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My wife and I picked up a 92 TA convertible about a month ago. Since we bought it, we have added the hawks 17 in wheels and the throw back stripes. The stripes are Corvette Laguna blue with black pin striping.
It is a 305 TPI 5 speed so it is plenty fun to drive.
New seat covers have been ordered.
The only real problem with the car is that it has an intermittent idle speed problem. It likes to hang between 1500-1800 rpms every so often. It happened about once a week when we first got it and hadn't done it for two weeks until today. Looking forward to participating in the group.
Welcome to TGO, beautiful car
As for the idle issue my go to first is pull the IAC out of the TB and spray it down with fuel injection cleaner, The valve pintal may have some carbon built up on it causing it to stick open or not fully seat during normal operation. Do you have a check engine light on?
The car has 150K miles. It does appear that it has been repainted once. All I have done to the exterior besides the stripes, is to clay bar it and two coats of wax. It looks plenty clean for something I plan to drive a lot. My wife really wanted to use the 70-72 bumper bird and I could not find a way to make it look good with any of the dual strips I layed out. The single stripe fell into place pretty easy once we bought the bird decal and started there. It's amazing what you can mock up with some time in the shop and blue painters tape!!! I think we went through four minor variations before settling on the final one.
Car is really pretty solid. It does need the hinges fixed on the driver's door. I have the parts and just need to prioritize doing it one weekend.
No check engine lights.
It needed a new transmission mount, some tranny fluid and fluid for the clutch and has been driving nice ever since. Its easy enough to drive that my wife enjoys driving it and we taught my son to drive a stick on it. He likes his 79 Camaro better but will borrow the TA every so often. He says when he's in the mood to really drive there is something fun about the stick shift.
I have all of the parts to put a 4L60E in his car and was really afraid he was going to change direction on me and want to go with a stick.
Looks nice. You've got the 1994 25th anniversary TA thing going on. They had white leather upholstery. Hope that's the color you ordered to complete the theme. Not many cars can wear white, but white vinyl or leather is perfection in a white convertible.
We went back close to original on the seat covers, Light charcoal Chino Velour from Hawks. We did get extra material so we can do the inserts on the door panels to match.
Here's a couple of pics showing the rest of the collection. I can't imagine we will ever get a 1st gen to complete the Bird Collection as my wife love's the LeMans too much.
The Firehawk is actually my wife's daily driver and the rest are evening and or weekend cars.
Feel free to educate me on POCI as I'm not a member.
My wife and I have brought the 80 TA to TA nationals back in 04 or 05. Hard to imagine I've had it that long. We drove it to STARS in Destin, FL the year after nationals I think. Then we had our son and haven't been to any long distance shows since. We are in South Central Missouri.
Tipp City cruise in was our favorite part of the TA Nationals. We had the best thin crust pizza ever one night there. The pizza was nearly an inch thick on thin crust. It was south of the main drag on a side street. I don't think the pizzeria even had indoor seating as we found a nice grassy spot and had a picnic and ate the pizza. It sticks in my head that it might have been a pizza joint and a laundry mat.
The year we went, several of the large historic homes outside of downtown were for sale and we got to tour the houses to. I remember one of the antique stores had a second floor balcony and standing out there looking down the main drag was impressive.
I'd like to get back to Dayton and Tipp City one more time.
Now that I'm older, I'm torn between driving them to the show or pulling the trailer. Driving them I get better mileage than pulling the trailer, but trucks now a days are so comfortable and easy to drive.
South central Mo. You should be going to FirebirdFest! Met the guy who runs it last year. Seems like a great event. It' s on my T/A bucket list. TTOP350 a and a few other members have been I think. You still have a few weeks to sign up.
I enjoy POCI for a couple of reasons. I'm a late adopter of the Pontiac brand. So I've learned a LOT about the fantastic history of Pontiac. I get a lot from the national's magazine, Smoke Signals. I'm also a member of our local POCI chapter, and enjoy many of the chapter activities (annual car show, cruise nights, fall color tour, etc.). Sometimes you see folks fall into the habit of not using their cars, so club membership helps me make sure that horrible affliction never occurs to me.
And yes, I think I enjoy the evening in Tipp City as much as the show. Had a great experience there last year meeting Pontiac designers John Shinella (who will be at this years FirebirdFest near you...just sayin'...), Bill Davis and engineer Herb Adams. When you meet John and Bill in the street and they have positive things to say about your car, well, it doesn't get much better than that.
We're in a similar spot the last few years. Kids are out of college, and we have a skosh more time and money, so trying to get out and do a little more.
I've always towed to Dayton for the Nationals. The drive would be a lot of fun, but my car still has everything original under the hood (except for the now 8+ year old battery, reman AC Delco alternator, and one headlamp motor), so it just seems crazy to hit the highway for a long trip with 35 year old hoses, radiator, plug wires, cap, rotor, etc.
Last edited by DynoDave43; 05-06-2023 at 09:27 PM.
05-02-2023, 05:27 PM
