3 for 1 - Tribute Trans Am, Project Red Sled and Altered E-Go

A

muscle car. Rick shows us how to under coach a ride. The Comet gets more new steel and a big fish that's ready to bite.

Hey, guys, welcome to muscle car. It's a whole new year and we've got something lined up for just about everyone in the coming months. Alter

ego. Our A FX drag car. Well, it's poison ready for its new firewall Brent. He's been busting his butt on red sled or 61 Impala. We're getting ready to knock the body off and prep it out for paint. Now, 71 UFCC

A,

it's sitting outside our door and it's about ready to come in too last but not least there's a 69 tribute trans Am. It's about ready to hit the road

last time he saw it, we got the body panels back on,

gave it a couple of coats of GM Arctic white

and laid on the classic Trans Am blue stripes

with a new coat of paint and a new found attitude. It's ready to move on to the next step.

So I got busy installing the window regulators and glass. The old hand crank windows are out of place because this thing is gonna have power everything.

The conversion kit from year one includes new regulators that bolt right in place of the old ones and they can even hook you up with original style switches.

Now, undercoating is next. So I've got the whole thing masked off one more time. I'm using a rubberized undercoating, which is real close to what the factory originally used.

It's gonna protect the undercarriage and prevent any future rust.

I'm using three embody chutes. You don't have to mix or pour the stuff. It just screws right onto the gun and you're ready to go.

It's pretty messy. It's more like spraying spackle and paint. So I've covered the floor in plastic and I'm wearing a suit.

If you get it anywhere, it doesn't belong, you need to wipe it off right away with some reducer or it'll be there to stay

mask off your suspension mounting points. You'll be scraping it off later to get your components in place.

It will take about four or five cans to coat the entire undercarriage.

Well, I've been sealing up the bottom side of the Trans

Am. Brent's been working on the top side of red sled. Lower balances aren't available for this car and the original ones where they were on the useful as templates. So it's time for some fabrication.

These are pretty complicated panels with multiple compound curves. So building them in one piece is impossible. Brent started by duplicating the shape of the biggest piece using the slip roller,

using the original as a guide cut out some mark to mimic the factory stampings.

Two,

the corner piece is the most complex. After making a two dimensional version of a three dimensional piece, it's time to coax it into shape.

He gets it close with the help of a hammer and a shot bag. But to smooth out the bumps requires the finer touch of the English wheel.

It looks pretty close so we can tack it into place continuing to shape it as it goes.

Mhm.

Once it's completely welded a grinder and a 40 grid disk will finish blending it together

and the fit looks good. But now we need a way to attach it to the body.

Brent's plan is to make some simple mounting taps. These will give us something to screw into that can remain hidden behind the bumper.

Yeah, those balances are looking awesome, man. Appreciate it, man.

Very cool. A heck of a lot better than the other ones we had. Oh, yeah,

still got this little issue with this gap right here, but I think I'll just fix it later on. Yeah, that's no big deal. Just put in a little patch or something right there. Yeah, that's cool. Hey, you're probably getting tired of playing around with the red sleds rear end, dude. It's got an altered ego. Spend some quality time on that thing. Let's do it, man. Cool. Sounds good. Well, hey, we're gonna switch projects but don't go switching your channel because coming up after the break we're gonna chop out what's left of the firewall lay in some new sheet left

up next. We're firing up the plasma cutter and welders to take the comet one step closer to the drag strip.

Hey, guys, we're back with a 64 comet.

We're just gonna cut the rest of the firewall out of the way because honestly, there's not enough left of this thing to even mess with. So it's time to bust out the plasma cutter

originally. Well, I didn't want to replace the whole firewall, but as we cut more and more out to make room for modifications, it's become more of a hindrance than a hill. So I'm gonna let the sparks fly.

Defenders are coming off for easier access because we have a lot of welds to remove.

I'm using a Mac code spot. Well, drill and Brent prefers the old school drill bit method.

Once the welds are gone, the air chisel comes in to clean up the Klingons.

A little hammer and dolly work will straighten out the edges.

I'm knocking out two jobs and one pass here smoothing off what remains of the spot welds and knocking off the surface rust with a strip and clean

some well through primer will seal it all up.

And now here's a quick tip for you guys when you're using this. Well, through primer,

don't ever set it down like that because all the solids drop down to the bottom. It jams up your straw. It ruins a brand new can always put your lid back on it.

Set it upside down. Save you a lot of money

with the rest of the firewall out of the way. Now is a good time to add into the bar to the cage. We can get at it a lot easier. Plus we can weld it all the way around.

I'm chopping up a piece of leftover roll bar tubing. I found in a scrap pile. We always hang on to extra pieces. You never know when you'll get the chance to use them.

And we all know recycling is good.

The tube sharp makes it easy to get the fish mouth we need for the joint, but you could do this with a grinder and a lot of patience.

All right, man. Let's see how close we got here.

The fit looks good. So we're ready to draw some amps and weld it in place

using the cowl as a guide. The shape of the new firewall is traced onto some cardboard and trimmed out for the template.

Cool. That was good.

I need some extra material around the edge for a mountain lift. So I'm laying a strip of three quarter inch tape to get that extra width.

The outside mark shows me where to cut

the inside mark. That'll show me where to bend

I'm cutting the rough shape out with a plasma cutter first to make it easier to handle.

Since there's no way a four by eight sheets going to fit on a band.

I need to clearance the corner so I can make the bends for the mountain edge, the straight sides. Well, they can be easily bent on the brake, but the curved edge has to be formed by hand

by lightly scoring it with a grinder. I'm creating a line where the metal will easily bend.

Since I want to keep the face of a flat, I'm going to make some relief cuts.

A hammer and dolly are all that's needed to get the flange finished up.

The fit looks good, but we do need to do a little more chopping to make room for the bell housing.

It fits like a glove so we can go ahead and weld it in

now before we can go any further, we need to get the transmission bolted up to the back end of our mock up motor. That way we can build our transmission cross member and fab upper tunnel, but don't go run it off because we got a lot more sparks to make later on in the show

after the break. A 71 ka

with big block Mopar

Power.

Today's flashback. A 1971 K

A 383.

Go catch a coa

if you can.

That was the old Plymouth slogan back in the day. And the 71 Ka

is quite a catch sporting one of the most aggressive and bold designs of all Barracudas and a massive big block under the hood. You can tell this fish is ready to bite,

armed with a four speed pistol grip shift. Their owner, Jamie Cecil loves showing off a ride.

Now, this car has always been driven.

It's an ever trailer.

We've been to Indy, we've been to Columbus. We've,

we go everywhere in it.

Now, co

is not just a nickname, it's the beefed up high performance version of the standard Barracuda

Kas

came with heavy duty suspension and brakes hood, scoops, a blacked out rear deck panel and Riley gauges. Plus you got a 383 floor barrel pumping out 300 horses with 410 pound feet of torque.

You also got the choice of upgrading to a 344 40 or even the

Hammy.

But this 383 has plenty of power and torque to take on the pony cars of its day.

0 to 60 times were a scant 7.8 seconds and it could do it a quarter mile in the mid 14.

The 383 made its debut in the Barracuda in 1967.

But the small engine bay of the A body cars could barely contain the B block motor. There was no room left over for ac or power steering

by 1969. The fish car was starting to look dated and sales were falling. So the Mopar

guys decided to completely redesign it.

The success of the Bee Body satellite allowed him to invest in the brand new E body which was unveiled in 1970.

This new body kept the same 108 inch wheelbase of the A body, but the front end was larger and wider like the bee bodies. This allowed them to drop in big engines with plenty of room to spare.

Plymouth continued to refine the looks of the E body style coming up with several standout features that you'll only find on a 71.

1st up is the grill,

a

cheese grater instead of the simple vertically divided grill of the 70

this one has six teeth that look like the things of a real life Barracuda. This was also the first and only model to feature quad headlights.

Now every fish needs gills, right? So why not this one? These

lures didn't really serve any function except making a look cooler. Defenders had to be specially stamped to install them, which may be why they didn't make it into the 72 model.

Probably the most outrageous style and change was the billboards on the rear fenders. These monster stripes announced to the whole world what was lurking under the hood and were practically the size of a billboard.

They were so big and so hard to put on the car that the designers at Plymouth were told to never design any stripes that large again.

And they didn't,

despite all the changes, sales fell dramatically from almost 18,000 in 1970 to less than 6071.

Part of the reason they sold so well in 70 was that labor strikes had virtually shut down GM and Ford.

But the market for muscle cars was also drying up as insurance rates skyrocketed and EPA regulations took their toll.

This was the last year you could order a coup

with a 3 83 4 40 or

hemi

in 72 the only engine you could get was a 340 rated at just 240 horsepower

records show that in 1971 only 501 ka

hard tops were built with a 33 and four speed transmission.

Plus this is one of the few with ac making it even more rare

before Jamie bought it. It was about to be cut up and turned into a race car. This is one fish. We're glad didn't get away

next on muscle car. The guys have big plans to hold up. Altered egos. Big trans.

Do you ever look inside of a pro stock car and wonder why the tunnel is so big? Well, this is why

moving the engine and transmission up and back. Well, it may be great for weight transfer but it doesn't leave you a whole lot of room on the interior. Now it could do like extreme, just cover it up with a rubber mat,

bam,

money,

dollar dollar bills.

But that's just not our style. That means we need to get some sheet metal over the top of this thing, but still leave enough room for our feet and our pedals. But before we can do that, we gotta build a transmission cross member. Brent. You got a plan, man.

Check

out that.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. What you gonna do with it?

I figure

bore a hole right there.

Weld it in.

Have a piece of tubing across.

Make a little mount right here off the tubing cool. That'll work. You're on it

and I'm out,

we're using removable mounts from ballistic fabrication. If we ever need to drop out the trans well, taking out the cross member won't be an issue.

Brent's getting on the recycling bandwagon and using another piece of scrap tubing from the pile. The inner diameter of the tubing is the same as the outer diameter of the connectors. So they go together like peanut butter and jelly

with the ends welded up. It's time to cut the center

a

few more passes with the tig and it's ready to go in.

The last piece of this puzzle is the actual mouse,

Brent's tacking it together in the car. But since this piece is made to be removable, he can take it out and finish the welding on the table.

Hm. That's a good danish.

So him.

Hey, that turned out nice.

Yeah, I've been working Richard. What have you been doing?

I've been eating the danish and drinking some coffee.

I'll tell you what, since you put all the work into that, I'll bolt it in for you. Well,

how about instead you just work in those tow boards.

Uh, we gotta do the tunnel too. I'd love to do that for you. But you know what?

We're out of time. So, until next time we're out of here.