Forgotten 1968 Pontiac Firebird - Will it RUN AND DRIVE 700 MILES?

Under this car cover is a

1968

Pontiac Firebird that hasn't been on the road in about 10 years and is known to have some issues. I'm going to try to make this work and

drive

it 700+

miles

from Eastern Michigan. All the way back to Minnesota in the dead of winter, probably snow, definitely freezing rain, and I also just realized I have to put it in gear because I just traded in my car for that perfect one before I got too far. I want to thank Joe and Vicki, this is their store here and this was their

firebird

, very nice people for letting me in here and another thank you to Joe who unfortunately couldn't be here today.

You're working for our amazing air force, so thank you for your service and whatever we do for our country, let's take this cover off, let's take a look around, let's hook up our peepers, see what we're going through now, I gotta get heartbreaking quick, Not only

will

the sun set in a few hours and it

will

get much colder, but another snow storm is coming and I would like to be on the road before it arrives. I have no idea what a 68 Firebird is like in a blizzard, but I'm guessing it's not, not ideal, since it's bright.

I'm scared, I'm not really sure how to approach it if you just walk in there, if you just wander around, it seems to be in pretty good condition. What really intrigued me about this car is that it comes from Nevada, I think Arizona is one of the two and it's supposedly 319 percent rust free, never had any patches or anything like that which is huge to me because You know I'm in the rust belt. Nice color, I don't know how to explain the colors, it's blue and then there's kind of a reddish brown stripe here, kind of a spare hood, ooh, foot pegs that have 24 horsepower each, seems to be pretty good, everything here, maybe some lens covers, I noticed a piece of chrome wiper is missing.

I have boxes of parts here that go with it. Mickey was nice enough to go digging and find all this stuff. Oh, it's this crushed velvet. It's nice. There are no rear door panels. Maybe they are in the boxes. This is as southern as you can get. i definitely say it's the south car arizona nevada the scripts and everything is fully cooked before we go digging too far the guys always have to start in the trunk tells you the full story let's dig in there and see if we find anything good, I'm going to do it?

Come back here, I have 86 keys, that's good, it should be one of these round rounds, negative, negative, well, what's going on, negative, this looks like a mailbox key, that's it, you're going to like this, we have zombie robbery and mouse droppings. and that's it, which is exciting, you don't want to see intake gaskets, or water pumps, or head gaskets, or anything like that. Hopefully, this should mean that everything is in the engine and ready to go. I'm going to listen to this on On the way home we have a radio probably not. Don't know. This thing might be too bright for me.

I might have to run some sos pads or something. Maybe shoot some primer around the wheel wells. Let's dive into the captain's room here. look what we have on the door panels they are in excellent condition this is a factory model here it's called rotten you know and it wasn't very popular but some people dug it up I wonder if it could be a new door. I'm seeing black down here. you get them from amd or pretty much anywhere, the doors and door frames come in black so they could have been replaced, we will decode it later, maybe if we have time, this interior I leave, it will have a steering wheel of racing, that's good. i have some scallage so you know the transmission shift kits don't work with a radio fuel gauge, that's a plus, oh look at this down here, you see it has the little pedal so it's gone, but it used to be a four speed, I guess so.

This used to be a four speed car, which is great because I'm putting one back in it right away. The headliner is also gone. It's also cool. You don't have to delete that and it looks like they might have had a problem. Get in the trunk, the seats are already hanging brake lines, speedometer cable, so I'm going to say the speedometer doesn't work. I have blocks to raise or lower, it depends on how you arrange them. I guess we have radioactivity. Look at this. We have what is it? What type? What is the flavor? Durabrand I keep up my alley.

I have the old removable faceplate. Throw it at Levi's and then they supposedly won't steal your rig. A lot of paperwork. I'm not going to show anything. What is this headlight harness? I guess the headlights don't work. I'm not sure why the problem is pretty standard. What I like is that the dash isn't completely cut out except for the stereo, but they don't have gauges buried here anywhere in the center. The console is in pretty decent shape and I don't see any weight reduction yet, which is fantastic. I usually feel something on my lips here, it's all metal, pretty good, a lot of cobwebs from sitting, so they got this car about 10 years ago on the front. and through deployments and everything else, you know, life gets busy, they parked it and then I think she said they moved twice, so this car moved from the south and came all the way here to Michigan and basically has been under the car cover, but you could tell they care, there's a battery charger that's a multi-angle view when you accelerate and start to drop, extend your field of vision there, that's custom, probably oak, Ah, definitely, pine, I still like it, I don't know.

The paint on a solid car has some flaking, all the tires are airy in the front, the ones are low, but it's not that bad, let's open the electric barn and see how many horses we have in there, they usually don't come out so easily, oh . yeah, we're off to a great start and it's got a battery, I'll dive in. I was wondering if we were going to see a bop engine here, some kind of buick olds or

pontiac

, but it's definitely a stubby small block and she's got some quick parts edelbrock heads intake carburetor looks like we even have the clear lightning roller some bagel lightning hoses I mean you could water the garden with them new stuff the rotating charging belt is pretty broken that's just from having digital fans on here I just saw it has a napa battery it has I have to look closer at this oh we have some red down here, what does that mean? oh it's got disc brakes on the front I'll dip it right we're under here so look at that I've got all sorts of suspension parts on the front no idea what that means or does but it looks pretty cool , we'll get behind the block here, I'll take the digits out of that and we'll analyze it to see what type.

Small block that it is, I'm sure it's probably just a 350. I see a frame down there, I have to change it right away, uh oh, look at the belt angle on the power steering, I don't think it's going to last, it's got a custom. bracketry here, you know, if we have to run it, I might cut it, it'll most likely fly off anyway, that's a mouse nest in there, oh no, that's what I think it is, oh, give me a minute , guys, this could be uh. Really bad, wait, I had to get a little more light to confirm and if you see that little piece of brass down there, that's the complete freeze plug that came out of the engine and is located on the inside of the engine mount and that, my friends, it is potentially the same.

Pull this engine a foot or two out of the car to replace the freeze plug. It is a very common and easy mistake that makes you move a car from the south to the north. A lot of times you're just running on pure water and when it freezes. They take those plugs out and the other thing we have to worry about is the block is cracked and if the head has cracks now too, but that's going to take quite a bit of work. Maybe you can remove this side of the With the engine off, try lifting it up enough to remove the plate and then adjust the temperature there, but most likely we'll have to get this whole thing out of the car.

Great, the other thing I noticed down there is a transmission pan looks like a murder, it rode under the car so something is going on with the transmission it could also just be a pan gasket. Hopefully, I wonder if we'll take a look here, there's even something left so I can see a little bit there and it's 100 water, so let's get out the old dipstick and see what the count tells us. If we have water in that very black oil, it is necessary to change it. I don't see any water here and I taste a ton of gas, so it probably flooded well.

It could be a few things flooding when trying to start, it could be a bad fuel pump, a few different reasons for that are the least likely, but it's an indicator of whether the engine is tired and worn out and the rings aren't doing what they're supposed to. they must do. what I'm doing, you can also lower fuel into the crankcase that way and just because there's no water in nature doesn't mean we're safe from not having a crack head or a block, since it has a mark, it hasn't circulated nothing, so I don't do it.

I know I think at this point I should see if this works, let's see if it comes on and if it does then I'll go through the headache of trying to fix that freeze plug and then we'll move on to the transmission. it actually moves and brakes at the end and at minimum, those are just a convenience, I think where a guy is going to start with this platform here is, I'm going to get a spark later, jam a telescope in there, let's take a look at walls of the cylinder to see if we can identify any problems or if it looks healthy and then we'll move on to the fuel.

I'm going to cut this line here that goes to the tank, we take it out of the pump and I have a little Digital Pump and we'll bring it here in a drum. I just want to see the color of the fuel. Smell it a little. Put it in the windbags to see if we get chunks. If it looks half decent. We'll plug it back in. I have a few gallons of new gas. We'll throw it in there later. Couldn't you go out? It's pretty cold here now. I'll be honest, overall, I'm pretty excited. To be honest, I've owned a lot of first-gen Camaros, never a first-gen Firebird, so this is going to be a lot of fun.

This thing is tastier than Oprah Moses' sandals. The fuel in the crankcase is definitely rich fuel. Make this happen. Check out this Sparklater, that's exactly what you're going to see when they're running really rich. I don't have an Edelbrock tuning kit with me, but maybe I can. I think they keep them on the shelf at 0'. Reilly and it's definitely not just an idle circuit issue and it won't work any better the way you marked it so we'll have to take that into account hopefully the cylinder walls won't be all washed out so I'll do that. reach there now we'll take a look.

I'm going to end up moving to a different cylinder here because this one is on the top but we can see, I don't know if you can, but the top of the piston is very charred, those two scratches are coming from my cam, slightly scratching the top, so they are very, very dirty. Little Berryman's Italian tune-up would do this. Nice stock style piston there with the valve reliefs. I saw something written here so I'm curious maybe I can get a better look in a different hole but usually if they have 30 on something like that it will say 30 on some kind of part number and 30 on the top of the piston and I I wonder if that's not what I was looking at there, so I'll move to a piston that should be down if I can quickly figure out where it is in the firing order and then we'll take a Better look well, it's not horrible.

I still see some cross lines and I know you guys probably can't see this, but there are also some really nasty vertical scratches. I mean, it's not bad, but this would definitely be a candidate for retirement. do a quick refinement of the ball, throw some rings on it quick, it'll probably work fine, so let's go ahead and install a little fuel system here, get some fuel out of the tank, see what it looks like and hopefully we'll have it. This thing turned around here in a few minutes, while I was dialing it I started looking at other things and drinking them more and this means a very long, cold, long, cold ride home in the car from the south, you just rip all this stuff off , cut them. turn this off, add another nine horsepower, you know, I didn't see any part of the heater core in the box or anything, so we'll just have to take that into account how to live on the way home anyway, I have this bomb. later installed here I think this one is ground we'll figure it out and we're just going to pump it out oh, it's already eating gravity.

Pump up here to see what that fuel looks like and make a decision if I need to drain it. Take out the whole tank and then fill it up or if we're lucky we could just put some new fuel in there, shake the car and suchtime he escapes. That's probably not the most important thing, I just don't want to be sucking up bits and stuff here because then I'll have to replace a bunch of filters on the way home and stuff, speaking of filters, we gotta get rid of this one here, these leaks. They can cause more fires than ex-wives. so we want to remove this this is the type of spin and what happens is your engine vibrates and they slowly release and then they start leaking fuel and kabuf you got fire okay let's see what a guy can get out of there oh skill.

Yeah, that doesn't look very good, let's see if that clears it up. Sometimes the line will have a lot of varnish and then it will lighten a little. I didn't see any chunks coming out, so that's okay, but gas is definitely bad, so let's pretend I didn't do that. You know, we didn't look at the condition of the fuel and let's plug it back in and see if it leaks. Remember guys, great things happen when you take shortcuts, you're angry, cut that off, just hook it back down here, okay, yeah, here we go, just smell. It's not good to keep ignoring keep ignoring I don't think we're going to have any problem getting a ray out of this.

This is about making it as good as possible and it looks complete, so once I hear it fire, I'll feel comfortable. It's already enough to put in 942 hours of work to fix that freeze plug, speaking of smells, the inside of this one isn't that bad, it's a grain bin with a touch of a shoe cabinet, it's actually quite nice, well let's get started Let's dig in here and take a closer look. a mile long bolt here put it where I'll lose it 1405 so it should be a little bit 600 cfm yeah a little 600 man is sure to drown and you can clearly see it's flooded more than my basement, it has to simply be expelled. wrong, there's no reason it should be working, the rich have the good support here, they actually connected the down kick, that's pretty weird, a lot of people just leave this alone or don't even connect it, it even has the little ones and stylish bolt covers on.

There, everything is intact. I missed this. The green lightning wire here says we got an attack somewhere here. How did I lose it? Where is? I don't even know, oh, it's way down, yeah, so she's got a breakout meter. That's good, we'll see if we can bend that needle normally. I slide under these and hook my lonewolf 6000 trigger so I can get them out here. This one is in a diaper bag, so I'm not going to get to the starter very easily. I'm just going to turn it with the key because again I'm just looking to hear it go off just for a couple of seconds, that's enough for me and then we'll jump into this freeze plug.

I have my battery charger that doesn't work plugged in and with the sink full, that's where you boil them overnight you know, so I'm going to jump in, just start turning it, there should already be fuel in the pump, so It should only take about 10 seconds until we get fuel. to the fuel, make it happen now, I'll start pumping it and see if we have a fire. The ignition works. The starter works fine and we have a stain on the deck at the filter. That's fine, so I'm going to shoot. some brake cleaner or carb cleaner down here, whatever you can find first that's easiest to grab and then we'll see if it spins, fill this thing with fuel and see if it fires.

I'm going to give it just a touch of motivation here we go, uh, I guess a guy should tackle this first and then we'll see if we get some squirter action. What is happening there? I found this one at the bottom of my toolbox, so I'm sure it's definitely pretty good. better than that, well this is a great example of what I was talking about before, guys, these fuel filters, take them out, take them out, take them out of your vehicle right now, here we go, now the jets aren't working, let's try it. I have a punch again, I'm going to try it like this, yeah, yeah, I'm not sure what kind of mufflers the old one has, but it sounds pretty good.

I had my ear meter all the way on when she was just mumbling trying to start and believe me no yeah I've heard that noise before so I came here with the old timing tool and gave her about four degrees of initial timing and she jumped right away, so now that I heard it. Run, let's start digging, we're not going to get anywhere without this freeze plug coming out. The other thing I started thinking about too is that I have to look at the other ones pretty closely, there are a couple that I can't get to, but I'm going to use my probe here and look at the other one behind the engine mount and then the other two also on the side, where I could just look through the headers and see them.

Oh, this is not going to be fun, so it would be the captain's side in the back and that one looks firmly seated. I don't see any evidence of any leaks around the perimeter. It usually gets flaky and algae and I don't know any other scientific stuff so that one looks good so I'll move on. next to the sprue and look closer at this side here, so this would be the sprue side, front behind the engine mount, at a bit of a weird angle, but that one is firmly seated again, I don't see any evidence that leaks, which is Great, that will give me the confidence to first try lifting the engine this way, you know, and if I can get my meat gloves in there well enough to remove the three bolts from the cover part of the support. that out of the way, then you could stick one of those expandable rubber cookie plugs, uppy freeze plug, later 200 in there and that lathered with silicone might be good enough to get a guy home.

It's like I'm saying I'm planning to shoot. all this anyway because I want to put the four speed back on it so I just need it to run for 700

miles

even if it leaks fine it will carry water you know so the next step is to get the spark hoses out of the way, I have to get rid of them. of this header so I guess I'll just lift it up in the air I put on both the collector hopefully they'll come off get it out of the way and then we can start fighting the damn old mountain I've got updates here I've got the Quite the boom tubes, now you can see the Wi-Fi freeze plug a little better, so I think if a guy has a plan, I have these chains attached here and I don't need these accessory holes, so if I remove these bolts , Yeah. we'll just move over to these, they still hook a cherry picker on this and I'm going to try to lift it high enough.

I already removed the top two bolts of this bracket. I need to get the one on the bottom that is hidden down here over this unit that looks like a clam shell from a 300 jiggy bobber and I hope I can get this high enough or maybe I could sneak in from underneath and take out that bolt and then I can get enough separation there and if that fails, then we'll go into full export mode, which is undo, the other side removes the lightning weather and actually lifts this thing in the air trying to avoid that because I don't want to remove the

drive

shaft. and all those things, by the way, are down here removing the exhaust, we have pipes in full drag race mode, I don't know what they're two and a half inches and three inches and I think some of them are fancy floor masters back here, so we're pretty fancy, we've got new springs i.e. rear sway bar, there's some good stuff on this thing that I haven't even gotten to yet, I've got some chocolatiers in there, braided hoses, the gearbox's been put in, so quite a few pieces in this thing, okay, let's go. give this a chance I'm going to go and grab as much as I can until the transmission hits the tunnel there it's probably only about two inches there but I've got a takeoff oh I think we've got a lot here we go so I've got a There's a lot more here than I thought I was going to get.

It looks like maybe two inches, two and a quarter. I'm going to try to block this or get some wood in here or something so I don't have my hand under this if the old China freight fails on me, I don't want this, you know, it'll bite you and that's it, but the good news is that if I can get that bottom bolt out, we're in business, I can easily get the old one out and get it out. That new one that was there 62 days later took it out and that was a problem because it's cracked or broken so the rubber has settled and it was sitting right on this bolt so the bushing wouldn't go over it.

I could enter. from the bottom, let it go and then I kept rocking it back and forth, put my finger in, loosened it, held the bolt, put my finger in and finally pulled it out. It felt like it was two miles long, but it's definitely a regular old one. Not putting it back wouldn't really make sense since it needs to be repaired and now we have clear access to this bug right here, a lot of rusty junk falls out. You can see the other plug down there. I'll grab it real quick. I'm going to take you down here, see the glitches you can see it's not horrible, but she's affected enough down there to give us a leak, maybe more or less, and then here's that other one and it looks pretty good, we'll just ignore it completely.

So I'm going to start by rotating this from here to there, if I can tilt it there, I probably won't keep hitting it with sandpaper and then I have a couple different flavors of cheeks, I'm going to rotate them there, you know? Look what happens, probably nothing, okay, I have this polisher here. I'll see if I can spin it a little. I can definitely smell the rust. It's right on my teeth, so it's doing something. Let's take a look and see if we did anything. It gets better, oh yeah, I already look a little better, in fact I think it's probably pretty good.

I'll still pass poker on there just for a second. It'll make me feel good about spending money on this, at least you know, just getting stuck in there, well that was really the ticket, look at that now, dial spanks, so if you find yourself in the bind here, skip the sandpaper, just go get this cheap little inch and a half of course woo the couple boop boop boop she's ready to Come on I thought I'd show you this case quick you've never seen one that's good to know in case of an emergency but basically the concept is to just drop this into the block and as you tighten this nut here, it tightens.

These two washers come together and the rubber expands. You want it to sit flush and completely inside the block because you're basically creating a lip on the inside so fluids can't come out normally if the block is very thick and pitted. Put some rtv or something around this permatex but I have it pretty clean on this one and they say dry install them but let's be honest I don't think anyone will do that but I'll try it this time and see if it works so I'll go to put this in there, give it six fifteen oogadoogas and that shouldn't have decided whether I'm going to let it hang like this, turn it on and run some coolant through it to see if we have a leak or if I'm going to put it. everything back together and I just cross my fingers.

I'll probably put it all back together and just cross my fingers that it leaks again and then I'll have to take it all apart because you know that's a lot more fun guys, you should probably know to try it. That was before you put this all back together, so I did the right thing and just put it all back together if you're wondering from before why I didn't run it for longer than one. I didn't want the headers to just be piped. It's hot because I had to get in here through the exhaust and two. I'm going to assume the transmission was empty because there was 71 gallons of atf in the ground and I didn't want to burn out the pump, but I go. to finish tightening them and I think we're getting pretty close to where I can fill this up to see if we have any leaks, but I'm probably going to have to fix this transmission leak before I keep running this and I'm thinking it's just a crankcase gasket.

Hopefully I didn't look too closely below. The guy has to assume that's what it is, so I have a filter kit. We'll put in a filter at the same time, but this is going pretty well and I think. I have enough room in there, if that's leaking I can put a wrench in there and just hold its ears back a little more if I need to, eventually I'll have to address how this power steering pump is Kitty Wompus. Here I'm quite surprised that this belt hasn't been removed yet, it gets difficult because this mount is for the original collectors, you know?

This thick guy could probably stand out here with a hollow tube and they do. Another aftermarket support thing, but of course I don't have that right now, but like I say, if this becomes a problem and the belt gets damaged, I'll keep driving. I don't need power steering anyway, so it's As we join together, there are a lot of guys who think you're cursing yourself when you change filters and transmission fluids work great and then all of a sudden it doesn't. We're not really in a position to choose here, we just have to get. this leak fixed yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, get out of there, wow, this thing, this, I can even get to it, I got the shift rod, make some dabber,Stubborn imp, oh, it's okay, I can't see anything.

I'm going to leave a couple. of this loose up here that way it swings like this it sure is nice to lay on, although I'll tell you that, well, there's no juice in this thing, I'll tell you there may be a little left in the pan, but usually it's already overflowing normally like this I would have my armpit full up to my hip bone well why is it stuck like this? Oh yeah, she's dry, I just can't see there, that must have been there, okay? there is a little bit of metal in the pan it's normal due to clutch wear but this is what they call it's just extreme this is literally a pile of built up metal so now guys are wondering if i have any gears left because that is incredible.

It's going to take me a while to get all this stuff out here, look at that, so the clutches have been cooked, no doubt about it, as long as a guy can park and drive, that would be good. I don't want four neutrals, that's much better. about two cans of carb cleaner and some steel wool and that should work pretty well, quick filter possible. This time I'm going to use a rubber gasket that was an old cutting gasket, there's a lot they can absorb before you start. crying, button this up, i think i have enough etf.

Hopefully, I think I have five or six quarts that should be enough to run anyway and that'll probably be it for tonight and then in the morning we'll put some coolant in this. thing and let's see if our repair stays decent. The second day, at 759 o'clock, we finished the transmission pan gasket. It actually took longer to install the shift bracket, more than anything, but it's okay, the guy got to thinking while he was there, the miles will change the oil while shooting her in the air, she's sporting a frame filter right now, so let's delete it. that I have a wix and some more oil that we're going to put in and then when we drop it, we're going to throw a couple of crusts in the transmission to see if we can get this thing started again.

I'm excited to see how many neutrals we get. After there being 11 inches of clutch material in the transmission pan, there should be no surprises with the oil down there, like a filler tastes like a lot of gas and not a ton of shavings on the magnet, which is good news if you look closely. on the outer ring that's all gas in the oil there and I wish it had olfactory vision because it's ripe, it'll be here the next time you go to the parts store, whichever one you want, to order a cut of a fram filter versus filter of air like napa gold or wix or whatever brand you use and you will be surprised this is pretty good, I opened my wix filter here and the small block cheby water neck gasket came out, some cheby filler must I resubmitted this and I forgot he got this right there.

Remember to have the guys write the date on these and maybe even the mileage with the paint marker. This will save you or the next guy a lot of guesswork if you've watched my channel for You've known for a long time that I'm a big fan of husk and pennzoil oil products, the current flavor is pennzoil 1030. Typically on these old engines and tired of flat tap I like to run like a 1540, a little heavier oil, but we're in the dead of winter and it's snowing right now so I'm going to go 10 30 here and this pennzoil is pretty much the buffet of properties of the oil, it has everything a man needs, plus it has a good cleaning agent with all the carbon I saw with the borescope, I'm sure there is a lot of sludge on this too and this will help clean it up for the drive selector directional, back there we're going to completely rebuild it by throwing in some lucas stop slip, just get ahead of the curve, you know a little trick here, put on half a nice shirt and then take half of this, put it here and then shake it and then throw that away that way you won't be sitting there for 93 minutes trying to squeeze.

This goes in and then your second qt finishes the bottle and you're ready to go. I don't think anyone is going to fill this to capacity until I can make sure we don't have a Yellowstone park. I have to think last. The night I was trying to get 13 minutes of sleep, this has digital fans, no idea if the temperature sending unit works, if the relay works, so we'll have to make sure we test it before we hit the road, yeah boy . Sitting here thinking I still don't have a nickname for this. I was originally thinking that instead of the

firebird

it would be the snowbird, since I had to drive through two snow storms to get here and it's snowing right now, but it's also been bombarded with stickers. with a flamingo that's it, they eat a lot of shrimp, they turn pink, I guess I don't know the wives' tale, but if you have a nickname for this beep, bloop, down there in the comments, I have no idea, but it has to be called something what are these creatures?

Don't know. The fans just turn on. None of the indicators seem to be working. You know what guys? I think it has a small camera, believe me, probably not. I think actually yes, maybe a little. VR camera or something, has a little bump on the thumb, it was circulating, the fans kicked in, I still don't see any leaks and it's charging, so we're off to a very good start. I'm going to let the fumes get out of here. A little bit, I opened the garage door, I got a little dizzy and then we're going to try some gears here in a minute, so I've got everything buttoned up.

I'm going to go in, check the transmission, see if we go forward and reverse and if we do then we'll move with headlights, taillights and wipers, that would be fine, it's snowing and I have to go through another storm on the way back, Also, okay, we have gears and headlights, we don't have a tail. lights, so we'll start over here, so there's a little bit of wiring here. I'm sure there were some difficulties going from a manual to an auto and then some things got cut. I realized this is high and low beams, the switch here, those work headlights work, the heater is connected there and then I have brake lights but no tail lights and that was a grounding problem here, which I think I have solved this other one.

It's busted here, I'm not going to worry about it right now, there are some new casings, but if I pass the cop, I'll hold the brakes while passing them so it looks like I have taillights in the dark. Vicky has packed everything for I had a box here and it was full and she somehow got all the pieces in here, which is great, so we're making great progress. I just have to finish packing some tools. I have my power tools and of course. Mountain Dew and I'll bring my universal tool kits and stuff here. I think I'll have plenty of space.

I never thought I'd say this, but a '68 Firebird has a lot more room than the Corvette, which it is, I guess. makes sense, I think this is all done, I normally throw Berryman straight through the carburetor, but b and we have over 700 miles on it, I have like 10 cans, I'll keep putting two cans in each fill up and that way it's just They're feeding me onions all the time and hopefully that should clean those pistons and rings and there's really no point in changing the spark plugs right now, they're dirty, but hopefully the berry growers will keep them at bay while we burn off all that excess carbon and those things. and if I end up failing then I'll just stop and replace the plugs real quick.

I think I'll replace this belt quickly now that I'm looking at it, there are a lot of cracks here, I don't know. I think that's going to get me very far, so the miles will roll on and do it now, watch it a couple more times and then I'll probably hit the road. I'm not even going to worry about the wheel bearings, this time it's the Wilwood disc disc kits. There is no way they haven't put in new bearings. I need some air and I don't know. I guess I'll just keep walking around this thing scratching my head.

This one is on the edge. Oh, the windshield wipers work, but this is the only thing. I don't have anyone in town that has the right one that fits. I tried to adapt a thing, you know, to the things here that didn't work very well, so I just spray the snot out of it and if I get into a tight spot, I'll be gentle and use this sparingly and then you can always venture out if you find them. things get very bad. I guess I just took it to the gas station, just a couple blocks away from the meter that broke and drained, basically, I don't know if.

That's either accurate or not, so I can't pass up a gas station. Let's start with the Berryman B12 treatment. I'm going to use two per fill and this should put it back up to the ceiling. It keeps falling apart anyway. The fuel gauge works. I supposedly have 15 gallons on number 16. I don't know anywhere between before 20. So let's estimate 10 miles per gallon to be safe, so I need to stop at 150 140 miles. A 5 gallon jug broke here, somewhere I taped the board so it wouldn't fall. The electric heating was turned on. Do-nothing mode was turned on. I have my fire extinguisher here and if you take the burner on your finger and turn it 90 degrees, that's also a defrost.

I've got it ready, I think we're going to hit the road and see what happens. The transmission shifts, but is very wet. I mean, it only takes a minute to select. The brakes work very well, which is a first for me. I think I have a lot. from the vibration of the tires, but I think it's just from sitting all those years, maybe they will recover, probably not, I have a spare, it's flat, it's fine, so so far everything is going according to plan, passing the top right now, nothing that's good. I'm going to try to go maybe 450 miles today or so and then turn it off for tonight.

I didn't get very far and I froze. I taped the hood here, it comes under the dash somewhere, hope that helps a little. little, nothing is leaking, the fans are kicking, this is a little scary, ah, the fuel pump feels a little weak, that was weird, well anyway, good enough for now, I'll pass by Mickey D, grab some food, get it back on the interstate, I have a lot of In the field, I like to get as many miles as I can before the sun goes down because then I'll have to figure out what I'm going to do with the tail lights .

I have brakes and I think I might even have flashing lights, but I don't have taillights. I also don't know if this is a good '68 plate. Maybe it will work. It's probably not one of the biggest improvements I have going for me. There's like 38 39 weather stripping in here, which is really good. that window sticks out further than the other window so it has a little leak but hopefully this nine inch exhaust pipe heats up the floor a little bit but so far it's not too bad we'll just have to see how it is at least in the introduction state. there was no snow on my face I didn't get very far I was putting gas right there now I'm here because I used my blinker and it just stayed on and I blew a fuse in my brake lights and then I had to I thought it was going to get dark or dusk pretty quick so I hooked up the brake lights and that's pretty easy to do guys if you get stuck just unhook the brake switch which is this thing here which is just a plunger and that's what it's called normally open so when you are not pressing the brake pedal the circuits open and when you press the brake pedal it becomes mc or normally closed so I just disconnect it and loop it like this and if you don't want to disconnect it or it's really hard to get to, you can actually just take a scotch lock like this and just put it in there, push this down to close them and spend the night and in the morning you just take it out so I'm going. run like this and tomorrow morning I'll just take that loop out and put the brake switch back in.

It looks like we hit the flat spots on the interstate and the tires haven't come off yet, so I'm going to do the right thing. and take this exit, just shoot straight at 75. See if they come out that way. I think I have high enough gears in this thing. 1500 is about 55. So, these roads in Michigan need some work, I thought in Illinois. It was bad, my goodness it handles well, though wow, really loitering and 70 to 20200rpm, it's not that bad, very drafty, although I guess they'll have to put the overalls on as soon as the sun goes down. able to hold on until then this is shaking here we have a mouse nest burning somewhere I know that smell it's fixed a man's son worked himself to the bone just trying to make something out of nothing you know he never wanted silver, gold or the finer things just a wife and kids at home in the american dream, are you going to step up baby, this is our time to rewrite our american dream?

I just can't see it not being thawed, oh yeah, still snowing from the flat tire. The good news is that I saved the tire, so I'm going to spend two hours jacking up the spare tire on the bottom of everything to see if it fits. Hopefully these aren't lock nuts, noIt seems. luckily and I need to change this pretty quickly sitting on the side of the road, easy way for the old coxswain to appear, damn this tire is losing air fast, it was flat when I bought it at that store, this one is going to rub. really bad, my finger could barely fit, I'll have to stay away from the bumps and try not to spin, it's the only option I have and this is really bad on the rear, having different size tires, I have 40 miles next to the city, gary, indiana, mobile, alabama, the something something no, none of those I'm close to gary I'm actually in indiana on the illinois state line somewhere around here not sure what good day friends, we We got a firebird, we got a lot of miles down from leaving late in the afternoon that's good, I don't even think she smoked when she lit up, did you guys see that's really cute? make something to eat I'm going to try this establishment, I heard they have good fried pickles and that's the only reason the best man came running and I was thinking, here we go, round four, I can't work with your garbage in the forehead. from our trash motel, but you know he just wanted to know what size engine the old snowbird had.

I like to take my tools to my room. You know, that way when my car is stolen, I save $128 on tools. 712 early still spitting. It snowed a little last night, I guess I have to deal with this tire problem today, ironically when I googled machines and came out with a bunch of tire stores around and ended up at the same motel I did with the corvette that was headed north of Detroit. I knew deep in my liver that these front tires were going to be a problem, they are so dry and rotten here and then you combine that with the introductory state of Michigan, you are in trouble.

I also left the tail lights on last night, dead battery. That's weird, I can't get in through the driver's side door either, apparently it locks and never opens so I lost some hardware on the door panel so now I can crawl out the passenger door for the rest of the trip . Okay, I learned pretty well. tire trick to save you some money. In fact, I can remove this other side and I think I would be wiser than a white owl to replace this side and also dig up the other tire and then call an Uber XL.

For eight ten dollars they will let you, get the tires, call someone else, he will bring me back, maybe it's a leaf, I don't know, it's much cheaper than roadside service or mobile tire guys, nothing wrong with them, I just can't. afford yourself, you know it's expensive, it's an emergency thing, you know, I have a jump pack but I was charging my phone with it all night, hopefully it'll have enough power for z, otherwise I guess I'll just hold on the jumper cables in the air and I hope someone stops, I hope they even start this morning.

Double checked the bumper spoke fluid didn't really do much. I just kept it on the floor. You know, since it's negative 244 degrees, I think I'm going to get it. Taking this tire off was probably a good idea about an hour and a half later the guy had it back, these are the only tires believe it or not even with all these stores around here that cost anything remotely close to 235 45 17 and this It was quite painful. Firestone, I don't know, champion fuel fighter, three thousand, supposedly, a seventy thousand mile tire, not sure, 400 dollars, balance mounted for both, but I got to thinking that I have charging the starter motor the water pump, the lightning hoses, a lot of things that get pretty. about the same amount of dollar value I'm going to return when I get home so yeah hesitant I didn't want to resize too much because of the back space and then it's so close to the rub I'm going to put them on.

You should be able to do this quite easily. You just have to get under the front. Put that one. Remove that one. Put the other one. You know, the drill will probably take out the finger burner. This I hope doesn't crack well, that's done and the good news is they don't look even remotely like that pattern so it's okay they are tighter than I remember but look what we have before I had to run it without the filter. last night i forgot to mention that it doesn't have a high enough lift so what happens is the throttle gets stuck at 3000rpm which is fun but when you get into traffic it gets a bit tricky so unfortunately I'm going to have to run your cylinder wide open, the walls are already marked, so yeah, it won't matter if it chews on some things, look that's still pretty full, perfect, what else do we want to check?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, this seems okay. I don't fit in anymore and I look like a complete idiot slithering into this like a snake, but now we're going in here, how is this going to work? Um, random seats, can I go all the way like this and then bring my leg? bring my leg lift my leg bring it oh oh help me help me oh help I never this is not ah well that went well I think it's an easy process look at all these keys and it just helped me understand that we are going to test this one, yes, coke that It's not working, take it out anyway just in case I used all my juice, so I hope it has enough, maybe give it more gas, I probably only have five jokes, there's more gas left, wow, not even a fire, oh, I've got my device safety disconnected now I have to get out of this bring the thunder here we go uh well I'll let it sit here and idle finish removing the snow uh solid ice man this sounds good although I opened the door while I was warming up I just took a flat screwdriver and you could see the door hatch there and somehow I got stuck between the closed lock, so I had to hold the button, lift the lock, press the lever and now everything reset again, I crawled under it, hooked my uh I changed the brake light again so now they're off and I'll have brake lights during the day so okay let it warm up for a couple more minutes and then accelerate there and start skidding they're masters flat, it's like a kit put together and welded, that's cool, I put over 700 miles on it with no heat and a 68 Firebird, I'm the opposite of Pink Floyd, my feet are painfully numb, it's okay, the car did great even after from sitting for 10 years, apart from the tires.

No complaints, I don't know what to make of this, although I'm looking for your guys' suggestions, so please put them in the Bleep Bloop section. If you're not subscribed, hit the bell to find out when others are available. Videos like this will continue thanks again to Joe and Vicky. I'm starting to not be able to see them, so that will do it for this episode. See you next time.