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-   -   The 1988 Pontiac Trans-Am GTA Project! (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/international-automotive-scene/264707-1988-pontiac-trans-am-gta-project.html)

I probably shouldn't have, but did. I've owned a few older cars that have been fun to fix up and have fun with. These have included an old Corvette, an old Jeep, and an old Camaro (1987; Third Generation F-Body). The Camaro, however, was not fun. It was a complete nightmare to work on and fix. GM computer systems and electricals from 30+ years ago are not fun to work on, or remotely easy to figure out. Their older stuff is really easy to work with (my 1977 Firebird is a dream to work on), but not so anything that was computerized and filled with sensors.

Anyhow, after the nightmare of working on the Camaro and the constant issues it had, I was happy to see the last of it, and swore I wouldn't ever mess with a Third Gen again, despite really liking the Pontiac version of the F-body (in their Firebird variants). About 3 weeks ago, I was randomly browsing Craigslist, and a 1988 Firebird Trans-Am GTA showed up for sale. The GTA was the halo version of Pontiacs halo car (the Trans-Am), and was loaded with power everything, and numerous features not seen in regular Trans-Ams, including conforming seats with power side and lumbar bolsters. Regardless of how much I like Firebirds, I still wouldn't have bothered, but this one actually ticked all the boxes. No T-Tops (those are fun, but leak), a factory digital dashboard, a 350 (5.7 Liter) V8, and most importantly, it was completely stock and hadn't been hacked or modified in any way, right down to the original tape deck still in the car. And the mileage wasn't bad at 98,055 miles on the odometer. Anyways, I tried to contact the seller, and never heard back. I figured the car had already sold, since the asking price was quite good for the car. A week later, out of the blue I got an email from the sellers daughter, who let me know that the seller was an older gentleman who wasn't very good with selling stuff. She suggested I call him again. He spoke with me, and it became clear that he loved the car, but wasn't really driving it much. He also made it clear that since he loved the car so much, he was being very particular about who he sold it to, since he wanted to make sure it would be taken care of, and not just left to rot. The fact that I already had a 1977 Trans-Am was a big deal for him. The car had sat untouched for most of the past year, and that's pretty much a death knell for any third generation F-body (the engines and sensors don't like that). He was upfront that it ran rough, but it ran. The best thing I heard from him was that all the electricals in the car still worked great, and that it was completely rust free, which is a really big deal for these cars. It had a couple of other minor cosmetic issues (rock chip in the windshield, sagging headliner), but nothing crazy. The car had never been repainted and was still in the original 35 year old GM paint. The paint had lost some of it's sheen as expected, but was still intact.

Since the car was in Anchorage, and I couldn't get there immediately, I had a friend out there check it out for me. When he corroborated what I already knew from the seller, I made an offer. The seller accepted and the car was mine. He held on to it for a week while I arranged shipping. There's no road into or out of where I live (you can only get in via ferry or airplane), and the nearest town on the road system is Haines, which is a 4 hour ferry ride away. Haines connects directly to the ALCAN (Alaska Canadian Highway). This is the only route into SE Alaska. Once the shipper picked up the car, they had it on a truck from Anchorage to the ALCAN and to Haines within a couple of days. In Haines, they loaded it on to the ferry, and all I had to do was pick it up when the ferry got here at night a couple of days ago. My buddy gave me a ride to the ferry terminal, where I picked it up and drove it back. The shipper had warned me that the car would be completely coated in mud since the ALCAN this time of year is incredibly muddy, and she wasn't joking. The thing was coated with mud, and I had to somewhat wipe down the windhshield with wet paper towels so I could at least partially see out while driving. It ran rough as expected. However it drives fantastic. The car handled great on the drive home, with a very tight and responsive steering and suspension, and not even one squeak while driving. Once I looked at it the next day, it was clear that everything in the car worked. The interior was completely clean, original, and not any rips anywhere. I finally washed the car earlier today, and was able to get some of the mud off. The car needs at least a few more washes. Now begins the fun of figuring out why the car runs rough and won't idle. The OBD1 system gave me a code 36, which is MAF sensor related, and which is know from past experience is a nightmare to figure out. But this car is actually worth the effort. We're working on figuring out the MAF issue, or if there's any vacuum leaks that are messing up the idle. But that's going to take sometime to solve. I started chipping away at other things. We already got in a new distributor cap and rotor. Waiting on access to a friends garage lift to change out the oil, oil filter, and the spark plugs and wires. The plugs in a 3rd gen are a serious pain to change thanks to the way the engine is situated in the bay (which I also found out thanks to the Camaro!). I'll be changing out the pop up headlights back to the original halogen style. The previous owner put in LEDs which I really don't care for. In the interim, I figured people would enjoy some of the pics I got today after cleaning her. Because who doesn't like a black Trans-Am :)

Always loved that front end. Not as good as my 77, but this one is a close second




The paint looks shinier in the pics than it actually is. But a wax and polishing job, and this paint will be shiny again, since it's still in really good shape.




Rear end with the wraparound spoiler




The 5.7 Liter Tuned Port Injection V8. Great engine, just a really painful system of relays and sensors


The really cool digital dash I've always liked. And this one actually works.


The DIC (driver information center) right next to the main instruments above. The car does a full systems check and flashes any issues to you on the screen. The DIC also fully works.

One more day of trying to diagnose the stumbling/hesitation issue and idle issue. Could possibly be a bad distributor cap or timing needs to be adjusted. Or I could be dealing with two different issues, where the hesitation at slower speeds is just the old bad gasoline working its way through the system, and the unstable low idle is MAF sensor or idle air controller related (both of which would actually be an easy fix if so). More pics after my quick interior cleaning today :)

Not bad at all for an original 35 year old interior. Not a single rip anywhere. All I had to do was remove coffee stains (at least I hope that's what it was) from the plastic back portion of the drivers seat.




Driver view. Steering wheel was an option on the order sheet, with stereo controls at hand. Big deal 35 years ago.


Those are the power switches for both the inflating side bolsters and the lumbar supports. They work great, and I could ensconce myself very well in the seat.

Happy miles with the knight rider. The car looks in awesome shape for a 35 year old vehicle.

Thanks man. I'm looking forward to getting it on the road this Summer.

Pretty well maintained car for its age, I could never guess it was 35+ years old. I spent countless hours playing Knight Rider on my Nintendo in the early 1990s with this car as the star of the game.
Not that I could ever afford parking where I live, but how expensive is it to maintain and how reliable is it compared to a Japanese car of it's era ?

Honestly no idea of expense relative to a Japanese car since I've never had the interest or inclination to mess with those. Parts for this car are quite cheap and very easily accessible, as are parts for my 77 (GM parts for their old cars are incredibly cheap). As far as reliability goes, the Tuned Port Systems can be a bit hinky after 30+ years since the sensors and relays crap out, but as I said, easily available and cheap. These engines and transmissions are bulletproof.

@AKTransAM - It is a seriously beautiful car! The digital dash, DIC, the steering with mounted controls and auto-adjustable support on seats is brilliant - all this 35yrs ago! I cannot tell you exactly why but am really glad that you got this car - i believe it is surely in really good hands. Do keep posting - please do post a video of how that 5.7 V8 sounds once you fix the gremlins.

@AKTransam, that's one 35+ year old beast of a Trans Am, and seems in fantastic shape, brings back memories of the days with the old VCR & watching the knight rider show with David Hasselhoff, wish luck with this Project..

Knight Industries would be so proud of you. What a legend.

A thumbs up from me, David, Devon and Bonnie.

Etched in my memory.



I still couldn't believe how that thing looks inside, all that LCD's dials.. Damn!

Hearty congratulations to you.

Cheers!
VJ

Really an iconic car and quite amazing to find it in such good, original, conditions. Many of these cars were modified along the way, what with multiple owners over a longer period.

As you already mentioned all the electrics are working. Which is really relevant on these cars. It’s not that the electrical systems are very complex, but troubleshooting them can be a very time consuming affair.

On the MAF you might want to try to clean the sensor with special MAF cleaner. If that doesn’t work, as you mention check the idle air valve, but also check the MAF electrical connector and check for vacuum leaks.

Great so see such a car going to another enthousiast.
Enjoy

Jeroen

Thanks Jeroen. Yup, we did use the MAF cleaner, and in the end changed out the IAC since it looked gunked up. Still same issue, but we're narrowing it down. It does seem like there's a vacuum leak somewhere that we need to find. The old PCV hose has been a culprit in other TPIs that I've read about, but this one seems to be good.

Thanks! And yes, I'll be updating this thread as progress is made!

Vacuum leaks can be a true PITA to solve. A few tips on what I do

With the engine ramming, idling away, start tugging and pulling at everything, see if the idle RPM changes.

Or, with the engine idling I spray starter fluid everywhere, again when the RPM rises you have found the location of the leak.



Alternatively you could use brake cleaner. On these big engine it might be difficult to spot a change in RPM. I have sometimes hooked up a digital RPM counter. Or on modern cars hooked up a OBD scanner and monitored the short term fuel trim, which is very accurate for spotting this sort of thing.

Good luck

Jeroen

Update on the project. Finally figured out a few issues. Spent a ton of time making sure there wasn't a vacuum leak, which there wasn't. So we then moved on to other causes. The beauty of the cars from this era was that they were designed to be worked on by the driver. The OBD 1 system in the car will flash you a code using the "Service Engine Soon" light. For eg. if the bulb is lit with the "SES", that means it's a code in the ECM. If it's a code 36 (which I had), you can use a paper clip in the OBD 1 terminal to connect between the 2 relevant terminal points, or a dedicated scan tool, which does the same thing, which is plug into the OBD 1 terminal (varies depending on model year, engine size etc). The SES light will then flash, for a code 36, three quick flashes, followed by 6 quick flashes. Does the same for other numbered codes. You can look up a manual or online and get what the code means.

The curse of these cars is that they're a nightmare to get to anything because of all the emissions control garbage stuffed into the engine bays. There's literally no room. I had to get the car on a lift just to change the spark plugs, and even then it's not easy. Anyways, we got rid of the engine code after changing the relay. But that was a separate issue that wasn't linked to the rough running engine unfortunately. The car was still idling low and dying, running very rich, and running rough. That turned out to be incredibly retarded base timing, which we fixed today. Someone had messed with the distributor in the past and had somehow screwed things up. The car still stumbles at highway speeds, but is at least driveable at this point. I'll have to do more research on forums to figure out why the car is stumbling. It seems like it isn't getting spark advance from the computer, which would be bad since that means the ECM is going bad. Not an expensive fix, just hard to find these days. But at this point, at least she's driving!

And because who doesn't love a black Trans-Am by a glacier on a Saturday evening, here's a picture from today :)

Reading about this car now brings me back so many fond
memories ,from the Knight rider video game that featured the K.I.T.T car to a show called ‘Fast N Loud’ that used to air on discovery turbo.In that show they have build this car multiple times ,once as the knight rider KITT car featuring the bells and whistles as in the original from the series and the second time as Smokey and the bandit (1977 film)car replica upgrade ,both times featuring the stars David Hasselhoff and Burt Reynolds respectively.
Congrats on owning an icon and all the best with the project.

Well I figured out the stumbling issue through one of the most brilliant ways to solve it....sheer dumb luck! The idling issue was timing as described earlier. The stumble was driving us nuts though. We were trying to troubleshoot it, and were going down the path of possibly ignition module, no advance from the ECM, bad signal from the ignition module to the ECM etc. After a drive yesterday I popped the hood to make sure I wasn't having any fluid leaks, weird electrical smells etc since this is still an unknown car to me. I was rooting around the engine bay, and found the issue by sheer accident (I wasn't looking for it). Turns out I hadn't pressed one of the spark plug wires on to the plug all the way, and it was loose. So it was obviously not sparking, causing the stumbling and the rpms to stutter. I only noticed it by chance because the boot was completely off, on the passenger side which is really crammed with emissions garbage. Again I'm surprised I even noticed it, since it was way down on that side. I had to squeeze my hand way down into that small space between the plumbing to feel for the plug, and then somehow push the wire back on. Oh well, all solved. She drove great today. Finally took her for a longish drive, and everything checked out! Now all I need to do is remove the tint from the glass, and repack the front wheel bearings, since there's some play in the front wheels. But those are really easy to deal with.


That was the space where I had to squeeze my hand way down in and feel for the plug, since it isn't even visible.


First longish drive in this car. Great day for it, and she drove great.