My first car was a 1969 Pontiac Firebird. Ok, my first car was really a 1982 Honda Prelude but my first “real” car was the Firebird. I remember seeing this car under a tarp at the neighbors house. One day the tarp was off and there sat this beautiful green with black vinal top 1969 Pontiac Firebird. It had a 350 big block, Muncie 4-speed with Hurst linkage, dual exhaust, black vinyl seats and a hood tach. I asked the neighbor if he wanted to sell it and after a few days of mulling it over he said yes. I can’t even remember what I ended up paying for it. I probably would have paid double at the time as I was just fascinated with this car. So I brought it home (2 doors down) and started taking a look at the engine. I quickly discovered that the fuel pump was bad and needed to be replaced. This was the start of what my Mom can only describe as the “Great Garage Takeover”. I figured that while I had the fuel pump off why not take a look at the carburetor and the manifold and the…well you get the idea. Six months and $4000 later I had a sweet running machine. I had basically rebuilt the entire engine myself (minus some machine work to bore out the cylinders). I had pretty much replaced everything with high performance parts from the cam shaft to the pistons to the push rods to the manifold and topped it all off with chrome valve covers and air filter. Now before you think “Wow…good job” I’ll let you in on a little incident when I first went to fire it over after the rebuild. The whole time I was working on the engine I was very careful about labeling and bagging all the parts, taking photos of how things were installed etc. When it came time to install the timing chain I had two books that showed two different positions. I chose the one that I thought looked the most reliable but rather than run the engine through by hand to make sure it was really correct I just kept going and putting things back together. Big mistake! When first trying to start the engine it just kept cranking. So we tried to prime the carburetor by adding a little fuel and that quickly burped flame into the air. I should have taken that as a sign that something was not right. So the neighbor said how about we try and push start it. So he got in his truck and pushed me down the road at a good clip and then I popped that clutch to get her going but still nothing. At this point we felt something was seriously wrong so we took a closer look. We soon narrowed the search down to the timing chain which turned out to be way off so that the pistons were hitting the valves. I ended up scarring the tops of the pistons, bending all the intake valves and bending the associated push rods. Lesson learned. After I got all new parts and installed them I did a manual run through of the engine to make sure everything was working as it should. And guess what…she fired up first time. This was by far the most enjoyable car I have ever driven. Some good times were had with that car. I drove it clear across the US one winter. I had it up to 140 mph once (the speedometer went up to 180). As time went on it started costing me money to fix little things that would go wrong. Being a college student at the time I could no longer afford it and needed more reliable transportation. So I ended up selling it. Looking back I regret it, especially seeing how much a classic Firebird goes for these days. And for all the fun and joy that car had given me I don’t have a single photo of her. I guess that is the way it was supposed to be…just a memory.
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