Quote:
Originally Posted by 70rs
Good progress John.
I never knew the old pipes were set up like that. I just assumed you had full headers running to them. This should open things up quite a bit huh?
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Yes sir! More power!! .......well, in theory anyway. hehe
To replace the core support on this car everything from the firewall forward has to come off except one fender. On most old cars that's not too bad of a job but the early 2nd gen birds with a front spoiler have a lot of pieces and LOTS of bolts! So a couple hours here and there over the past couple days when I had time and it's all off. Since I will be pulling the engine/trans and running lots of new brake lines etc I figured there was no good reason to leave one fender in place so I just took everything off.
In previous posts you saw the new (to me) core support. These early 2nd gen Firebirds were notorious for rusted out core supports. The wide openings under the bumper with no grills allowed leaves, papers etc. to fly in and hit the radiator then drop when the car stopped only to slowly rot there because there was no place for the debris to get out. It just sat wet from rain and washing on the lower part that holds up the radiator. The core support was the worst part on my car when I bought it, and remained the worst until today, while pretty much everything else on the car was reconditioned/replaced.
Many, many years ago I made a sheet metal section from frame rail to frame rail to support the radiator and eventually found a pretty good core support to replace the original with. BUT, I knew how big a job it was to replace and procrastinated, year, after year, after year. AHAHAHA So here's the pics of the rusty one. Due to rust the only thing connecting the top and bottom is the latch support bracket which will be refurbished and moved onto the new core support.
