Lowes Travels

NOTE: If you’re into cars, read on. If not, you should probably go back to what you were doing 🙂

Along with our travels and maintaining all of the systems and gadgets in our house and on our property, Steve has been working on his ultimate automotive project over the past two years. Below is his story of that project, mostly for our memories but also to share with others who may be interested. TAM (short for Trans Am, and a real Vietnamese name) is what we call our 1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am convertible.

Steve here –

I’ve been working on cars since I was a teenager. I love the muscle car era, particularly the years 1967-1972. I restored and modified several cars starting in 1978 when I was in the military, and as $$$ allowed I began doing full rebuilds several years later beginning with my then-girlfriend’s 1967 Pontiac Firebird convertible. I loved that car but couldn’t afford to buy it from her after our friendly separation. I never forgot it and vowed to build one for myself someday.

To clarify, TAM is not an original Trans Am – only 8 were built at the factory in 1969 for GM company executives. Those are each worth over a million dollars and amazingly have all been located. Mine is a clone, which is just a Firebird convertible conversion using parts and paint to match the original Trans Ams. Got it? Good 🙂

My mission: Take a perfectly good car and tear it down to the last bolt and wire, then rebuild it into my dream machine. Let’s get started!

Some background –

I modified 3 cars during my stint in the Air Force, but my favorite was a ’68 Firebird hardtop. I put a nitrous oxide injected 350 Chevy engine into it and sold its 400ci Pontiac engine to a friend. We installed that into his ’70 Chevelle. Why did we do that? Because we could and we were both happy with the results. You can probably tell I don’t restore cars to original specs; I make them unique and the way I want them!

While working on my cars I was fortunate to become friends with Rick Dobbertin, an amazing mechanic and engineer who owned the speed shop where I bought my parts. He was the owner/builder of a world-famous 1965 Pro Street Chevy Nova and several other vehicles, and a big influence on me in my future car endeavors:

After leaving the service and the east coast for California, I agreed to completely rebuild my girlfriend’s 1967 Firebird convertible. When she had bought it in D.C. I’d urged her not to because I found major rot hidden under pieces of coffee cans and tons of bondo (I’m not kidding). But she got it anyway and was ready to pay whatever it took to restore it. What an education that project turned out to be!

I discovered that the body was completely ruined and had to be replaced. I found a 1968 body and transferred everything over to it. This took 6 months to assemble and paint:

TAM –

I completed several other projects, but I don’t want to run too long here. My current pride and joy is TAM, my most complex and final project. I’m getting a bit old (mostly my eyes) for this kind of work, although I still love it. I purchased TAM from our neighbor and friend Eric who is a car collector. He brought her home on a trailer, and I instantly fell in love. After inspecting her and getting Mona Liza’s approval I bought her on the spot:

Two weeks later I began the disassembly:

My good buddy Dave, a mechanic/engineer extraordinaire, began assisting me with the project at this point as we pulled the engine and transmission. I tore the engine down and we took the components to an engine shop in Phoenix for machining and rebuild. It took over 7 months for them to complete due to the supply chain problems at the time. Oh well, I had a lot of other things to keep me busy while I waited:

Once I realized the magnitude of the project we purchased a pre-fab building to be TAM’s home, since parking our other cars outside long-term was not an option:

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Next up: Back together and on the street!