I thought I would take a few to introduce the Blackbird, she's a 79 sunbird sport coupe that I purchased last October as a father and son project. It was heavily optioned from the factory, mainly for luxury. It was a fairly cold winter here in Indiana so very little has happened at this point, but with it warming up we will begin restoring and modifying it soon. This is my first project car and I must say, I'm no mechanic, but I have managed to maintain my own vehicles over the years. Disclaimer: this will be a fairly slow build that is not going to be a race car, just an enjoyable grocery-getter and car show frequenter.
So on to Project Blackbird:
- The Good:
Binder of documents including purchasing paperwork from 79 and all maintenance through 2013
63,000 original miles
4 speed manual
Clean interior (cloth seats are faded though)
- The Bad:
Fenders rusted out behind the front wheels
A little bubbling under the landau
Headliner was replaced by a previous owner with the wrong color
It is currently an Iron Duke with the crossflow head. The original one was delivered with a cracked block that leaked everywhere and was replaced within weeks of ownership. While definitely not a performance engine it seems to perform well in the little bird. I took it on a 8 hour road trip last weekend and it did great for 7.5 hours of that. This trip included driving through Brown County State Park which has many steep inclines and tight turns, and she handled beautifully. She also managed to get around 30 miles per gallon across the trip, no complaints with that. But as most of us know, a little power is never enough, and it did get a little anemic on the highway. I considered many different engine options but I keep coming back to making some minor improvements to the current engine and just enjoy cruising it. So that being said here is the current list of plans for the car (phase 1):
1. Wheels and Tires: New tires, this is why I said it did well on 7.5 hours of an 8 hour road trip, it broke a belt in the rear 30 minutes from home. The tires were put on during the 90's so it was to be expected eventually. I considered all the tire and wheel options and as of now I plan to keep the stock wheels. Paint stock wheels in argent silver, classic chevy rallye wheel color, replace trim rings with rash free ones and clean up center caps. Current color match paint job was performed by the previous owner and while okay, I'm not as happy with it as I could be. I think the black rallye wheels hide the design a little too much.
2. Body: replace or repair fender rust and body rust around the landau top. Body is straight and true other than the couple rust spots so I'm going to attempt to restore the current paint instead of doing a full respray. Weatherstripping needs replaced on doors and door windows, windshield and rear seem okay.
3. Grill: there's a lot of chrome on the front of this car, I'm looking to tone it down by painting the headlight bezels black but leave the forward edges chromed to create a nice outline, same treatment for the grill. All done with chrome black-out for proper adhesion.
4. Interior: Custom fabric seat upholstery with matching door inserts. Paint interior plastic bits with original buckskin color. Remove what is left of the wood grain sticker from the steering wheel and paint that portion flat black to match other interior bits. ADD SOME CUP HOLDERS! Honestly, this has been one of my biggest complaints with the car since day one. I hate the over the door hangers, and who designs a car that can't hold a cup? Curious about what others have done to make this happen. Fix the clock, find the high beam switch, replace headliner and replace seat belt looms.
5. Engine: Rebuild carburetor, still going strong but it has never been rebuilt and would provide some peace of mind. Custom exhaust header as mine looks like a corn cob and replace catalytic converter with a high flow and get a high performance muffler. Replace intake snorkel box with an open element style. EGR delete to go along with the previous two sets of modifications. Other than that just standard tune-up and repaint the engine. I want to keep the engine mods to a minimum at this point as I'm still considering a non-conventional engine swap down the road.
Thoughts and suggestions? Perhaps some useful forum redirection? I look forward to reading the replies.