuring, welding and grinding the welds, but hey it was worth it.

But news!

I was scanning the webs and decided to look for a Chevy 10 bolt (not running a ton of power and ease of finding parts immedieatly) and found a Junkyard that just took in a 1970 Nova. $350 later and now I have a rear axle for the car. Found a local supplier that has the control arm hardware too so I'll be getting this into roller status hopefully next weekend and then I can dispose of that god awful trailer it is sitting on.

Once it's off the trailer I'll tackle the floor pan repairs and then start sanding the exterior body down to get it into a primer/sealer so it won't continue on its...erm...patina. I wish I had a garage to store it in but Long Island is stupid expensive and $500 a month for a place to store it and not be allowed to work on it is considered a deal around here. So driveway restoration it is until I can figure it out.

Anybody in NY have glass they'd sell for cheap? lol

Just curious if you pulled the PHS on this bird. In one of your pics, it looks like there's a ram air pull knob to the lower right of the steering wheel. Could be something added later, but might be worth checking.

I have not run the PHS on the car as of yet, but I do know it was a factory 350 car. The car did have several RA motors in it during it's time as a racer though, the first being a RA IV which was done while being campaigned by the dealership, so I can imagine they would have done all of the stuff to make it factory appearing. It ended with a RA V motor (which is still owned by the P.O. along with ANOTHER RA-V) and they was stripped down to re-paint and forgotten.

I do want to do the PHS soon but right now I'm more worried with getting the parts I need to get it off that trailer and back on to 4 tires of it's own.


Speaking of parts needed to roll it around. The Chevy 10 bolt from that 1970 Nova turned out to be a 1978 Monte Carlo with a 10 bolt, so that was a bust. BUT I was cruising the Facebook Forum and found someone gracious enough to give me a BOP 10 out of a 1968 Bird that needs some work. This will probably wind up being the final rear for the car for a while so I'm going to rebuild it with some better gears (3:55 and a limited slip most likely) and call it a day.

I did find a local supplier of restoration parts called Yesterday's Muscle Cars/New York Resto Mod in Farmingdale that has a good supply of parts on hand, so if you're in the area give them a shout!

I'm not sure if you have seen this but with your car's racing pedigree I thought you might enjoy it. About halfway down the page the then current owner of Pontiacs own Jim Wangers Blackbird. An infamous 68 firebird in the street drag seen around Detroit back when your car was also terrorizing drag strips. He was closely associated with Wangers back in the day. His knowledge of everything going on at that time is invaluable. It is a long read and you won't be able to do it all at once but some where in there he talks about how the Detroit seen had the fastest cars in the nation because of back door support from the factories, but that the only other place in the nation they respected was the New York seen. Of course that was right where and when you car was in it. enjoy. http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=652803

Wow, that is one hell of a thread! I have it bookmarked and I'm going to go through it in the next few days, almost a decade of conversations...lol

The backdoor support is something that I have found was prevalent during the time. I spoke with a gentleman who owns the 1968 RA-II car that was used by the same race team from Biener and he said they were able to head on out to Detroit and load up a pickup truck full of new parts and use them on the race cars. I'm imagining that some of them might have been on this car but have yet to find somebody who was actually with the car at the time. The previous owner of the 1968 mentioned was in Vietnam when they got the 1969 and only saw it for a few months in the very beginning.

My dad's friend who I got the 1969 from has had it since the mid 1970s and it was bought from a different person who sold him all of his racing parts with the car. It was The American Indian at that point and was disassembled shortly after and then sat until I received it.

I'm still hunting for history on it though and while it won't be a drag car again, I do plan on documenting it's racing pedigree. Everything I plan on doing to it will be reversible so if I ever decide to bring it back to it's racing history I can. I wish there were more parts with the car when I got it, because that would probably steer me into a different direction of the build but it's just a shell right now. The closest drag strip is also 3 hours away from me so a driver is a more attractive build direction.

Have you posted on PY looking for info? They have a much wider audience and are more race/performance oriented.

I've been trying to register for the past 15 minutes and every time it says I have the captchia (anti robot thing) wrong. I'll try on my phone and see if that gives me a better result...lol

Have you checked for a pulse lately ...

Well, not much of an update on the car itself, there's about a foot of snow on the ground making me not want to work on it much.

I did however uncover more of the history of the car from the previous owners/builders of The American Indian.

Right after Biener Pontiac owned the car, 2 Gary's bought the car, one being Gary Claudio who wound up becoming a fairly well known Corvette person at GM.

I spoke with Gary C. and found out that he had co-owned the car with a Gary P. , who was the painter of the car, and they had drag raced it on Long Island until Gary C. had gotten married and as happens with many people needed to sell the race car to fund house repairs (Landscaping and a Driveway in his case). Gary is looking for more pictures of the car but did provide me with this cool painting/drawing that he had done of the car when he owned it.

More to come as it is discovered!

It's been a while but I have made progress! She's sitting on her own weight and I even found myself a 1967 400 block and some 6x-4 heads for the basis of my engine build!

Floor pans should be here this week and I will hopefully be getting them welded in in the next few weeks. I'm leaning more towards a 1970s Super Stock style like it was when it was torn apart. Once a race car, always a race car I guess...lol

The goal at this point is to fix the little rot it has, collect the rest of the missing body panels (trunk lid and cowl panel) strip everything down and get it into some epoxy primer before winter. We have recently had a resurgence of interest in Drag Racing on Long Island (including a NHRA sanctioned airport "Racetrack" for 8 events over 4 weekends. Witnessing the first event this previous Saturday made me realize that this car needs to race again. It was never used as a driver, always a race car and there's not many like that. Here's to hoping that they approve more races for next year and that I can get this finished enough to make at least one pass next season!

Got a couple of nice cowl panels if you don’t find one local.