Dirtiest Car Ever! First Wash in 20 Years Lost Pontiac Trans Am Rare 455 HO

So okay, come on, come on, so last week I got an email with photos of a forgotten broadcast. I wonder if you could come inspect the overall condition in hopes of recovering some of the original parts for eventual rebuilding and restoration. the place is almost harder than finding the car that's all when i pulled up where i thought it should be i saw a 1985 iroc z in the back so i assumed i was in the right place joe i am. joe it's larry ok thanks john i chatted with the guys a bit and inspected the vehicle which i gotta tell you was pretty messy there was a lot of mold on the doors the armrest the back seat and pretty much

ever

ywhere the abroad. again, mold, rust, dings and dents on the doors, so I wanted to know more about the past history and how Joe, the guy who emailed me, found the car.

What we have here is a high performance 1975

pontiac

trans

am, 455, four speed, cardinal red is one. of 857 made that year quite

rare

uh

pontiac

didn't actually offer 45 and 75 until May June end of production that's why they sold little of them so it's quite

rare

to find a bird quite difficult to get for me son. riding his bike in the summer he came across his car in the back of a driveway and they said dad, you have to look at this

trans

. I saw a really cool Trans down there and took some pictures of my dad. He says dad, you have to buy. this car and I was like you know we have enough stuff we have too many projects as it is we don't need another car a few months later I got a call from my friend john hey john what's going on he hey um I got that trans am um I have to get rid of him.

What happened because I

lost

my place? I have three weeks to find another garage, otherwise I have to leave. I've known John my whole life. I grew up with John um back in the '80s, '90s, always likes cars, remember when John

first

bought this car sometime around '92 and it closed two days before the end of a month for Joe. So far I have no buyer, no one wants to come see it if you don't buy the car from me. I'm going to the junkyard, sorry, I'll buy the car. Where is the car? So he gives me the address and then I put two and two together.

Oh, that's the same car my son saw in the summer. It's my friend John's car. Yes, I do. I have a photo of the car uh I'm not a photographer so you know I don't take a lot of photos but the only photo I have is when I had to fight a parking violation office for giving me a ticket for not being able to place a plate on the front of the vehicle, why can't you fix it from the vehicle? There's no set space, there's no frame, there's nothing you can attach it to, so I had to do it.

Put it in the front window and that's not acceptable in New York City once we found out it was John's. There's no way we're going to the junkyard. We have to keep it in the family. We are going to preserve it. Joe hid it inside his cave among the collection of parts manuals and, of course, old photographs of him and his My father worked in cars, so I knew it was going to be a great house to restore, so

first

we removed the chevy 350 and some equipment to push the ta outside with of course some help from the next generation of car specialists, which was quite cold outside in the daylight.

I got a better idea and the true condition of the material and realized that there is absolutely no way this can be safely restored without first removing all the mold and of course cleaning the inside with chlorine dioxide as well that at that time. We tried to get it onto the trailer while blocking the street in downtown Queens, so it was quite an adventure and of course a nice exercise break to say the least. The third time was the charm. Once we got up and out of town, we dropped it. In the study to begin decontamination with proper lighting, we began to understand how bad the paint and wheels were, which makes sense because the inspection sticker was 18

years

late and on its way to the crusher at the warehouse. scrap, but the first step is Just to make this work safely, the first step is the chlorine dioxide tablet that kills odor and bacteria, similar to removing and completely replacing the interior of the BMW 3 Series due to the water leak shown in a previous episode while cooking inside for 20 minutes.

I more or less used compressed air to dislodge all the leaves, dirt, plastic bags, towels, etc. After over 15

years

of sitting outside in the trunk, I found a spare tire that looked pretty good because it was safe from the elements, which made me wonder. about the current wheels, so I Facebooked my friend George at Performance Industries to ask if he could lend me his media blaster and powder coating booth to surprise Joe at the end of the job. More on this later. At this point, I can imagine most of you. they're saying why working on this car you should burn it you should crush it it's a waste of time

ever

y comment you can imagine the answer is because the sentimental value far outweighs the effort involved in saving it from the crusher from a practical, sensible and prudent perspective.

Yes, this isn't a logical decision for most people, but Joe is committed to rebuilding this car and then passing it on to his son, who originally found the trans. Now it's hard to argue with that, especially being a parent, so here we go. The first thing we did was remove everything from the inside of the car, but the passenger side seat was actually rusted right down to the floor, so we left it as is, you know what they say live to fight another day, then we used foam ammunition and a scouring pad. and a steam machine to clean and restore interior plastics on vinyl areas.

We then filled the professional foamer to clean the transmission while inspecting the integrity of the seals by filling the two and a half gallon container with a bottle of foaming concentrate. and is ready to do up to 20 to 22 full

wash

es or you can just put some lids on if you are only

wash

ing one or two cars at a time, click the link above to watch a full instructional video at The professional foamer will be available very Soon, once you have set the desired ratio, you can manually pump the professional frother or you can connect it to your compressor for continuous power, as this unit is equipped with a psi gauge and a regulator, another kind of cool features that can really fill it with your compressor then disconnect it from the compressor and just walk around the car and you'll get enough pressure to make a whole car so it's great or just put it in your mobile van or put it in the back of your truck. etc., it is super versatile and the sprayer is actually six times stronger than the normal aerator due to the larger capacity and of course the larger headroom, which will create more pressure below and added gross to a bottle full of water that you can use on the door jambs.

While foaming the entire car to soften years of dried dirt while agitating the paint with a microfiber towel, we noticed that the areas with the brush agitation came out much cleaner than normal washing, so I did something I had never done before. . considered in 20 years of details, well, at this point we washed the car and I swished it with a microfiber towel and it didn't do much because this is completely dirty and Dan was using a little interior brush on the edges and a lot. scrap actually turned out pretty well, so let me say real quick, obviously this car wasting time polishing it doesn't make much sense, but what I'm trying to do is inspire this guy when he sees it and he's got a little more pop for a little more shine, I think he'll feel better restoring it, which he's going to do, but I can feel his legs and his knees and he's just shaking, it's like he doesn't want to do it.

I'm not sure if it's worth it so we'll have some fun and bring it back so what I'm doing now is something I would never do in a car in this case because it was working. Well, I just increased the size and now we're using our interior, it's a very soft interior brush with a keeper wire in the paint and you can see here that we made a place that is very clean and this is very dirty over here, so I'm going to turn it on. in two seconds, it's much cleaner again, we're having a little fun, but this didn't come out with just a normal wash and a microfiber towel, but it certainly comes out with this, okay, before you leave a comment, understand. that the paint is incredibly rough after years of exposure, so washing it normally is like shooting bullets into a tank, it wasn't doing anything, so we increased the agitation to tickle the embedded junk off the surface before removing it, now in desperate times.

Desperate measures were called for, so we ended up power washing all the stuck-on grime once it loosened and the debris just spilled off the surface, then Dan and I buffed the paint with a Rupes blue foam pad and a thick blue polishing compound. handle the extreme. Now we are polishing off residue because you don't plan to repaint the car immediately by fixing the rust, yes ok that's definitely a problem but the priority is the engine, brakes, interior etc. and the paint is way down on the list, so I might as well surprise it with a quick facelift once we finish the paint and then load the old wheels into the mobile detailing van and head to Performance Industries to clean the original wheels from time to time.

George lets me borrow some. tools I don't have in the studio to get your wheels back in shape if you don't know performance is a full wheel repair and restoration facility they do an absolutely crazy job if you have a problem with your wheels and want them back on Painted or powder coated or fixed up, these are the guys. I first removed the rust from each wheel with soda to remove all the debris before putting them in the oven for 25 minutes, once the metal was hot I took it out and pushed it into the layer of powder. cabin where I placed the positively charged material that will stick to the negatively charged wheel once done, the wheels were placed back in the oven for about 25 minutes approximately at 400 degrees and the process is repeated several times to achieve the desire and appearance If you want to watch the step by step video on the entire wheel repair process, just click the link above while the wheels dried overnight and the car was basically done.

I did a little Googling, which is where I landed. I got into trouble and found paint at a local body shop supply house, so okay, we added some lacquer and diluted the viscosity, filled the tank and went down the rabbit hole. I went to create my rusty Picasso, okay, so yeah, I know it's crazy. but so is setting up a house before people come to see it. You want them to feel a certain way and visualize themselves in the house. Same kind of concept here. He wanted to push Joe to fall in love with this again and see himself in the driver's seat. seat speaking of the driver's seat, it was a total loss, however, I removed the mold, steamed it and then put white duct tape on the exposed cushion, kind of like putting a band aid on a bazooka explosion, but I worked with what I had. at that time just to get it home we finally cleaned the glass polished the trim and then reinstalled the seat or whatever was left of it the next day we picked up the restored wheels and new tires and put them on along with the newly polished center caps on the stage drive I am very quick on a side note to remove that blue protective layer on the new side walls you can use a plum wheel cleaner or your favorite cleaner and shake lightly and then wipe with a cloth before washing them by hand. pressure and clean them.

I'm heading out right away, so before Joe and his friend arrived, I removed the wheels from the passenger side, that is, the side they would enter from the front door, and covered the driver's side so I could have some fun with them later. Alright, here we go, what's up guys, come in, take a look? Oh wow, what are they doing? Oh wow, holy man mackerel, amazing right, and after the quick ride, I revealed the restored wheels. Alright, I have another surprise for you, however you can. Look, we're missing two aspects of the vehicle, okay, come here, look at this, so I have your blue towels, what do you think of that?

No, I'm just kidding, uh-oh, so below, here we go, yeah, oh. Wow, those are the originals, those are the originals, so we went to Performance Industries, my friend George, I've known him for a long time and we powder coated them andthen we painted these little areas, basically making them new again. We put the new ones. Put the lips on new Coopers, so now that it's working, it's out of control. Yes, now the only thing left to do is to really see if this could start after more than 15 years of sitting there. First, the friend removed the old battery and installed the. a new 13, we have 13 with a gun that turned on the emergency lights, so we were headed in the right direction.

Then he removed the air box and filter and dumped some gas into the carburetor. Now we're going to turn off this carburetor with a little bit. Fuel now I have to tell you that after 10 years of filming car preservations, my friend is on my list of favorite characters I have ever met, he is a mechanic and can make anything work, but he is so much fun to hang out with, that's right . Come on, come on, come on, let that leaf turn, come on, baby, come on, you can do it, come on, baby, oh my God, here we go, here we go one more time, we'll do it again, we'll do it again.

It's over, go ahead, I've got the fuel, I've got the fuel, go ahead, wow, I can't believe it rolled over, listen, it's magic, magic at this point with the paint a little cleaner, the interior safe to work on and now the engine spinning, I could see Joe and his son imagining the next steps for a complete restoration, which makes me incredibly happy and was worth the effort. If you think about it, a rusty old Pontiac saved from the junkyard could become the best excuse to spend more time with a teenager, that's a price every parent would be happy to pay.

The house bill is on me.