PROJECT FIRECHICKEN
2004, Project FireChicken has been a project in theory for about 2 years now. I had recieved this car for free. In fact actually it was from the same owner whom I purchased my other Firebird from. When I recieved this car the interior was completely out of the car. The car hadn't ran in about a year. He thought it had something to do with the fuel injectors. After doing some tests, I realized that it was the coil pack on it. The car ran great then. So the car cost me $50. The interior is what actually was in the 88 Firebird. Kinda hard to explain, when this car wouldn't run anymore the guy bought the 88 Firebird. It had grey interior which was trashed by the previous owner. He had black interior in this 87 Firebird which looked good. So he swapped the interiors of the cars. So when I got this car I had to put the grey inteior into the 87 Firebird. Lot of work had to go into this vehicle, but for not paying for it and only having to put $50 in it, I cannot complain. After my initial look at the car I noticed that it had been wrecked before and redone. The job was very bad though. It had way too much bondo in it. Which led it to start cracking and looking bad. Plus the car had a lot of rust on it. The frame itself was in good condition. Very minimal rust on the frame, so I was able to take care of it quickly. Next came the body.....

Fall 04. After two years of having this car I finally decided to restore the body of the car. During the first two years came the work of making the car run good and replacing suspension parts and making sure everything worked. During the past month I have redone both rear quarters. They were really rusted through and had a lot of bondo over the rust. After cutting out the rust and rewelding on some new metal, I think they turned out good. Then came the trunk lid. It had surface rust on it, just as the roof does (as you can see from the picture), plus it had that third brake light. I removed the brake light and welded the holes shut.



Winter 04. The weekend was quite busy. I finally started work on the roofline of the car. Grinded it all down including the rust. Which luckily was just surface rust. Filled in a couple of little dents and reworked the driver side quarter a little. Still had a few ripples in it. Pulled the parts off and masked around all areas. Then primed it. Now it should be set for the winter, without rusting anymore. Spring I will try to get the paint all finished up.



February 05. This month has been extremely busy for working on the car. I have received an extra set of doors and fenders that were in better condition than what is on the car. These pictures show what I originally started with, what they looked like after I sanded them down, filled them in, and primed them. They are now ready for the car.



March 05. I finished sanding the hood and the front and rear bumpers for the car.


June 05. Here came the fun part. I did a complete teardown of the car. Took off all the old doors, fenders, hood, mirrors, bumpers, etc. Then spent some time setting and aligning the new doors and fenders. Since I was driving the car during the winter of last year, I needed to do some touchup on a few spots on the rear quarters.



June 05. The Paint!!!! I decided to go with a two-tone paint job. I did a chromobase urethane setup. Dupont 99K Black and Dupont 907K Red. I started by laying down the black on the bottom edge of the car. I only went up to the ledge line of the car. Then I masked all that off and shot the red onto the car. Then cleared everything.



The following pictures are of me getting the outside of the car back together. The headlights, front and rear bumpers, and taillights. Also reattaching the rear hatch.



The first three pictures are of all the glass and mirrors put back into the car. The rest are of the car cleaned and the interior put back in. Overall for a daily driver, I was impressed with my paintjob.



Fall 05. The following pictures are of the engine and moldings attached to the car. The engine is a 2.8l v6. This is a GM remanufactured motor. This motor at this time is all stock. Future plans are to add a better exhaust and a performance chip.



Fall 05. These pictures are of the interior. I have redone the headliner, as it was sagging really bad. You can see from the seat picture that the whole interior needs redone. The picture of the instrument cluster is just after I modified it to contain gauges. Before that, it had the indicator lights in it.



Winter 05. I purchased seat covers from Hawks Third Gen. They are a Lt Charcoal color. Below are pictures of the seats after I reupholstered them.



Winter 05. I purchased carpet from Hawks Third Gen. It is the Dove Gray color. Below are pictures from what it looks like before I started tearing the car apart. I put in some sound deadening material and then added some extra carpet padding. The final pictures are of the final installation.




Spring 07. The intake on my motor was in need of a cleaning. Had the intake cleaned at Midstate Machine then painted. I polished my throttle body and alternator. While I was in there, I changed my thermostat to a 180* one. What a difference that made on the temp gauge. I changed out the stock air box for a cone filter. Now it has great throttle response and I figured I picked up a few extra ponies from doing all this.




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