Any Project Cars Going On Right Now

Is anyone working on any great project cars.  

What constitutes a great project?  The long term goal?  or is it the car itself?  or is it just in the eye of the beholder?

I only ask because I have a 1991 rs tbi305 and the old school guys don't like 305's and the high-tech guys don't like 3rd gens, and really nobody likes tbi's.

In spite of all that (no really - in spite of all that) I am building my car.  It was giving to me for free by a complete stranger.  I saw it sitting in the guy’s front yard over about 8 months it never moved and I wanted to buy it but I knew that I couldn't afford it even if he was selling it cheap.  Finally I broke down and stopped to look, it wasn't in great shape it looks as though someone lightly sideswiped something from the front quarter panel down to the passenger side door handle.  Other than that the rest of the car looks as good as a 17 year old everyday driver can.  Turned out nobody was home that day so I left a note on the door and he called me back a few weeks later.  To make a long story short after playing hard to please he ended up giving me the car for free as long as I would get it out o f the yard.  He said it leaked water badly but that it ran.  So I had it towed away and now it is 2and a half years later.

It turned out that the stock 305 had a fist size whole in both sides of the block and the intake was cracked from front to back.  We got a h.o. 305 out of a '85 z28 and picked up an intake from a junk yard and that’s where it turned into a project.  I planned to just throw it back together to drive it and that turned into rebuilding the heads and tbi buying a new cam, shaving the heads, 1.6 roller rockers new fuel pump, proform electric water pump, motovation underdrive pulleys, headers, smog pump removal, 3 inch cat back flowmaster, pertronix coil and module, 4.10:1 gears and b&m trany kit and I cant remember everything else.  Long story short 2 and a half years and $3500.00 later the car still hasn't been turned over.  Right now I need to buy a new air condition hose because I misplaced mine over this time period.  I just have to figure out my vacuum lines and plug some holes in the intake and we should be running as soon as I get some time to work on it.

my long term goals are stroke the motor 40 over I think that will be a 337 or 340ci, gmpp fast burn heads, twin turbos, 2 stage nitrous, ws6 pin on ram air hood, lambo doors, 10 point roll cage bigger wheels to allow for bigger brakes.  I want a ten second street car.  It will happen it just takes a lot of time for a working man with a wife and two kids. I'm sure I’m not telling anybody anything  

Hey guy's I got a bit of a project going on.I bought new in 95 a Impala SS,I did the basic bolt on's at first slp cat back,slp headers,AS&M cold air intake,motive 3.73 gears,march pullies and a MSD ignition system.car dynoed 270 at the wheels.Not to bad for a car that has 260hp at the crank stock.Unfortunatly the opti spark went on me for the 8th time and the car sat for about 2 years.I just recently within the past 6-8 months started working on it with the hopes of revivng the beasst I know it can be.I dropped a Edelbrock intake fitted with a BBK 58mm throttle body sitting on top of Trick flo genx ported heads.Installed crane gold series 1.6 rockers that I had sitting around since probably 2003.Also insatlled a LT-4 hotcam,vigilante 2800 stall,and cloyes heavy duty timing chain kit.To top it off there is also a nitrous works wet kit on it now with a 150 shot.I'm getting ready to get it tuned but running into some problems with fuel injector sizes and the Granetelli MAF sensor.Ed wright at fast chips in tulsa said to put the grenatelli on ebay where it belongs and get a 1995 f-body MAF sensor.I took his advice,but still stuck on the injectors.I bought 42 pounders but i'm getting alot of negative feedback from friends saying they might be to big for a wet system and that the stock 24 lb. injectors might be enough.Anyways getting it dyno tunned in 2 weeks and i will try them both out and see what happens.I'm hoping to see the numbers in the 400-450 rwhp range,I will keep you all updated on it in the upcomming weeks.Gabe  

Cool stuff Gabe and throw some pics up if you have any.  

sure thing man,i'll get them up a.s.a.p.  

Yeah i got A 2001 SOM SS with a cme, having ls6 ported heads custom cam and electic waterpump, torque converter installed next month already has SLP longtubes headers and cai ran 12.9@108.  

Project? Well, that would imply that I have an end in sight. I can see no end for my car!

It's a 2000 Trans Am WS-6. I bought it used in 2002, and found that it had some cat-back work, lid and chrome underhood bits. I was into autoxing, and had been competing with a 2000 Firebird convertible. Obviously, the V6 wasn't cutting it, so I bought the TA.

Well, I immediately started messing with the car. The first thing was to get some tires. I bought a set of 17x11 ZR1 replica wheels, and put 315/35-17 Victoracers on them. That helped my times immensely. An adjustable panhard rod followed, along with prodigious wheel well hammering, to prevent tire rub.

Never one to be content, I called up Sam Strano and bought some Koni SA shocks and 500lb springs for the front, Bilstein HD shocks for the rear and swaybars. A few months later, I installed Hooker headers, LS6 intake and a new, custom cat-back system (Mufflex 3"-to-4" Y-pipe with a 4" Dynomax bullet muffler bolted to it, dumping in front of the rear axle). This was the setup that I brought to the Houston SCCA National Tour and won 2nd in the ESP class.

Then, Katrina hit. After the storm, I found a new job that was a 100 mile roundtrip commute.  By now, the Trans Am had a new nickname that my friends gave it - The Red Rhino. As its name suggests, it wasn't the best car to commute 100 miles per day. So, a DD Saturn was purchased.

The night that I brought the Saturn home, I ripped out the interior of the Rhino. By the end of 2005, the car weighed 2980 pounds wet, and had a full roll cage.

Since then, the car has had a few more modifications (Unbalanced Engineering de-coupled torque arm, Hellwig adjustable rear swaybar, Baer GT+ brakes, T2R differential, rebuilt and strengthened T-56, custom homemade rear LCAs, different springs and rear shocks, etc.). I use the Rhino to race in the Grand Bayou Race Series in the GTO class (dominated by production-based racecars). Although it is far from fully developed (still has a 100% stock engine with about 80k miles), it is one of the fastest cars on track.

As for where this "project" is going, I don't know. I want to get the car to the point where I can bring it to almost any track and contend for the lead with whatever production-based car shows up. With about 150 more horses, and some minor aero work (splitter), I believe that this is a very achievable goal (as of now, I am roughly 3 seconds slower than a previous SCCA National Champ who drives a GT1 Viper).

- Matthew  
2000 Trans Am
#14 - Delta Region SCCA
2008 G8GT

Good Luck on having a top winner 00 Trans Ram.  

yep 6.0 rcsb 01 silvy and my 87 turbo t.added spray to the truck and car the other day.truck has a 224 cam and cold air with mesa headers.car has 218 roller with gn1 heads,intake and percision throttle body.both are fun but the truck is much less upkeep lol.man a gn is alot of work  

I bet, truck are so much less upkeep.  

Still working on our EPP Formula, she has gone 10.91 with stock engine and Procharger.  Going to do a cam and set of heads, just to see if stock block will go bottom 10's.  Scott's write up is giving me motivation for this!!  Darn him!  Picked up another block last month....we'll keep this build secret for awhile.  

Jon