Medical Checkup

[ Tommy ] You're watching Powernation!

[ Tommy ] It's judgement day for our Pontiac GTO. We're pulling apart this old muscle car to get the final verdict. Today on Detroit Muscle. [ Music ] [ engines revving ] [ Music ] [ Tommy ] Hey guys, welcome to Detroit Muscle. Today we're kicking off one of our brand new projects. That would be this thing behind me. I know it may not look like much right now but it could be a bucket list car for a few of you out there. It's a 1969 Pontiac GTO and yes, it is a real deal GTO. We're not planning to restore this thing as far as the chalk mark kinda thing because we're missing the power plant. This thing is long gone. So that means it's getting late model power. Now we've got some pretty substantial plans for this thing to go along with it. It's gonna get trick suspension, cool transmission, fancy paint, just to name a few of them. Now for today I want to get the chassis out from under this thing and it all taken apart so that we can take it to the sand blaster and get a coat of color put on it. That way we've got a solid foundation for all of our upgrades. I guess that's enough jawing for now and it's time for me to get to pulling some wrenches. [ drill humming ]

(Tommy)>> There's always got to be one. I've been told before that we make things look way easier than they really are, but in this case the GTO doesn't fight us much at all. This old Pontiac being pretty cherry it sure does help things out. The floors and the frame isn't all gunked up or full of crud, which makes the separation of the body and chassis a breeze and the bolts basically zipped out. This project isn't gonna be nowhere near what some would call a chalk mark style resto but frame off yes. Doing it this way we get to assemble the suspension, drop in the engine and trans, and build a product that we're proud of. This GTO rolled off the assembly line about as basic as they come. A person could just bolt on new parts but we want everything to look nice. Grinding and cleaning a frame for hours on end isn't what I call a good time. I mentioned to you earlier about making things look easy. The fellas at Blast from the Past does it for sure. You can drop off some ugly and they'll work their magic. But wait, we've still got a couple of surprises for you. [ Music ] While we're out and about I had to stop in and catch up with an old friend of mine. This gentleman has a treasure pipe full of old Pontiacs, and we need a couple of pieces for our GTO. Now today is a day we're gonna be doing a little bit of scrounging, and that sounds like a whole lot of fun. [ Music ]

To see this many old school muscle cars that all have the same badge on the front is pretty rare as a sight. Now I'm looking around here and I see a bunch of cool stuff. A lot of times other folks may look out here and go man, that's a bunch of junk, but looking through here this stuff has a lot of wealth to it. I'd speculate that if you were to itemize a lot of the pieces out there's a tremendous amount of money. Now what we're looking for today is a couple of pieces of trim because ours is dented up, but walking around an old salvage yard like this what I really enjoy the most is the odd things that you'll run across. So let's just see what exactly is out here. [ Music ] Looking in the trunk of a person's car will tell you a lot about them, or in this case who owned this thing. Apparently they like to stay hydrated. It's even got a cooler here. They were into some tunes, and that verifies it, a drum stick. An old beer can, a beer hat. I bet I know what happened to this car. [ Music ] Now I'm always interested to look at old school wheels. That one's got a set of them old antique mags, and then check this thing out. This is one of the ones that was Pontiac like a honeycomb. Often times people look at them and think it's a cast wheel but actually this is rubber. You can tell because it flex, and you can see where it's kinda dry rotted. Looks kinda neat. Now I know the story on this ole car. If you were to walk up on it it would blow your mind to see it sitting in a salvage yard like this. At first glance you think it is the ever so elusive GTO Judge but in walking around it it can give you the illusion that it really is. Actually if you run the numbers on it it did not come that way from the factory. This is one of those cars that someone has cloned. If you've got a cloned car there's nothing really wrong with it except for its not the real thing. So don't expect the real type of money. There's two cars that I always stop in to look at every time I come here because it basically helps to ground me or humble me. We do all these restorations all in the sake of having a good time, and these two cars somebody didn't have a good time at all. This one's twisted up, and by the skid marks on the top of the fender on that one it was sliding down the pavement at some point. Guys there's nothing wrong with enjoying yourself but always remember, stay safe. I guess you could say this is enough window shopping and looking around. It's time to get down to the nitty gritty. I need some trim. It's time to locate it. [ Music ]

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I wound up finding one good piece already off. If you go to a salvage yard and the part isn't on the car that doesn't mean it's close by. I found this one in the trunk. So we don't have to remove it. Up here this is the piece that we're really needing. Like I mentioned to you guys earlier how a lot of times people look at this stuff and go it's just a piece of junk. Which it's a rough ole car for sure, but this trim right here is exactly why Mister Bill saves stuff like this. This old car being so crunchy the clips probably will just crumble right off of there. Score! Coming up next we rise for the honorable '69 Judge.

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[ Tommy ] Walking through here I'm kinda overwhelmed with inspiration. These cars were built with performance in mind and the joy of driving it because that's what muscle cars are all about. Now I'm curious to you all? We all have that one car that if we could get the keys we would drive it. In here which one would yours be? A car that would be on the bucket list for a whole lot of folks would have to be a first gen Camaro like this '69. These cars are popular for a lot of reasons. Iconic styling, they look fast sitting still, and have power for days. Another first timer would have to be one of these. I don't want to get into the details with pony car versus muscle car. 289 Hypo, fastback top, that is sweet. From day one the public loved the Mustang. These are one of the most recognizable vehicles ever built. Inside and out it's perfection. Performance under the hood, a silhouette that's easy on the eyes, and an interior with just the right amount of chrome. For me it would have to be a Judge. When I just think of one of them it comes in this color, and then you combine that with the Ram Air-4. Not gonna lie, it kinda gives me that kinda feeling. I even sweet talked him out of the keys and he's given me the approval to give this thing for a test spin. I may spend quite a bit of time making sure I get everything calibrated just right, and I don't know. I bet those rear tires are a little slippery. [ Music ] This is what I would call a man's muscle car. It is manual steering, manual brakes. Kinda gotta wrestle this thing. Could be why they call it muscle car. You've gotta put a little muscle behind it. These cars are definitely something special. It's funny how a lot of times folks won't drive them in bad weather, or looks like it's gonna rain, something like that. Back in the day what was cool is some dude drove this every day of the week. It was a means of transportation. However, it was awesome transportation. Cars with personality give you some confidence that a lot of times other ones don't. Now we're not doing nothing crazy right now. We're just cruising some back roads about 45 mile an hour. Enjoying life! With our Pontiac we know it's not a Judge. The name Judge, I've been told it has to do with a popular television show back in the day, but when I read the Judge it has nothing to do with that. It makes me think of the guy you went in front of if you're out raising cane in one of these. Our car isn't that. I'm not really into cloning things, but it got me thinking of a project name. The personality of ours is a bit more of the, hmmm, pushing the limits if you will. Kinda like a henchman. Up next, we take a look at AMC's bold leap to be competitive in the muscle car market.

[ Tommy ] In 1968 AMC fought its way into the muscle car market with a two fisted approach, the mighty little AMX and its big brother the Javelin. Both were a hit but by 1970 the era of performance was coming to an end and the AMC would have to let one go. [ Peyton ] Sales of the two seater AMX dwindled down to just 4,000. So sadly it got the ax. The name lived on as AMC's top performance option, joining forces with its big bro to become the Javelin AMX. [ Tommy ] For '71 the Javelin was all new inside and out. Gone were the tighter squared off features of the original. It was now longer, lower, and wider with a flowing coke bottle shape. [ Peyton ] AMC went with a more European flare adding twin canopy roof up top and sculpted fender flares front and rear. Thanks to these humps this generation of Javelins would end up with the nickname Humpsters. [ Tommy ] The AMX option carried over many of the race features of Mark Donohue's Trans Am Javelin. A stainless steel grille was flush mounted in front of the standard inset grille for better air flow. Plus there was a Donohue designed rear spoiler. [ Peyton ] All Javelins got a newly styled interior in '71 with an unusual wrap around cockpit style dash. Instead of woodgrain finish though the AMX got an engine turned look. [ Tommy ] A 360 V-8 was standard with the AMX, or you could upsize to the brand new 401. It was basically just a stroked version of the 390 but with lower compression. It still bumped up the horsepower to 330. The 3,200 pound car managed to make it to the mid 14s on the quarter mile at a top speed of 98.8 miles per hour. [ Peyton ] A blacked out tail panel and T-stripe tells you this Javelin was outfitted with the Go Package, AMC's goodie bag of performance features. A front air spoiler was included along with functional rear facing cowl induction hood. That fed air right into the ram induction system that set atop the air cleaner. A heavy duty cooling system was also included. [ Tommy ] A Hurst four speed and rally pack gauges were also part of the package. Plus you got a twin grip diff and upgraded suspension. It all rolled on fatter E-60-15 Polyglass and wrapped around slotted steel seven inch wheels. [ Peyton ] Ever since the new look debuted some folks have grumbled over the loss of the original styling but not owner Mike Gray. [ Mike ] I got attracted to Javelins when I was a kid building Johan models, and I always loved the styling of the little spoiler on the roof, and the big hump fenders, and the spoiler on the back. [ Tommy ] The '71 Javelin took first place on the Trans Am circuit but wasn't a success in the showroom. Only about 2,000 got the AMX treatment, and less than 800 came with the 401. Not many survived. We're glad that this Humpster got saved from the dumpster. We've got a quick tip to drop the temps. Plus it's easy to do, coming up on Detroit Muscle.

[ Tommy ] Welcome back to Detroit Muscle. I've got a little bench top how-to that I want to show you. It's gonna do a couple of things for your project. One, it'll spruce up under the hood. And two, this will lower the temperatures under it as well. It's not very complicated but you are gonna need a little bit of some patience. What I'm talking about is wrapping your exhaust. We've got an older set of headers that we pulled from one of our projects and there's nothing really wrong with them. They're just showing their age. They definitely don't look nearly as nice as whenever we pulled these things out of the box when they were brand new. We picked up a kit from DEI and it comes with the wrap that you're gonna need and the little steel ties that help hold everything in place. It also has this cool little tool for cinching these things down. You're gonna need a few other pieces to go through this process. One is you're gonna need a set of side cutters. That's gonna help to trim off the excess of these ties. Then you're gonna need some serious scissors. These aren't those safety ones that you used back in kindergarten. I also like to use a few of these plastic zip ties whenever you get started. They work real handy to hold everything in place, and then you can come back and install those serious ones. DEI also offers some high temp coatings that can do a couple of things to assist you in this process. One, you spray it on these well it's definitely gonna make them look a lot better. Then two, it will actually add a little bit of grip whenever we go to wrap them up. So if you've got ceramic coated or polished headers you may want to check into that coating. The first thing that we're gonna have to do is basically clean these, and I've got a little wire brush here. So I'm gonna do a little bit of hand jiving, get them spruced up, and then we'll clean them, and then we can begin. [ Music ] Make sure whenever you're prepping for paint that the rag that you use you keep it moving because if the rag itself is dirty whenever you're going back across your clean spots you're wiping dirt on the. Keep folding it, move it around. If you have to change it, get another one, continue that process until your rag's clean. [ aerosol can hissing ] [ Tommy ] You guys may have noticed while I was painting I was concentrating most of the spraying up here at the flange and the collector. That's because those are the two areas that's gonna be left out in the open or exposed. Not covered up by this stuff. Now whenever you're handling the wrap it's a good idea to use a set of gloves because this can technically irritate your skin. We're getting ready to go ahead and get started here, and you've gotta think this stuff through. Some of these tubes are so close together that you won't ever be able to get the wrap around them or in between it. So a good plan can save you some time. You may notice that you only have to wrap this section and come back here and wrap this section because of an interference. Then whenever you start from here and move your way forward you wrap back around those missing sections and it still looks like a million bucks. If you're gonna do this don't be afraid to back up. If you need to using these plastic zip ties will allow you to cut off and restart. These you really can't reuse. So it's time for us to get started. With this it's a good idea to calculate how many loops you're gonna need. That way you can go ahead and trim it off the roll. You also want to have an overlap of about a quarter of an inch. Much more than that is just unnecessary wrap. What I figured I was gonna need about 20 of those. [ Music ]

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Looks like I was a little bit over on my calculations, but I have to tell you it's a whole lot easier to cut off that excess than it is trying to stretch this stuff if it was too short. One down! [ Music ]

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Well we have two and a half tubes wrapped. Now we're ready to move on to the final one. What we're gonna do is start here at the collector, move forward, wrap it around two of these tubes, and then as we get through this section get down to just one and then finish it off right up here. Should look nice when we're all said and done. [ Music ]

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The final thing that we need to do is install our clamps, and it works a whole lot better using their special tool. Now these are basically like a zip tie except for these don't melt. Now once I get this clamp on here I prefer to spin it so that the little metal tab is on the bottom, basically for aesthetics. [ Music ]

[ Music ] There you have it. Looks pretty good! From what we started with definitely shows its age. Now fresh and clean. I'm gonna warn you guys this does take quite a bit of time and some patience, but it's worth it. Even looking at this thing it has that racy feel to it to say the least. That thing, that needs some love. Guys we sure had a whole lot of fun today on Detroit Muscle and until next time y'all keep it between the ditches.