African Muscle Cars - Forum

The engine bay is full of pipes and wires like modern cars. Must say I prefer the simplicity of the early 70 cars.
Could not drive it yet, usual stuff after been standing for ten years, fuel tank and fuel lines rusted. Fuel tank in for cleaning and coating at the moment.

I managed to open the boot today. Found this funny looking run flat yype spare wheel and the bags for the T Top glass. The base for the jack is there but sadly the jack itself is not there no more.
Does anybody know if the sticker in the pic below means anything significant ?

Very cool. Wish I could have another Trans Am. Love how original yours is. In its day you would have had a can in the boot to inflate the spare.
If I had this car, I would attempt to restore to original. Have you got any history on the car? I would loveto know hoe mine landed up in SA.

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I wondered about that because the spare is so small compared to the real wheels.

Any idea where I would get an original jack from?

Have no history besides that it has been stolen and recovered something like 15 years ago. Since then it was not used much.
The past 6 years spent time in a shed, not used at all.

Got the engine turning with the started motor tonight. Still waiting for the fuel tank to arrive back so I just added a bit of fuel to the carb.
Started for about 3 seconds.
Shocking sad news. Water with anti freeze in is running out of the exhaust.
I guess some water pockets must have been rusted through so water went into cylinders.
Will have to open up the engine.

Question now is : How easy is it to get spares for the 301 Pontiac or must I put in a 350 Chev?
Any 350 Chev engines laying around?

Started stripping:

Jislaaik this looks like a cool project! Congrats.

Sorry to hear about the motor woes but a rebuild makes for improved reliability and a better chance to have her as a daily driver - take your time.

Question on the speedo: Does she max out at 140km/h???

It would be a shame to install a 350 in that car, its a numbers matching car, please don't butcher it. Do it proper and rebuild the original engine.

From a value point of view I would think it would be worth more if you respray the car in its original metallic silver.

Ja there is no space to work on this engine so while stripping I realized that I had to do everything 100% perfect because fixing anything afterwards will be a huge task.

Not sure about the spedo , nether had the privilege to drive her yet, but it is strange that it stops at 140.

User = Picard also have one, would be interesting to hear what he says.

Update:
So I decided to strip the whole car and the engine. Did not know what to do with the engine because I read on so many forums how bad the 301 Turbo is.
In the end I decided that since it is a matching numbers car I will take everything back to original. Will paint the original colour and rebuild the engine.

When I stripped the engine I found that the welsh plug behind the aircon bracket was rusted through resulting in water leaking into the air pump port which links to the exhaust port. That is why there was water coming out the turbo.
It also have a crack in the one head and due to the water damage I also have to replace 4x exhaust valves due to the water problem.

Will do a complete rebuild of engine, new pistons, rings, bearings, water pump, oil pump, etc. Also getting all new weather seals for doors and T-Top.

I am now waiting for engine parts from the US, damn expensive.

Car is now also at the painters, we are now removing the old paint up to bare metal.
I am putting Rixim Autobody in Brackenfell to the test.








Then started to strip it for the paint job.



Taking it to the painters



Removing paint is bad news. Previous guys painted it with Duco which crumbles when you try to remove it.

Baie mooi en geluk!!