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ACTIVITY LOG FOR MY CAR
(By the way, there are currently no pics of my car on the website)

Monday, March 26, 2001 | Thursday, April 5, 2001 | Sunday, April 8, 2001 | Friday, April 27, 2001 | Saturday, April 28, 2001 | Monday, April 30, 2001 | Friday, May 4, 2001 | Thursday, May 10, 2001 | Wednesday, May 16, 2001 | Tuesday, May 29, 2001 | Saturday, June 2, 2001 | Tuesday, June 5, 2001 | Thursday, June 21, 2001 | Friday, June 29, 2001 | Tuesday, July 10, 2001 | Tuesday, July 31, 2001 | Wednesday, August 8, 2001 | Tuesday, August 21, 2001 | Sunday, September 2, 2001 | Monday, September 3, 2001 | Wednesday, October 10, 2001 | Wednesday, October 24, 2001 | Tuesday, November 6, 2001 | Saturday, November 24, 2001 | Wednesday, January 16, 2002 | Wednesday, February 20, 2002 | Thursday, April 25, 2002 | Saturday, May 18, 2002 | Sunday, July 21, 2002 | Sunday, August 11, 2002 | Wednesday, August 28, 2002 | Saturday, August 31, 2002 | Friday, November 1, 2002 | Thursday, December 19, 2002 | Monday, January 20, 2003 | Saturday, March 22, 2003 | Monday, March 31, 2003 | Thursday, April 24, 2003 | Wednesday, June 4, 2003 | Sunday, June 29, 2003 | Tuesday, July 29, 2003 | Monday, September 22, 2003 | Monday, July 25, 2004 | Friday, April 8, 2005 | Thursday, September 8, 2005 | Sunday, June 8, 2008 | Monday, June 9, 2008 | Friday, August 29, 2008 | Wednesday, February 4, 2009 | Thursday, June 11, 2009 | Monday, June 15, 2009 | Tuesday, June 16, 2009 | Tuesday, August 4, 2009 | Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Tuesday, September 8, 2009: Mileage: 3643.8. Started at 3629.1. Gassed up @3635.9, among other trivial things. At some point on an earlier run, I went to Firestone behind Exxon to get the gold N89's mounted onto the gatorbacks after no luck at four other places (wtf? I guess nobody needs my moolahs). I guess those were many of the miles between 3557 and 3629. I have that receipt somewhere so I should grab that date and add it on here too.top

Tuesday, August 4, 2009: Mileage: . Car sitting outside in the rain for the annual garage fix.top

Tuesday, June 16, 2009: Mileage: 3557.4. Went to Biltmore Abrasive to pick up wheels. Went to Subway across from King Auto Auction, then back to garage.top

Monday, June 15, 2009: Mileage: 3540.8. Mileage back-calculated w/ google maps. Drove to Mountain Tire on H'ville Hwy. to have wheels removed and temporarily replaced with Eric's batmans. Tire guy came up to me when I was waiting in lounge area and said "So what's the story on the Trans Am?" and we talked about it for a while. He seemed pretty impressed. Later on when he was cashing me out, he commented on how the Eagle GT's had runout and were "square," i.e. out of round. I told him they were the original tires from 27 years ago and that they sit in a garage all the time. Dropped off newly removed wheels @ Biltmore Abrasive and headed home. Car got wet during last 15 minutes of trip. Bummer. Rain-X or whatever from way back when is still doing its job.top

Thursday, June 11, 2009: Mileage: 3522.0. Mileage back-calculated w/ google maps. Inspection @ Exxon on corner of Long Shoals & H'ville Rd. I sure am glad the bums there half-ass their NC inspections, because the rear marker light which has been out since 2001 is still out post-inspection, even as the hillbilly yelled "all good back here!" when inspecting the lights. Window sticker gone for good, w/ NC's new rules. Went to Innsbruck Mall license office to re-register Big Red. Went to Burger King in same shopping center & hogged out on a Whopper Jr. w/ cheese. Sure... of course I'm on a diet. Drove back to Fletcher in search of a place on Pinners Cove Rd. that supposedly did media blasting, but could not find it. Car got wet during last 5 minutes of trip. Starting mileage 3481.9, so one session missing below.top

Wednesday, February 4, 2009: Mileage: 3466.9. Temp outside roughly +15F. Unhooked battery was showing 12.4V after having sat for a couple months, but as soon as it was hooked up, it showed about 11V and couldn't move the starter at all. Jumpstarted it with Big Red, which also had to be jumpstarted from the all life-giving p.sdt with its new batteries. Drove to Cane Creek Middle, back to old Country Food Store, u-turned to neighborhood, left on W.P.Way, right on W.P.Cir., back to garage. No water pump leaks visible at this time. Starting odo was 3458.0 so there's at least one missing session below this one, as (per) usual...top

Friday, August 29, 2008: Mileage: 3453.7. New batt from Advance Auto parts. For a while, I had been using the same batt for both Trans Am's. Joyride path: from home to Cane Creek to US74-A, to River Ridge exit, u-turn to US74-A, onto B.R.P. south, exit as US25 south, through S.Asheville to intersection with Advance Auto / First Citizens, up to Rathfarnham, Sweeten Creek, Mills Gap, McCrary Stone Eaters (new sign? -Eaters+Service), etc.

Noticings (if it wasn't a word, it is now) : 1) outta-nowhere click or crack from passenger's side window / seat / map pocket area while on 74 west. I coulda sworn that sound was followed by a new rattle for the next minute or so, but that disappeared, so it coulda been an existing rattle. 2) trans. fluid drip on driveway after backing into garage after return home. Both engine oil and trans oil are full. 3) As a matter of fact, trans. fluid is overfull. I don't know how that happened, or if it's a bad omen, but I was pretty damn sure I never overfilled it. Car always seems to have a slight "toaster" smell to it after it's warmed up. I'm not gonna try to guess if that is also transmission related, so I'll just keep an eye open for now. 4) Especially when cold, a subtle clickety clackety sound out of motor, which has been there from pretty much day one. No, I'm not a mechanic. But when I start thinking about pushrods, lifters, etc., that can never be a good thing. Hopefully I won't have to tear the motor down with barely 3000 miles on it. We'll see. 5) T-top weatherstripping, not the part on the car, but the stuff on the actual t-top itself's outer edge, looks pretty damn weakly. It's like it was assembled in such a shoddy way that it doesn't form a really good seal at all. 6) The sunvisor innards must be made of some really _really_ cheap stuff! If you dare touch that foam even slightly, it collapses and does not puff back out to shape. This is something I noticed on Black Cherry's sunvisors too, but their cloth was already sagging, never to be the same again. Mine aren't sagging yet, and hopefully won't, but, man, material quality in 1982 really sucked. How sad. Kevin says these parts are potentially still available in charcoal, so that's a good thing to keep in mind. 7) Made a note of hood strut part numbers, 10025954. I should get some ASAP, if they are available with that same part number. Even if they're aftermarket, I should order up a pair.top

Monday, June 9, 2008: Mileage: 3426.7. Drove (another car) to License Plate Office and got re-registered and got new plate. Drove Trans Am to an Exxon service station and got state inspection done. Personalized plate should be coming a few weeks down the road.top

Sunday, June 8, 2008: Mileage: 3414.1. Mileage started out 3410.3. Swept away lots of spiderwebs. Used California car brush over most of exterior. Checked tires; driver's side front tire low; topped off. Tightened valve cover bolts. Removed and reinsterted spark plug wires at all spark plugs. Drove car around the neighborhood about 3 times, sometimes doing full circle, sometimes figure-8 in the middle shortcut. Insurance was also re-initiated a few days ago. Several entries with minimal activity missing inbetween this entry and last one.

Thursday, September 8, 2005: Mileage: 3404.0. Need to know basis only.top

Friday, April 8, 2005: Mileage: 3396.5. Mileage to start was 3392; obviously a couple of entries missing here (it's like deja vu all over again).

Mixed bag of luck. Plan was to go to the auto parts place and get some fluids. As soon as I got in my car & drove like 1 mile from my house, it started to rain, because like a moron, I didn't check the weather forecast first. But at least it was fresh rain on a dry ground, not rain on a saturated ground, so there was practically no roadfilth getting kicked up. Serious bead-up action on car body and windows. That was cool. Even still, I got pissed at myself and just went to the closest convenience store to fill up on 93, and then went straight back home, still in the rain. Under my watch, the car has seen rain 2 times now; 1) when towing car down from NY state, for a prolonged period, and 2) today, for less than 15 minutes.

If anything, this helped to wash off any existing dust I may have missed on the car. Of which there's plenty :P So it was a sorta OK ride I guess. And the fewer miles, the better.

Note to self: graph at bottom is way outdated. Jeez, I miss the days when I relentlessly and endlessly worked on my site, improving tiny little micro-flaws. These days I just log on once every few months and I've forgotten what I did since the last time.

Back to truckdriving tomorrow, away from my poor cars. Picking up a load in Catawba SC and taking it up to Newton, Iowa, monday morning.top

Monday, July 25, 2004: Mileage: 3340.6. 3336.? start. 3340.6 end. obviously there's some entries missing here.. doh. might b gone for good if i can't dig 'em up later on.

car had been sitting a few months & i had concerns about it; underneath was totally covered with spiderwebs. cfi air cleaner lid was full of some kind of seeds ; upper engine was bone dry from sitting, fuel was probly stale, coolant probly stale, etc.

1) i wanted to dump some lube funk in the cyl's to get stuff rejuvenated / loosened before cranking. bought some marvel mystery oil & i set out to do it. the plugs were pretty damn hard to get to and i had never removed 'em on an LU5 before. got to two of them finally & dumped in some of that goop, before i gave that up.. would've taken me a whole day to get 'em all. i wanted to at least get the motor turning a few revs before cranking it up, and didnt want to do this w/ the starter. so i grabbed the bolts of the middle upper pulley (camshaft? dunno, been so long since i looked at a car engine, i'd have to go verify what accessory it was!) with some wrenches & torqued in the tighten-direction; was able to give the while thing 3 or 4 revs. got easier w/ each rev. ok, i was ready to crank, as far as that was concerned.

2) wanted to drain all the coolant at least from the radiator itself & replace, but time once again was an issue. this'll have to wait.

3) wanted to drain fuel from fuel tank & replace but a) time was an issue, but more importantly b) inexperience and lack of serious tools was an even bigger issue. this'll have to either wait indefinitely or not be done at all. another 8oz (or was it 12? same diff) of stabilizer will have to do for now.

4) trans fluid had been historically low since the first time i checked it way back when, though car ran tight & strong. checked @ warm idle & found to still be low (duh); added appx 2/3 quart & brought it up to full. add this fluid to the list of fluids i want to drain & replace, when i have time & tools. (simple fact is i dont trust a mechanic; it'd have to be me doing it, OR a firebird only mechanic like thirdgenresource in charlotte or something)

5) CFI lid was full of some kinda seeds. turns out a bag full of bird seed in the garage had a hole in it, and apparently some shitrats decided to make a nest in the CFI air cleaner lid! bastards. vacuumed out 99.5% of that mess; a few did inevitably fall out & around the outer crevasses of the motor. luckily none fell info the TBI's area.. i would've felt totally paranoid if that had happened. ancient & irrepleceable technology probably doesnt like to choke on damn bird feed and stuff.

ok, time to crank. batt was dead; hooked up w/ my dad's 96 cutlass ciera. as in past outings when the battery happened to be dead, it was excruiciatingly hard to start up. even though i had turned it by hand (see above), it was very tough to start. high compression (good)? or just super-dry oil-starved cylinders (bad)? engine kept turning like 1/2 a rev at each crankup attempt, then dying. sometimes it even sounded/felt like when i let go of the key, the motor turned backwards a longer distance than the starter had turned it. i.e. this sounded & felt & seemed not-good to me, but i'm not a mechanic, what do i know.. let it sit 5 more minutes, more unsuccessful startups. tried turning the key 2 or 3 times in a row for a rock-back-n-forth effect.. this failed the first few times. finally the bugger started up using this trick. ok now... immediately when i cranked, a very dense thick white cloud started coming out the tailpipe filling up the entire garage. you'd swear the house was on fire, i mean it was thick and dense like never before (though this has happened before). maybe it looked worse than it was due to nighttime & fluorescent lites? dunno. my dad sorta freaked out, he was like "quick, drive it outside into the driveway!" he thought we were burning up. i did just that, though i was not quite as panicked. ok the car sounded normal and idled normal, but here was this giant white cloud still coming out both tailpipes. last time this had happened this had lasted 5-10 min, so i figured, ok, give it 5 - 10 min and it'll be over. that's what happened. it kinda dissipated into the air & eventually the exhaust looked pretty normal. garage was still "smoking"; i.e. the smoke filling it was still seeping out slowly & was lighter than air, creeping upwards. the only problem is... for the life of me i cannot figure out what this CLOUD is. it doesn't smell like any fluid i'm aware of; not gasoline, not oil, not antifreeze, not brake fluid, power steering fluid, trans fluid.. NONE of those. just sort of smells like a product of a combustion engine, but not quite like normal exhaust. i think this even happened when we were up in NY buying the car & seeing it for the first time when the dude cranked it for us, but to this day i don't know what it is. i just know it goes away after a while like it never happened. can't be good but anyway.

still have 1 bad outer lamp, the driver's side rear quarter red lamp. i tried to get to it one time, without digging too deep, and found it hard to do so i postponed it. same today. who cares, it can wait. otherwise the car at night with parking lights on looks awesome, better than any brochure.

ok after it was at warm idle i added some trans fluid and rechecked, then my dad & i went for about a 4 mile trip around the local rd's. i tested the acceleration and it was pretty damn good. did not force a 3rd-to-2nd downshift though, just sort of a ram-air test. there was a noticeable sorta whoosh sound at the beginning of the acceleration; presumably ram air. hard to pin down but cool sound. oil pressure high around 55 at least (60psi gauge) during accel, appx 30psi at idle in gear. i noticed another artifact that i had noticed before too: when u come to a complete stop, there's occasionally sort of a quiet clunk & a slight kick from the drivetrain. definitely something in the driveline. can't narrow it down much further than that, but the driveshaft is involved, or possibly the rear diff & trans. and at a rolling start from 0mph, it'll sometimes do the same clunk/kick. at least rolling to a stop, you'd think it's a last minute downshift into 1st; some cars have a deceleration effect when that happens, but this is different; it's already in 1st, then it does this. & there's no rpm change. in all probability it's something wrong with the transmission, but i'll have to get that verified by someone who knows what the hell they're doing w/ transmissions, i.e. not me.

another observation is the sticky-lifter sounding sound which has been there pretty much since day 1. could be a sticky lifter or anything else, i'm just speculating. barely noticeable unless u listen closely. most noticeable at idle.

probly forgetting some good details here but this is good enuf for now, & this is a rough draft which i'm putting up coz i dont have time to edit it into looking good. final mileage 3340.6

reminder: dont email unless u want your email going into a black hole; i probably (that's the key word, u can take yer chances if u want) will not get anything till i do some cleanup, which i dont have time for now. :< use the messageboard. gttop

Monday, September 22, 2003: Mileage: 3288.3. Got a new 700CCA batt, idled in the garage for about 15 min., that's about it. Driver's front tire seems to be developing a very very slow leak.. will need to be addressed.top

Tuesday, July 29, 2003: Mileage: 3288.3. Drove with my sister to Cane Creek Middle School. Removed t-tops for only the 2nd time, and only the first time had 'em off while actually driving. Drove on: 74a, pkwy south, 25 south, enmark tta, turnaround, 25a n, mkt ctr, mills gp, williams, whprd, whpcir. Put t-tops back on. Parked.top

Sunday, June 29, 2003: Mileage: 3256.9. Drove to Verizon on US 25 with my mom. Ended up not buying a phone. Goof's luck.top

Wednesday, June 4, 2003: Mileage: 3246.8. Drove to Cane Creek Middle School. Turned around and started back towards home, to test the cruise control on this semi-hilly road. Seemed to work great. Set it at around 42mph, and the car then varied from around 42-46, as expected. Drove to the Fletcher P.O., then back to Mills Gap from US 25 north, then home. Typical trip, though slightly longer than usual.top

Thursday, April 24, 2003: Mileage: 3227.2. Drove Cane Creek Rd. to to US 74-A west, to the Blue Ridge Parkway, to US 25 South, to B.K., to Mills Gap Rd., to Williams Rd, White Pine Rd, White Pine Cir. Typical trip, except that it was at night, from appx 9pm to 10pm, and slightly longer than usual at 26 miles. Slowing down to pull into B.K. I noticed a subtle driveshaft clunk and while in the drive-thru noticed it again when I let off the brake to creep forward in line. Didn't sound major, but I'm sure it's a low-lubrication issue somewhere or other. Long term priority to be checked out.. not worried about it. Also when pulling into Willams Rd. I noticed a wheel-timed tick-tick-tick sound coming from the rear driver's side tire. My first thought it was "better just be a pebble stuck in the tire tread, better not be anything beyond that." As I pulled into the garage and parked the car, the whole gas tank suddenly exploded and killed me! OK maybe not; It was just a pebble in the tire tread after all.top

Monday, March 31, 2003: Mileage: 3203.9. 2-year anniversary of when I drove Truckl's mediamobile to NY and hauled the T/A home :)

Drove to the post office and back today.top

Saturday, March 22, 2003: Mileage: 3195.7. Eric gave me a black & gold "1982" front license plate he made at a local shop and I added it to the front of the T/A. It's a damn close shade of gold. Looks f-awesome. The FRT LIC PLT MNT BRKT is slightly bent from when I bumped into the Firebird that one time.. doh. I hadn't noticed it before. Oh well, what can you do? Accidents will happen. Not exactly a super-rare part anyway. I went by a local car show with the T/A just to look, not show. Wanted to check out what they meant by "5:30PM - burnout competition". I figured it would be 3 or 4 podunk cars burning oil instead of rubber, etc. Sadly by the time I got there, it was about 6:15, and there was a long line of cars leaving.. doh #2. I drove in, did a big circle and got in line to leave. Some mindless woman saw me and was like "look, knight rider car" .. :P It's awesome to have a car worthy of attention; not so awesome to be getting attention for the wrong reasons. 3195.7 mi .. with a bit of random joyriding, I added like 29 miles. damn / d'oh #3.. 10.000 gal of gas too. Missing log entries to come soon, if I can dig them up..top

Monday, January 20, 2003: Mileage: 3166.7. MLK day. Cranked up the car and recorded some wav's of the engine running, etc. Drove to the parts store to buy a few different items I needed. Forgot to get gas stabilizer for the next tank of gas. D'oh. I'll get that another day. Came back home and did a big photo shoot. Pics came out a little too dark for what I had expected, but it's not so baad. I have a few entries I haven't entered yet, but I will. I hate putting off stuff :Ptop

Thursday, December 19, 2002: Mileage: 3157.2.top

Friday, November 1, 2002: Mileage: 3123.2.top

Saturday, August 31, 2002: Mileage: 3087.7. I had to pull out so that a garage-installed refrigerator/freezer could be installed in the garage, right behing the T/A's usual spot. On the garage ground was a drip composed of about 2 average size drips of fresh oil, right under where the rear main seal would be. This may have happened int he past 2 days because I don't remember seeing it before wednesday. I figured while the car was out, might as well go for a short trip. Drove to Cotswolds again and did a small photo shoot, drove back. Got some mini-movies too (10 consecutive frames shot at 1/2 second intervals). Out time about 90 minutes.top

Wednesday, August 28, 2002: Mileage: 3082.9. I just took the rear seat bottom cushions out of my T/A in hope of finding the build sheet. You can probably guess the outcome. Don't care to guess? Well here it is: no build sheet anywhere in sight, of course! Although under the driver's side rear seat, I did find a small hex-type screw used during this era, a red rubber band, and a loose chunk of tar just hanging out. Otherwise it looked untouched. The screws holding in the bottom seat cushions were very clean but the black paint was not 100% mint, meaning there was visible tool wear on 'em. Could this mean a previous owner had been under there already? Or was it a factory phenomenon? I used a small piece of double layered plastic bag material to cover the screw before turning it, to try & preserve the paint. The hex screw found underneath looked totally brand new with no signs of ever having been screwed or unscrewed with a tool. Black paint on it is nice & thick & rough. Red rubber band looked very moist and new.. could it be from 1982!? Chunk of tar was like the kind you can find on railroad tracks but very soft and pliable, and had 1 or 2 cloth fibers mixed into it. It quickly broke into about 3 pieces in my hand when I was observing it. Back to main point: I have looked at 2 or 3 very likely spots now for the build sheet, and haven't found it. Could it have been taken out by a previous owner? I recently emailed the previous owner who owned it the majority of its life and he said he had never heard of such a thing. He is extremely short on info and I doubt I'll ever be hearing from him ever again. The first owner who I have never met or talked to only had the car for the first year or 2, bought it new, and though I know little about him, he doesn't strike me as the type to go looking for it, especially no more recently than 1984. So I've searched the easy places.. now I could go opening the door panels and removing the hood insulation, or the interior carpet, but there's no way I'm doing that.. not anytime soon, and probably never. Total "on" time was about 30 minutes and just drove in & out of the garage a couple of times. same mileage.

Other observations: 1) when I first cranked the car to pull out, after about a minute of being on, some very thin (almost invisible) fog-like smoke started coming from the tailpipes with a smell I've smelled before, but only from this car. It's the exact same thing that happened up in NY when we first went to get the car, he started it to let it warm up, and there was the ghost smoke & smell. Same thing happened after I got a new battery last year and cranked it the first time after the new battery was in. It's not an oily smell or antifreeze smell, but what the hell it is, I have no idea. 2) When I pulled outside, on the ground in the garage where the rear differential would've been were 2 or 3 drips of rusty water..? I smelled it and felt it and there was no oil component to it.. just felt and looked like rusty water. There are a couple of other similar stains nearby in the garage from previous drives. I've known for a while that some of the seals on the car need replacement, but rusty water from the rear diff? hmm. 3) The bottoms of the rear seats have "acoustical insulation" which is just really cheap fabric tiny chunks all compressed together in a sheet, like plywood is to wood, and under that is a layer of black tar on the actual floorpan, I presume. I was under the impression it was just plain tar and no insulation, but my car does have the insulation. Go figure. 4) Last observation is that the top rearmost edges of the bottom rear seat butt cushions have a tiny, almost invisible amount of wear; actually I'd call it "compression" and only on the fabric itself not the foam. I'm guessing this has happened from touching and rubbing against the bottom edge of the rear seat back cushions. No cause for concern since it's almost not even there at all, but interesting.top

Sunday, August 11, 2002: Mileage: 3082.9. OK there's this thing called the "build sheet" which is about an 8 1/2" by 11" piece of paper often found in Firebirds (and most other cars) and it tells you everything you ever wanted to know about your particular car like what options it came with, when it was built, its weight, dealer where it's destined to be sold, and then some. The "and then some" is a plethora of codes which nobody has figured out how to decode, but which correspond to all the options in your car, like for example in the Master Cylinder section if it says "FG" then there should be a sticker on your master cylinder that says "FG". Like I said these codes are meaningless; they're codes in some sort of internal GM language nobody has ever decoded. For a long time now I've been curious to know if my car still has its original build sheet buried somewhere in some totally remote corner, riding along every time I go for a drive and waiting to be discovered and see daylight again for the first time since the factory. I promised myself long ago that even though the build sheet is considered the ultimate score, I wouldn't tear the car apart at any cost just to find it. Still, the curiosity can drive a person nuts, as it's been doing to me. So based on where others have found their build sheets, I've looked in some of the most obvious places that are least intrusive, like under the front seats, peeked under hood insulation a couple of times, nothing. Well tonight I got inspired to go look in the trunk under the carpet for the build sheet, which is a likely location. and of course there was nothing there.. blah. I searched the entire flat section down there and bits of the corners of the wall in front of it where the gas tank is enclosed, and found nothing except some of that gunky glue that's under there. All I succeeded in doing is separating the acoustical insulation from the underside of the carpet, and partly unglued it from the metal under it, which I didn't really want to do in the first place. No big deal, just kinda sucks.. just my luck. :( I wish I could say that the hunt continues, but I really have no plans to do any more intrusive searches anytime soon. Except maybe under the rear seat bottom cushions, and only if I feel like it which I usually don't since I don't like messing with its originality.top

Sunday, July 21, 2002: Mileage: 3082.9. Natalie excursion in full effect, and I'm not speaking about any SUV. First outing since the Platinum Anniversary of her birthday!! ..Even though I'm still working on an accurate description for last time's trip, I figured I'd skip ahead & post this now before I fall behind. first off, my apologies to the dead spiders suspended between the undercarriage and the ground which were swept away. trip = to the post office (direct route) and back home (backroads) .. 10.6 miles total. there was some subtle body flex creaking inside the car as I pulled out onto the street from the uneven street/driveway connection. nothing unusual. no other ghost noises this time! oil pressure was up around 55 during normal driving.. remember on these cars it's not 0-40-80 like newer 3rd gens, but is 0-30-60, so 55 is an almost maxed out oil needle which was impressive. at idle it was a hair below 30 which is about what it's been before. first crank in over 2 months took a bit to turn, maybe 4 seconds or so. first rotation was slow and drawn out, a bit worrisome, but she fired up great. I was fearing there'd be black smoke mixed into the exhaust but it was clear-as-day and smelled like lean gas, as any F.I. car you would smell. the black smoke fear was from memories of when I changed the battery last year, when the computer memory went blank and I guess it had to reprogram itself and on the first few crankups it had spewed out a bit of blank gunk in both gas and liquid form. The liquid evaporated and left stains on the pavement so I'm guessing it was half-combusted gas or somethin.. who knows; I should've examined it more closely. I think that incident is logged on this page somewhere, in the older logs. so all is fine now, but.. usage at approximately 10 miles per trip, one trip per month (average), the chance for internal engine major "anomalies" before 10K on the clock is a very real one. Why do I have a feeling that sentence will come back to haunt me? hmph. but for now she's running like the Recaro Queen that she is. Anyway a cool drive with no brake weakness or sluggish CFI. It ran perfect. Shutdown temp was short of a vertical needle, so about 190 I guess. got a few pics; nothing new, a cowl plate shot, door jamb sticker shots, a couple of engine shots, seat shot, exterior shots. I was gonna get a zoom shot of an inspection sticker on the front stabilizer bar but I put it off for now. One thing I hate.. this cheap-quality camera :Ptop

Saturday, May 18, 2002: Mileage: 3072.3. Info to come.top

Thursday, April 25, 2002: Mileage: 3064.0. Nothing special. Drove to the store & back.top

Wednesday, February 20, 2002: Mileage: 3054.6. I knew this cozy spot in a parking lot which is hidden from the rest of the parking lot, so I was going to go there for a photo shoot. Nobody ever parks there. Well.. so I thought.. an annoying fooker was sitting there in his Jeep Cherokee doing nothing but killing my photo-op.. Anyway wasn't going any further from home since this was already about 6 miles or so and I'm anal about adding miles, so I started heading back. I knew another shopping center where I may have a chance so I tried it but no luck there either. I just drove around to the truck-only section of that parking lot and stopped for a handful of quick pics. Closer to home, I went to Cotswolds again, which is an upscale new subdivision with only a few houses built and many empty cul-de-sac's. I backed into a cul-de-sac and the car had trees surrounding it from about 330 degrees. This was a great time to do a 360 photo shoot for a possible 360 animation, which is exactly what I did. I was like 1 mile from home so off I went. It was kind of soggy out and the got car got a little dirt/water/mud flung onto it.. shame shame.top

Wednesday, January 16, 2002: Mileage: 3040.1. Car had not been started since late November and I didn't want to risk losing another seal, so it was about time for the "monthly" drive. My mother had left some garbage bags at the corner of the garage door and I didn't notice them, so on the way out, I ran over one of the bags which was full of other crumpled up empty garbage bags, and it rubbed against the warmed-up muffler, melting onto it. One more reason not to live with your parents.. what a P.I.T.A. I'm sure it's simple to remove, but still a P.I.T.A. Drove to the gas station for a fillup, and like a moron, chose 87 octaner.. so I pumped $3.00 of that, went & paid, then came back to top it off with 93 octane, $3.52 more. All in all about 5 1/2 gallons. Also poured in 8oz. of stabilizer. Pet Peeve: It was about 3:45pm on the way back home and the roads were full of school busses.. one was coming up a hill as I was going down it, and I was inundated with a nice big cloud of diesel .. I make it sound way worse than it is, and was probably harmless, but still annoying.top

Saturday, November 24, 2001: Mileage: 3031.9. A friend of mine was going to be in the vicinity with one of his wife's brothers and they were both interested in seeing the T/A, mostly the wife's brother. So we decided to meet about 5 miles from here at a Checkers restaurant parking lot. My friend had never seen it before in the daytime, only that one night back in april when he helped me upload it from the auto transport and we went around the block one time. The other guy had never seen it before. For having been so interested, he sure was nonchalant about it, heh. Anyway we hung out a while & snapped some pics of our cars together (the T/A along with his' 87 Renault Alliance), then we went to a grocery store & ATM to take care of some other stuff, then we went our separate ways again. Just over 10 miles added to the odo. I noticed when the car was cold, there was some hesitation when it would upshift. Like right when going into 2nd or 3rd, the RPM's would drop pretty damn noticeably and the output dropped too. the drop would last a few seconds, then full RPM's and full power would resume. Afetr the car was warm, this behavior was gone. I'm sure diagnosing and/or fixing it is beyond me and my low CFI knowledge, and yeah I do think it's CFI related. I'm not worried about it though. Might be a vacuum leak or something, doesn't feel major. top

Tuesday, November 6, 2001: Mileage: 3021.4. The turbo Finned Aluminum Wheels (N24) which had been on my car at least since 1983 are now finally off. I always wanted to take them off because they made it look like an '83 not an '82, so the time is finally here. A friend of mine with a 1983 Firebird S/E wants to buy them, so I'm glad they are going to a more or less "correct" project, even though the 1983 S/E could not possibly have these two tone wheels as stock equipment (could have 'em as silver though, if WS6 equipped). What I did today was to go to a tire place and get my wheels swapped while keeping the same tires on there.

It was sort of painful to have to watch each tire being deformed as one of those pressurized tire removers broke the seal between the rim & tire to remove them.. if they had been just any tires I wouldn't really care, but for being original Eagle GT's, fragile and irreplaceable ones at that, it was not fun to watch.. anyway tires seem to be fine, back on my "new" Turbo Cast Aluminum wheels (N89) which I had on my '85 Firebird Donovan till now. Donovan is now wearing some surplus Hi-Tech Turbo wheels (N78) I got from a different friend a few months ago. Also wearing P245 Dunlop G/T Qualifiers I recently bought.

While the car was up on the lift, I rotated both front wheels with my hand, with tires on 'em, and both tires seemed to have radial wobble.. what I mean by that is they are not perfectly round but they are I guess you could say pear shaped.. basically the circumference is not a perfect circle. You have to look close to see it, but it's there. My guess is that the tires have lost some structural rigidity over the years; I dunno what else it could be.

One more note: one of the N24's removed from the Recaro T/A had some oily liquid on it, mostly on the back, in a small splotch.. some on the front too, with accumulated dust on the wet area. I'm still rather worried about this because I cannot explain it. Feels, smells, and looks like motor oil. That would be the most benign thing; someone just spilled motor oil on it, at some point. If it turns out to be power brake fluid, things could be a lot more serious. The wheel in question I think it was the driver's side rear wheel, but I'm not sure.. top

Wednesday, October 24, 2001: Mileage: 3009.1. Yesterday morning the T/A had to come out of the garage for the day.. our garage door was malfunctioning and a guy had to come by to work on it, with no cars in the garage because he had to take off the garage door. Anyway I took it outside around 9AM and left it there till about 5 or 6PM, at which time I decided to put the car cover on it. The guy was already gone. I figured since it was out, I was going to take it for an early monthly ride, but probably not that night. So it sat there, under the car cover, till this evening when I took it around the neighborhood twice. The loop is exactly one mile, hence the 2 mile odo advancement. It's now back in the garage, and under cover too, which is something it hadn't been since May 4th. Still procrastinating on the bumper-to-bumper detailing/washing/waxing/polishing etc. which will have to be done by hand.

I just looked down near the bottom of the page where it says I want to get the car professionally cleaned and verify its authenticity. Well guess what, I don't really care for either of those things anymore! I know it's original and authentic, for one thing, and for another thing, all cleaning and maintenance will be done by me unless it's big mechanical work needed.

No other notable news. top

Wednesday, October 10, 2001: Mileage: 3007.1. Many big news; some good, some bad. First of all (I guess this is some of the good news), I passed the 3,000 mile mark. Why is it good? Well because I no longer have to worry about it and plan my drives around it or be paranoid about it. (and oh yeah, HPP you had your chance but oh well, your loss, not mine) I had no intention of passing 3k yet, but well, it had to happen sometime. Long story short, I planned to go get an inspection and the round trip should've been about 12 miles total for an odo reading of 2983. Well.. on the first try, I realized that I had left my registration at home and had to go back for it.. that's 12 miles so far. On the second try, I realized I had left my wallet at home, but only after they had already inspected my car! I asked if they could slap on the inspection sticker, let me drive home and come back in a different car to pay, but nope, they wouldn't put it on until I paid, so I had to go back home with no sticker to get the all-important $9.25, and we're up to 24 miles now. It was inevitable that I would have to go back a 3rd time for the sticker, which is exactly what happened, for a grand total of 36 miles on the day. The old 1988 sticker I liked so much is now gone. The 36 mile total was a real bummer for me because I was on track to stay under 3000 miles for all of this year. Anyway, sh*t happens. But that's not the end of the sh*t. Oh no.. not if gooF's luck had anything to say about it. Because you see, when they were inspecting the car (on trip #2 of the day), they had it up on the lift at one point and I saw something which was not fully surprising but fully disappointing (and this is the bad news): an oil leak from the rear main seal. I guess it happens, especially when a car goes undriven for a long period of time.. and such is the case here, because between 1987 and early 2001 (when I bought the car), I know for sure that the car received about 243 miles. Lord only knows how long it sat inbetween drives.. and precisely that, goes my theory, is why the rear main seal dried up and failed. Fact is I have no idea what it costs to pull a transmission and/or engine and fix the problem, and I'll have to find someone who specializes in these cars or as close to it as possible, because if just any Joe Schmoe does the job, I foresee many side effects, like a couple of new dings here and a couple of new grease stains there, and that is not an option. I mean just to do the inspection sticker, the bastard got his greasy paws all over the driver's side of the car.. imagine a tranny removal and replacement.. ugh. Secondly I cannot afford whatever that figure is, not right now anyway. I guess some related good news is that the leak seems to be stable and not getting worse. I've owned the car for 262 miles now and no oil has leaked on the garage floor. When it was on the lift I could see that the leak was more or less confined to a small area, and no oil was caked on or crusted on; it was all clear.. so considering the situation, I guess this is good too. I plan to leave it as is and keep driving it mininally as before, till all the pieces of the puzzle fall in place for a new seal or whatever else needs replacement. Oil pressure is good; about 35-40 idle, 55-60 revved up. Some more unrelated good news is the amazing cleanliness of the car underneath, which I also got to see for the first time ever when it was on the lift. I did have a camera with me to take pics if needed, but d'oh, it was still in the car, way up there. There's no rust (or even much dirt, for that matter) other than the things I already knew; the rusty anti-sway bars and rear axle, rear brake lines, and a couple of other small things. I forgot to look at the misaligned rocker panel on the driver's side.. better luck next time. Oh yeah one other thing.. double bad luck: The guys who filled out the inspection paperwork filled in the mileage as "29990", when it was in fact 2990, and I spelled it out for 'em twice.. two-nine-nine-owe! I thought to myself, "I'm going to be pissed off if I see this on CarFax or if it causes my car's history to be tainted!" I mean, imagine having a bogus record of 29990 followed by a legitimate reading of 3500 or something on your car's history.. then it's automatically suspect! All because of a moron working at a gas station.. anyway this inspection apparently does not show up on CarFax yet, so things are cool for now. When I got back home I used my new CA car duster on the exterior for the first time. Works great. top

Monday, September 3, 2001: Mileage: 2971.6. Monthly spin again. Went to a local gas station and filled up on 93 octane. It took just under 7 gallons. I had topped it off at 2874 miles the previous time, which was also the first time. By today it was showing about half a tank. As I was pulling into the gas station, a late 70s white & blue Z28 was pulling in at the same time. There were about 12 pumps in pairs of two and we were about 2 pairs apart. I admired the Z28, since it's a pretty rare sight around here. It looked to have less than average age wear, and looked pretty much stock all around, including the white wheels, which is even more of a rare find. I thought that was a great looking car. I didn't speak to the owner because he was already cranking up and leaving as I was walking in to pay for my gas (good excuse, eh?). Once his car was gone and could no longer be admired except in memory, I spent the entire walk back to my car admiring it instead. :) top

Sunday, September 2, 2001: Mileage: 2961.6 I just thought I'd mention the 82 - 84 base Firebird I saw today on the road. It was stopped first in line at a 4 way intersection I was passing through. It looked to be in excellent shape, except for swapped out wheels. I didn't get a good look at the interior. 82 - 84 sightings are very rare for me. It's not the first one I saw and not the last, but I thought it was newsworthy. maybe I'm just bored. top

Tuesday, August 22, 2001: Mileage: 2961.6. I had to move the car out of the garage to reach some stuff that was directly next to it. So I guess I added about a 500th of a mile, and then added a negative 500th of a mile by moving back in, in reverse (based on an estimate of approximately 10 feet movement up and out of the garage, then 10 feet back in).

This reminds me of "The Bueller Effect" I mentioned before.. I wonder if it works on an 82 T/A? Certainly seems to work on my 85 F/B for sure. Any insight is appreciated. top

Wednesday, August 8, 2001: Mileage: 2961.6. It was about that time again for the periodical upkeep trip. My sister wanted to come along for the ride this time. We just went down the road a little bit. Around the neighborhood so to speak. It was kinda hot but I didn't want to open the windows coz I'm all paranoid about wearing out the motors and stuff.. I wanted to take some pics so I took the camera and we stopped in a nearby under-construction subdivision and I got about 40 more pics of miscellaneous stuff inside & out of the car. Total trip was again about 4.4 miles just like on June 2 of this year when I took the same route. Car still needs a good dusting & washing / waxing which I'll do whenever the time is available. Still under the 3K mile marker, but I'm sure I'll pass it sometime this year. top

Tuesday, July 31, 2001: Mileage: 2957.2. Not a whole lot of new to write about; just thought I'd kill a minute to post something here. Oh, it's almost time for the monthly drive, so maybe I'll get to take a few more car pics when I go out but can't promise anything right now. This'll probably be in the next 2 weeks.. top

Tuesday, July 10, 2001: Mileage: 2957.2. In the middle of the night I had to deliver a package to a friend, and I ended up taking out the Trans Am for many reasons, but 3 main reasons: #1) My daily driver's inspection and insurance are not currently up to date so it's doubly illegal, and with zero traffic out, I didn't like my chances of getting stopped. #2) The friend was somewhat interested in seeing the car eventually, and this seemed like as good a time as any. #3) The location where I met my friend is not very far at all from home; it's like 6 miles, so I knew I'd be adding no more than about 12 miles, which is exactly what happened.

Tonight for the first time I noticed that the speedo needle is slow to fall when decelerating. For example when slowing down from 40mph to 10mph for a red light ahead, the needle will be hesitant to fall past 35mph even when I'm clearly going like 20mph, 18mph, 16mph, etc. If I continue to drive for a while at a very low speed, like 5mph or 10mph, the needle slowly "catches up" and falls down to the right level. I really don't know what this could mean, but it sure gives me strange feelings of impending doom to see it happen.

Also I gunned the throttle a couple of times tonight to invoke Ram-Air, and I did notice immediate acceleration response but nothing night-and-day. I've never driven any other '82 Cross-Fire that I can remember, so I'm not sure exactly what to feel for, but it appears to be working, so far as I can tell.

The gas pedal also seems a bit stiffer than most other car's I've driven, especially during the first 1/4" or so of travel, but I'm told by my Cross-Fire buddies that this is perfectly normal because of the twin throttle bodies. Honestly, I haven't given it a lot of thought or concern.. was just observing it.

Back on June 2 of this year I had observed the dash gauges and there seemed to be a blue/green tint to all of them. Today I specifically looked for that. It's definitely green/blue. That's pretty awesome looking compared to my 85 Firebird's orange/red that gives the feeling of a dying lamp. top

Friday, June 29, 2001: Mileage: 2945.1. Today was just about time for the monthly drive, plus I had to deliver some N89's to an eBay winner (well, his brother, anyway, who happens to live really nearby), so I fired up the Recaro and loaded up the wheels; 2 in the trunk on top of some aftermarket carpet and 2 in the back seats, on plastic bags. My sister decided to come along for the ride too. She had never been in the car before, and she was in the mood for a joyride so off we went, searching for the above guy's house.

We got lost a couple of times, but I wasn't too worried about heavy mileage, because we knew he lived really nearby. After a few tries, we were there. We got to talking, etc. The guy's brother said that his brother was doing a KITT project with an '83 T/A and that's why he needed these wheels.. something which the guy had not told me.. anyway, he had paid handsomely for 'em through PayPal, and there was no turning back now; here I was. So his brother and I just unloaded the wheels one by one, and that was that, as far as the deal. Just to clarify, I never met "the guy"; the high bidder on eBay. He lives in SC and would be coming up some unbeknownst time in the future to pick up his wheels from his brother's house, which is where we were now.

So anyway, "the guy"'s brother and "the guy"'s brother's wife were really nice.. we shot the shit in their driveway for a while, talking about cars, local issues, etc. He would occasionally comment on the car's nice condition. I invited him to look around it and check the clock.. 002940 miles. Now he was totally flabbergasted! We talked Trans Am's some more, and he was continually amazed at the mileage, mint shape, etc. We got to talking about Fastback '67 Mustangs, and by some odd chance, I knew where one was for sale locally.. canary yellow, 64k original miles unrestored, mint in and out except very minor things.. so I gave him the phone number for the 'Stang since he was passively interested. We talked some more about cars, local car shows.. my sister and they talked some more about local issues which weren't too interesting to me.. we talked about T/A's some more.. it felt pretty damn cool for me to be talking with a T/A fan with my T/A right there in person, since I rarely take it out and it's never shown off, so this was a unique experience. It makes me even more determined to take it to car shows in the long term (maybe next year) just to make sure it has its place in history and is documented, remembered by others, etc. Along with the 82-86 S/E, the various Recaro editions are pretty much forgotten in the past as a fading memory by most people, even fans.

To make a long story short, we drove right back home and garaged the car immediately until its next outing. 2945 and 1.5 tenths of a mile are showing. It's interesting to point out that both on my 85 F/B and this car, the mileage meter and tripometer both go backwards when driving in reverse. So theoretically the Ferris Bueller technique would work if someone was really determined. I'm curious if this is a common thing on cars... pretty sure it's not.. that's a whole 'nother story. top

Thursday, June 21, 2001: Mileage: 2929.8. Went to the garage tonight after dark and took 35 miscellaneous pics of the car; some in the dark, others with the garage light on. They came out pretty bad, since the only digital camera I have access to really blows. Got a couple of good shots of the odometer showing the 2929.8 miles and *barely* showing the blue/green tint of the backlight lamps. Also got many other pics of the interior, mainly the dashboard radio, shifter, turn lever, power lock switch.. all stuff from the vantage point of the drivers seat, which is where I was sitting. Got a few shots of the car in the dark with the parking lights on too. I don't plan to show these pics online but if interested, email me. top

Tuesday, June 5, 2001: Mileage: 2929.8. Since the A/C does not blow cold after all these years and since I didn't hear an audible click when turning the climate control to A/C, I wanted to check it out a bit further to see if I could determine the cause. Using a paperclip and the help of an online friend, I was able to jump the pressure switch and force the A/C compressor to turn on, to determine if the compressor clutch is at least any good. I turned the key to the ON position, turned the climate control to A/C, and there was definitely a click, so I know the clutch is good. I went ahead and turned the controller to "off" again, started it up, put it in A/C max again.. left it on for about 10 seconds, no cold air at all, then the A/C pulley or something started a faint high-RPM squeal, then it got more and more loud.. I was getting super f*cking worried by this point.. my friend had said that if I go this far, I should stop no more than 1 minute later, but I wasn't even going to let it go to one minute.. funk dat.. it had been about 20 seconds, still no cold air, so I turned it off.. I remembered how he had said that if it's getting no R12, it's also getting no lubrication, so I didn't want to risk burning anything out. OK, so at this point, I knew I had a good A/C clutch, but no cold air and a squeal that starts out super quiet and gets louder with time. The most likely fix for all these symptoms is a simple R12 recharge, provided I can find a local place that deals with R12... top

Saturday, June 2, 2001: Mileage: 2929.8. I took out the T/A for a short spin, just for the sake of rejuvenating it, since it had been sitting idle for a month.

Some observations:
• For a car which is essentially new, it sure does have its share of rattles when the road is uneven, like when I pull into my uphill driveway from the perpendicular road and the body is naturally "flexed", you know what I mean? GM's choice for unibody on these cars was a way to save money but it also reduces overall rigidity, which sucks..
• There is no mirror under the passenger's sun visor. I was about 90% sure of that, but now I've looked there firsthand. PHS info confirms this.
• Brake pedal still pretty damn low. I don't know how good or bad that is. The fluid level looks fine. It's 4-wheel disc. Any ideas?
• When I first started moving there was an almost imperceptible bouncing associated with the wheel rotations. I'm thinking it was a "flat spot" where the tires had been sitting for so long. It goes away after a few minutes. The same thing happened every other time I've driven it after it's been sitting.
• I tried the hood closing procedure where you let the latch go under the hook on the body and the hood is still unlocked, then you push the eagle down to close it, but that did not work after many tries. I felt like if I kept doing it, I'd damage something, so I just dropped it from about a foot up, as I usually would anyway. The hood struts are weak, since they're the original ones, and almost 20 years old (the rear hatch struts are still nice and strong, surprisingly). The hood was pretty easy to close, compared to other times.
• I opened the hood and observed everything for a couple of minutes and everything looked and smelled normal. The engine runs a tad below 220, which is within the normal range. The antifreeze seems to be a bit on the low side. The engine was fully warmed up but the level was closer to "full cold" than it was to "full hot". I'll top it off next time I get a chance, especially if I can do a bit of research and find out what's GM-recommended stuff for an older Pontiac.
• The pollen / dust / precipitates all over the body are really DAMN ugly. It's been sitting uncovered inside the garage since May 4th, and the garage has its share of foot traffic. The dust comes off with a light blow though, so it's nothing permanent, etc.
• I experimented with one of the water spots left over from the last car wash. The spots appear to wipe right off with a tiny amount of water (actually I tried spit, heh) so I'm fairly sure there's no clearcoat damage. This is goood news, hellz yeah.
• I'm hoping to wash the car this weekend or an upcoming weekend. Later on, I'll get some Meguiar's swirl remover and some 100% cotton towels to try to bring back the "slippery wet" look from before I brushed it back on April 8th. The swirls are very very minor, barely visible no matter how hard you try, but still, I feel so f*cking guilty. I knew nothing about glossy black cars when I did that. Some people learn the hard way.. damn it..
• Under the body side molding on the driver's door is a very small, almost invisible ding. No paint damage, just the metal has been indented slightly. I'm guessing the previous owner's son bumped into it while it was undercover, otherwise there would be a scratch, but there isn't.
• Same thing on the hood, in 2 places near the power bulge. 2 tiny, almost invisible dents. You can only tell they're there by how the light reflects off of them.
• Some clear/white cakey stuff is starting to form on the rubber stripping part that touches the bottom edge of the window. It peels right off very easily so I'm guessing it's dried up protection that the previous owner wiped on there for UV protection, dry-rot protection, etc. It does not appear to be part of the original rubber/plastic, just a coat over it. If any detailer types out there have any ideas, let me know.
• The dome lamp is indeed the base type, not the deluxe type. Click here for a deluxe type.
• The dash lights work so beautifully. There is sort of a green/blue tint to the backlit gauges. I'm used to a reddish glow denoting an old and worn out lamp. These are greenish blue, sort of damn awesome. All the exterior lights work except one side marker, which I have bought a replacement for.. just need to put it in.
• I'm up to 002929.8 miles. Tonight's trip was 4.4 miles.. just a short cruise through the local neighboorhood here.. awesome feeling, too.
• The A/C compressor does not engage. I turned on the A/C but it didn't engage. I know because I had the hood up and I was looking at it and listening to it, plus the air blowing out of the ducts was room temperature. I'm not too sure why it wouldn't kick in. It also felt like the RPM's were slightly lower while I had it in the A/C position, like it was trying to turn. But that could just be my imagination.
• When getting out of the garage and turning right to go down the driveway, the front tires sounded like they were sliding as I was going straight or turning. The grip felt rock-solid though. The car was not sliding. I'm guessing it's a combination of our pavement type (pretty slick, smooth black tar type, not grainy at all) and the tires, which are the original Good Year Gatorbacks and the previous owner had said something about how those tires sacrifice tread life for extra super grip, so they wear out really fast, or something. Sounds good enough for me.
• Most revealing observation: No 19-year old machine is perfect. And if you find one that is, I bet it's been rebuilt from the ground up meticulously. This car is not perfect by any means. I gotta get the brakes checked out, the A/C checked out, etc. The rattles worry me the most. It's not like some huge piece is loose, but just tiny rattles of like plastic rubbing against plastic when the body is flexing, now and then. It sounds "normal" but it's a PITA to listen to. top

Tuesday, May 29, 2001: Mileage: 2925.4. Not a whole lot of activity to report. The car is still sitting in the garage uncovered. I've owned it just a day shy of 2 months. I need to Armour-All the weather-stripping, since I haven't done so yet. I haven't gotten around to cleaning the fine dust and pollen that's been collecting on it since the 4th. Sounds like a long time but it's just been about 3 1/2 weeks since I uncovered it. Very minimal light gets in the garage, except when the door's open, which happens occasionally, so I'm not worried about UV damage or anything. So, the necessary cosmetic maintenance is adding up.. I better not put it off too much longer. I'll check back soon. top

Wednesday, May 16, 2001: Mileage: 2925.4. The car has been sitting in the garage without the car cover on it, since May 4th. This is because I had planned to wash it again and try to get rid of some of those swirls in the clearcoat. I've done some research on different products, and while Zaino seems to be the favorite of other car people I know, it's still very expensive, and most people say that something cheaper will get you very similar results, even better results in many cases. So for now I'm going to do what the previous owner had been doing, which is to use Meguiar's multi-step system instead of Zaino. I've bought the materials and I just need to find some nice 100% cotton towels and some spare time.

The Recaro wheels have been sandblasted and are now ready for primer and Gold Wing Metallic paint (1982 GM code 55L). I have spoken to paint shops that can mix this paint on demand, so it's easily available, though pricey. The paint is supposed to be pretty thick, based on what I've seen on all gold-painted aluminum GM wheels, so the rough sandblasted texture will not show through the multiple layers of paint. As I mentioned before, if these don't turn out satisfactory, I will eventually invest in some refinished wheels instead. That would be the next best thing to going back in time to 1982. top

Thursday, May 10, 2001: Mileage: 2925.4. The Recaro wheels I got from a donor car in February were sent to a sandblasting shop yesterday and they will be ready today. At first I had planned to use them as they were, since the picture the previous owner sent me made it look like they were in good shape. Once I saw them though, I knew they would need reworking. They were pretty rough with a lot of road rash, and the paint was really dull and starting to chip off, etc. So I'm having them blasted and I'll get a local paint shop to mix some Gold Wing Metallic paint for me for repainting. They'll be rough after sandblasting, but since the paint is supposed to be applied very liberally, in 3 or 4 layers, the wheel texture will never show up anyway, so I don't feel that bad about having them sandblasted. If these wheels do not come out well after primering and painting, I'll just sell them and buy a refinished set whenever I have the money. I found a company that refinishes them to new condition for about $179 each.. OUCH! top

Friday, May 4, 2001: Mileage: 2925.4. Today Was my last day of training at A3TC and I drove the car there. It's only about 5 miles away. Our insurance agent had asked to see the car today, so I knew I would have to take it by, so I figured I'd drive it for the day since I'd have to take it by there anyway. A couple of friends at A3TC asked about the car and said what a pleasure it was to see an older car in such great shape, etc., especially a "muscle car" in the words of one friend (little did he know about 82's relative weak performance). The insurance place is some 20 miles away from home, so the total mileage for the day was about 45 miles. When I arrived there, a woman came out to "inspect" it.. the "inspection" consisted of her looking at it from all sides, all of which took about 10 seconds.. she proceeded to say how it was "so pretty" or something. She then said, "OK, that's all we need!" Jeez, if I had known that's all they would do to "inspect" it, I would've described it to them over the phone.. Also, it's interesting to note that they had it in their database as a "Chevy Camaro", even though they have the right VIN clearly indicating it's a Pontiac Trans Am. Some people are like that.. It reminds me of when a friend was looking specifically for a 1982 Thunderbird Town Landau (still is, btw) and a used car dealer said to him "I've got an '86 Cougar.. same thing". Not only is it not the same, but a totally different redesign, etc. The only thing to be said was, "What else have you got?" *shrug!*

I checked out the code the ECM was giving back on April 28th, and it turned out to be code 44, which is described as "Rich exhaust indication - Oxygen (O2) Sensor voltage stays high after one minute of engine run". Since the light went out by itself and has never been back on since, I'm not going to go fixing something that isn't broken..

Monday, April 30, 2001: Mileage: 2880.6. I put the car up for auction on eBay out of curiosity. I have no real intention of selling it unless the reserve is met, and I'm pretty sure it won't be met, so nothing ventured, nothing gained (except eBay's $25 listing fee). Time will tell. top

Saturday, April 28, 2001: Mileage: 2880.6. I went for a pretty long drive today (119 miles). I hadn't planned it that way, but I enjoyed every minute of it. I tried the brushless automatic car wash as I mentioned. It did basically nothing for the water spots left from the April 8th wash. What a waste of $7! I think the trunk was unlatched when I went through the car wash today. I had left it open last time I was with the car. I looked at the pics I took and it looks unlatched. I didn't find any collected water or water damage anywhere, and nothing was wet inside, so maybe the rubber seals were sealed even though the hatch was open. After the car wash I took 49 pics and went driving around more. When the sun started going down, I turned on the parking lights. I noticed that one of the front parking lamps and one of the rear marker lamps were out, so I went and purchased some new ones. I've installed the parking lamp and will do the marker lamp later on since it's a bit harder to do. Actually the front parking lamp came on whenever it felt like it, even though its parking filament was totally broken. Very weird. My 1985 Firebird does exactly the same thing. Only difference is I've never gotten around to replacing its lamp till now; I bought one for it tonight, too.

Also today, the "check engine" light came on for about a minute. It was after I had just left the car wash. I have a code scanner but I've yet to check to see what code it's giving. top

Friday, April 27, 2001: Mileage: still 2761.9. It's sitting in the garage under the original cover purchased by the 1st owner in 1982. His name is imprinted on the cover. I'm thinking about going out for a spin in it this weekend. This time I'll go through a brushless automatic car wash and see what happens. A lot of people swear against those things, but I think it's worth a shot. There's no friction applied to the car other than water, so how damaging could it really be? I guess it wouldn't hurt to take a "guinea pig" car through first. If I have time, I'll do that. top

Sunday, April 8, 2001: Mileage: 2761.9. We've registered and insured it here in NC so it's legal to drive now. I took the car to a nearby car wash to get off most of the dirt that built up on the car when it was towed from NY to NC. It's still not as spotless as before. There are a few water marks here and there from the water dried, so I'll still have it professionally done or do it myself when I have the time. A friend of mine recommended car care products from Zaino Brothers. I checked them out and they sound really awesome, so I'll be trying out their Z1, Z2, Z5 and Z6 products, which sound exactly like what I need. There's no more of the black sooty stuff coming out of the tailpipes on a cold start. I've been told by good sources that it may have been the result of the engine sitting idle for a long time and the ECM readjusting to a different climate after the battery had been disconnected for months / years, which it was. Speaking of which, the car has a New York window sticker from 1988. It has basically been garaged ever since then. Documents provided by the previous owner confirm that there have been no considerable miles put on since 1988. I find that pretty amazing. The old NY license plates read "TREKKIN". I have no trouble revealing that since those plates are invalid now. I thought that was an interesting thing to put on a vanity plate. The previous owner said it wasn't Star Trek related; just related to travelling, trekking around, etc. top

Thursday, April 5, 2001: Mileage: 2746.6. When I wrote here on March 26, the car was still in NY. I had pretty much secured it but it was not here at my house. The car has now been hauled down from NY and is inside the garage.. awesome. We towed it on a U-Haul auto transport on the back of a 2000 Ford Expedition. It rained through parts of PA, WV, and VA so the car got considerable amounts of dirty water all over it. At this point it's still sitting dirty like that. I'll have it professionally cleaned wihen I find the time. I've put 0.75 miles on it; from the 2745.8 and a half it showed to the current 2746.6. It came with full documentation and many original 1982 papers / booklets / etc. which I will be talking about here when the time allows.

The interior is absolutely mint. It still smells like a new car! The exterior and undercarriage are not flawless, but very close. There are a couple of dings on the body here and there, almost invisible, the rear axle has a small amount of rust, but otherwise the whole car is near-perfect.

Other: Its battery had been sitting idle since late 2000 and would not hold a charge. I got a new battery from Wal*Mart and installed it. There's a little black soot coming out of the tailpipes right after I crank it. There's a very minor, almost imperceptible clunk when you go from reverse to drive, or vice versa. My friend and '82 Trans Am semi-expert says it's more or less normal for a car that's been sitting a while (it had been driven one mile from August 2000 till I bought it on March 31, 2001). When I take the car in to verify its authenticity I will get the drivetrain checked out too, to find out whatever else I can about the black soot and the clunk. I have taken off the aftermarket mudflaps which were still on. I'm only going to use them when I know there will be water or rocks being flung about everywhere. top

Monday, March 26, 2001: My own 1982 Recaro T/A:

While not the most highly optioned Recaro, this is undoubtedly one of the best specimens left on the planet. Safely distant from any Knight Rider destructionists, this fine looker has 2745 (two thousand seven hundred forty five) original miles! E-mail me if you have one in similar shape, as I'd like to compare options groups, prices, etc.. I've never been to the Trans Am Nationals but once I have the time and once my car is in show-winning condition, I may attend. Hopefully this year (2001) but that's not looking likely right now..

Known Problems
• Wrong wheels; has 1983 wheels instead of 1982 Recaro wheels; I have obtained a set of 1982 Recaro wheels and Recaro wheel covers which will be cleaned and installed. I will also try to track down the original owner to see if he still has the originals stored somewhere.
• Minor damage from previous shipping job: tiny indentations on lower fender area behind both rear wheels on the gold trim; damage approximately 1" wide by 1/4" deep; would require minor sheetmetal work and repaint/restripe to be 100% mint again
• Minor scuff mark on hood; should rub right out; will experiment with this in a non-destructive way
• Minor scratch on front bumper; would require sanding down and repainting or full replacement to be 100% mint again

Otherwise, this car is brand new. Full details coming soon on this showroom condition beauty. top