Instead of driving with a friend to get my new collector car or flying out to retrieve it, I opted for the delivery service the previous owner had recommended.
It cost me $400 to get my 1968 Firebird shipped from eastern Ohio to Chicago, almost 500 miles on the head, and it was worth every penny. Well, it was almost a disaster.
When the car arrived, the truck driver had me climb up on his trailer to back the car down. I had to back it carefully down a pair of ramps, with the trucker guiding back from the driver's side. As I inched the car slowly backward, all seemed to be going well, until he moved over to the passenger side to take a look. There he saw I was an inch or two from falling off the ramp if I kept going backward.
So now I was in a dilly of a pickle. Perched halfway down the ramp, I would have to put a car I had never driven in first gear, let out the clutch and hit the throttle quickly enough to prevent the car from rolling backward at all. I was none too happy, but I took a deep breath and let out the clutch and goosed the throttle at the same time. The car lerched forward without rolling back. I was able to make the proper adjustments and get it off the trailer without a scratch. Whew!
As I mentioned in my last post, the previous owner's description was light on facts. I learned that he only owned the car for six months or so, after buying it from the guy who did the restoration. He didn't have the prior owner's information, so it was up to me to learn what the car had.
Some reference books and a great site for owners of cars like mine called FirstGenFirebird.org would prove to be very helpful. Here's what I learned:
The Body by Fisher Cowl Tag had several clues to the car's origin, namely:
-The 12 D designation on the top followed by the number 21117 means this was the 21,117th Firebird made and it built in the fourth week (D) of the 12th month of 1967. That just happens to be the exact week I was born, year and all.
-The 68-22437 in the ST (style) block means it is a 1968 Firebird coupe with the standard V8 engine. I'm guessing that means the 350 cid V8, not the 400.
-LOR means the car was built in Lordstown, Ohio.
-The VV paint code means the car was Nightshade Green.
-The 272 trim code means the car had a black interior with a front bench seat. Interesting.
The engine had some things to tell me, too:
-The heads's 48 code, located where the two center cylinder meet, means they are the high-flow heads used in the 1969 Firebird 350HO or Ram Air III. In other words, they're good heads.
-The engine block has a YS code, which makes it a 400 cid block from a 1970 full-size Pontiac. That's fine because most Pontiac 400s are the same.
So, it looks like I didn't get a numbers matching car, but that wasn't what I was hoping for. With its high-flow heads, it seems that engine was built to be powerful, and that makes me happy. Given the powerful engine, the incorrect 1969 Trans Am rear spoiler and at one time had the 1969 Trans Am front fender scoops, I'd say the restorer was trying to build it as a phantom 1968 Trans Am, since the T/A didn't debut until the 1969 model year.
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