my budget Trans Am build

I just thought I’d share one of my projects with you guys. it’s not going to be a very practical car, but it’ll be fun.

when my buddy owned it…
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e9/appleseed114059/jakes%20trans%20am/DSC00925.jpg
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http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e9/appleseed114059/jakes%20trans%20am/DSC00385.jpg

then he gave up on it, and I bought it from him for $150 minus the motor and transmission.

so with the 305 and the TH350 trans gone, I dropped in a vortec 350 and a 700r4 trans. some long tube headers, and a dual 3" exhaust

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e9/appleseed114059/my%20firebird/DSC03645.jpg
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I also have ws6 sway bars to go on the car, a spohn wonderbar, and a spohn tubular panhard rod. I’ll also be ordering tubular control arms for the rearend.

I was also lucky enough to find a 4th gen posi disc brake rearend with 3.42 gears for the car on Craigslist today and picked that up for $180

so my running total on this car so far is
$150 -car
$400-motor
$0-transmission from my old car
$50- holley 670cfm carb
$130-hedman LT headers
$150- various exhaust pieces for exhaust
$100-4th gen seats
$180-4th gen rearend
$200-spohn suspension parts
$100- various odds and ends


total~$1500

I still need to buy the tubular control arms, possibly a new cam the rear brakes for and some wheels and tires, so say another $1500 and I hope to have a car making close to 260-280 hp/trq at the crank

looking good, i cant believe thats only 280 horse though

looking good so far. Look into grabbing an LS series truck motor. You can grab the aluminum 5.3L for a few hundo if you look good. Also 6.0s can be found for $1k or less if you get lucky.

I’m trying to make a conservative estimate it might actually make closer to 300.

:tup: good to see a 3rd gen project. I blew out the rear end on my 84 lol. I’m pretty sure its the pinion bearing.

well it looks like I’ll be spending more money on the build now, comparing the 4th gen rear brakes to the 3rd gen front brakes. the rears are larger diameter rotors. so I might as well upgrade the fronts .

Nice I like this project :tup:

can you just finish a project you’ve started

hahahahaha lulz

that exhaust looks better than the one mufflerman made for me.

nice project!

hah yeah he knows it I mean first it was the saab,got sick of that. Starts working on the trans am gives up on it and buys a datsun in perfect condition. Ends up running into some small issues with that and decides to sell it. Now he fixed the saab and sent it back to stock for a dd and is back working on the Trans am. I’m not a head doc but I’m pretty sure you have add.

my uncle has one of these i drove it and thought it was quick but who know, it will be nice to see how this ends up.

shouldn’t this be in the “builds thread” though?

i dont know him personally.

was this the dude with the ko4 saab

I wasn’t aware that the saab had a flange for that. I’m pretty sure they come with a k16 flange. Either way I know it had an atp aftermarket kit on it.

was it cruising around elma?

Did you reinforce the frame and structure from cutting the roof?

Nice budget project :tup:

paint the block… paint is cheap. looks like a cool project

Hah I do vehicle add, I don’t know which one to finish first so I just work on each one here and there. I still have the Z , because I was able to fix the Saab and didn’t have to buy another car. So that car is going to get some attention this summer too.

I haven’t reinforced the subframe. I was thinking about getting the subframe braces but I probably should have done that before I built the exhaust because now I’m not sure if the exhaust will be in the way or not. I did reinforce the inner sail panels like stock though.

Nice side pipes. I was going to go that route, but I ended up just putting Moroso spiralflows over my headers with a band clamp and it quiets the car down a lot. Those vortec heads can make some power.

so I took the car over to my buddy’s shop yesterday and we swapped out the rear end for the 4th gen rear. we also installed a ws6 rear sway bar and a new spohn panhard rod.
http://i685.photobucket.com/albums/vv213/turbojohnny_2009/DSC_0026-1.jpg
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