Project Red Sled Debut

Today on muscle car in with the old out with the new, we'll show you our plans for the seemingly wasted piece of history and the correct way to tear one apart, plus the return of the bandit and some serious tire shredded.

No one knows how long the 61 A pall has been resting in peace out in the field before we rescued it.

This thing's been laying around here for almost two years now. The more we looked at it, the more we tried to avoid it.

This is not an easy or quick project. It's kind of like a marriage. There's some mental preparation you got to do.

Well, we all got our tetanus shots. We finally manned up enough to actually tackle this project and Mike's not doing anything today and we could really use extra manpower. And besides, I hear he's got a knack for ripping stuff apart.

Yeah, this is a pretty rare car too. So we're going to show you how to take your time pulling it apart and salvage every piece you can.

Now, that's important because these two door sedans were, they were only made in 61. So there's not many of them left out there.

Chevy was pushing the convertibles and the super sport model with a choice of 305, 343 150 horse engines and the optional power glide,

the sport coupe or bubble top as it was called, was also popular in 61.

The smooth comfortable ride from the poor coil springs help make them disappear from the showroom floors,

but we're not going to let this one disappear. Bottom line,

it may not have been a popular platform but just like our plain Jane lemons in our book. It's still worth saving. It's just screaming for a new personality

and that's exactly what she's gonna get. The body trim and interior will stay true to the original car. But the rest it's in for a lot of change. A new stand from extensive framework bags, mini tubs and wheels, plus a stroke, modernized Pro nine and a four speed.

It's gonna live up to the new name,

Red Sled.

Now I know it may not look like it, but there's still a lot worth saving on this car. So the first thing we wanna do is give it a good once over just to see what we've got.

I think you're gonna need a truck, man.

Uh Yeah, I'd say you're right.

It's got some good doors on it.

Smoke.

It's pretty bad when you can take pieces of the floor out by hand.

Oh, we need that.

That's that.

Oh, sorry. Missing him

like this.

Here's the other side. Sweet. All right.

Realistically what the car needs. Floor pans, lower, rear quarters, trunk, pan

some of the glass in the car, front, left and right fender.

I don't think the car is that bad.

You don't? No

polish it out.

That'll buff out.

Now, we know we'll be replacing a lot of these parts, but it doesn't hurt to keep track of everything. When we're reassembling, it'll make it easier to figure out what hardware is needed

with the old carpet out of the way. We got a good look at our floor pants right down to the floor.

Oh, there's a good side of the frame

when they're this bad. Odds are we'll need to replace the bracing as well. But we'll get a better look. Once we get it up on the lift

seats are next and more rust means more work. The backside of the bolt is rusted off. There's no way that's gonna come out,

gonna cut the grind the head off off.

Yeah,

sometimes access is limited. So you have to get creative and use whatever you can to get the job done.

This is a pretty important piece to save. Finding a replacement could cost lots of time and money.

Uh

Well, at least we got one good usable part out of this thing.

So it ain't the greatest of shape, but at least we can use it, rebuild it. I'd hate to have to track down another one of these suckers

trim looks good. So, yeah, we can parse the trim out.

Reuse it.

Sweet. Let's get the back seat out.

There's 47 years of funk on this floor. So we're feeding it to the shot back before we go any further to make seat removal easier. The armrests are coming out first.

I bet a penny

monopoly money or something from the early days or I say early days, some of you watching might know exactly where that came from

1943 quarter.

Who it really is. Holy cow.

And I found a 1941 nickel figure, 2021 year old kids riding around buying beer and stuff drop and changing the back seat.

That's pretty cool.

These panels may look like trash but they can be used as templates for the upholsterer to make new ones.

Window glass and regulators are also parts. We need to keep track of at least until we know whether we'll be able to find replacements

removing trim can be a time consuming effort. Not to mention a headache. It pays to be careful and not damage it. Since most of this will be going to the plating shop to be reused.

One easy way to keep track of small hardware and tick off your wife at the same time is to get all the Ziploc bags from your kitchen and label everything.

These taillights are garbage, but we have plans for replacing these. So no worries.

Now, the front bumper

Clinton gave us nothing but problems. Hopefully the rear is gonna be easy.

We're stuck

next off are the deck Liden hood. And since there's very little rust on these, they will definitely be reused.

The damage of the front end could mean we have a bent frame, but once the front clip is off, we can get a better look at the damage.

Great look that frame really in that bent

if at all,

actually, it doesn't look bad.

All right, Rick, the left front fender is obviously not usable. It needs a core support battery box pretty much a whole front clip. Do you think we can save anything?

I gotta be honest with you, man. I, I really thought we'd have more usable parts on this thing than this. This is, this is pretty bad.

So this is gonna require some, uh some research on the internet and tracking some stuff down.

There's no way around it. But

anyway, let's, let's let this thing sit for now. Let's get the doors pulled off, let's do it.

We lucked out on the doors, no problems getting these off and the cow looks pretty good too. So it's going in the keeper pile.

We need to be careful with the back glass. Since this is a unique design, we may not be able to replace it.

The best way to make sure it isn't damaged is to get the trim off first. Same with the windshield. Since the rubber as hard as a rock, we'll remove it and the glass should lift right out

a few more pieces and we're almost ready to raise the body off of the frame.

Brent went a couple of rounds with the rear bumper, but it didn't want to cooper.

When you get frustrated with a tough piece. Sometimes it's best to let a fresh set of hands tackle it.

Here are some of the parts we pulled off of the car that we might be able to reuse like this front bumper that we're actually gonna have a little fun with. Before we send it to the chrome rep players. The front headlight bezels are the same way unless we can find new reproduction pieces. The cow, all we got to do with that is blast it and repaint it.

Now, steering column here is actually in really nice shape, but since we're gonna go with the four speed, we can't use it, but we will find it another good home. Some other parts just flat out aren't salvageable like this lower window frame here. Stuff like this can be really hard to come by it. So we're gonna take a little break. I'm gonna go jump online and see what I can come up with

red sled comes apart and the Le

Mans comes together after the break.

I didn't have any luck in my internet. Search for this. Quarter window frame. So we're gonna go ahead and put this thing up on the rock and get the body pulled off. Now, we could use jack stands. But since we got the lift, we're gonna take advantage of it

with the amount of rust on the underside of this thing, we thought getting these

bulls eye was going to be tough,

but they actually came out surprisingly easy.

And because in Paula's used X frames, all the body mounts are on the firewall and behind the axle, nothing in the middle

that body mounts not even connected.

The gas tank comes out next. A few spins of the cut off wheel and we're in business. Just

watch out for all that 40 year old falling funk.

Now with all the bolts out, we can lower it down, reposition the lift arms out to the body and lift it right off. So here it is the backbone. A red sled. We're going to measure the frame to make sure it's square, but the rest of it's going back to the Recycler. The coils are going to get replaced with air bags. This 283 this thing's getting junk for that, stroked and poked 409,

but the body looks like something you'd use to strain your spaghetti. Now, we got a lot of work ahead of us. Some of these panels, well, they're just not available. So some fabrication is gonna be in order. But before we can see what we really got. The body is gonna have to get blasted. So we're gonna put it on a rotisserie and get it out of the shop.

Right. Modern training is gonna come out first to lighten

load, get this chassis a little easier to work with a 40 plus year old tranny fluid. Well, that's some pretty nasty stuff. And unfortunately our two speed glide.

Well, it didn't come with a drain plug, so there's no good way to avoid a mess.

Well, Mike had to head back down to horsepower. And after seeing all the work, we got ahead of us on old red sled, we really needed a reminder that all this hard work will eventually pay off. So today we're gonna finish up the lemons, take her out for a cruise.

Now

the last time he saw it, we were almost ready to get the body panels on. But first comes the glass Dante, the glass man came by to give us a hand because he knows more about glass installation than anyone else around here. The trim retainer clips go in first. Then he puts on primer to help the bonding.

He lays in a bit of urethane adhesive. Then carefully places the glass.

Now, once it's in place, the trim pops right into the cliffs,

the doors go on next,

the alignment holes we drilled, make it a breeze to get them on straight.

It's sure to attach the inner fenders before putting the fenders in place,

the cow

grill

and re pop bumpers went on.

Then we finished the doors out with the handles trim, our refurbished regulators and finally glass.

Next came tail lights, headlights and turn signals.

The hinges

hood and latches went on.

Then we dropped in a hood tack for that signature Pontiac look.

The deck lid was the last body panel to go on and the trend finished it off.

But before we could hit the streets, Brent had to take care of one little problem rear wheel clearance

because we used aftermarket quarter skins. Some trimming was in order to keep them slicing up our BFG tires

after taping up the edges to protect the paint, a cut off wheel slices off a thin strip of metal.

Some grinding, smooths off the edges and some holes are drilled for the wells that will reattach the inner fender.

The worlds are ground down,

sand it off and once the paint is spotted in, she'll be ready to rise.

Our project.

Lamons had a budget now that she's all done. We can do the math, add it up and see how close we came to our target. Speaking of numbers, we're kind of curious what this thing itself for. So we're gonna call in an expert right after the break

up next. The bandit is back ready to roll into your garage

today on flashback. A year one bandit trans

am

you've probably seen a few year one cars rolling around on the big screen lately.

But for the year one team present day cinema is not enough

but check this baby out year one's Rusto mod version of the 1977 trans MS E which was made famous by the movie Smokey and the Bandit.

The package that we came up with really is, is subtle but makes a pretty big difference. Again, it's really just bringing it up to date more than anything else.

The minor details are pretty trick with input from Burt Reynolds. The bird on the hood was redone to be a little bigger but uses less gold and instead of a decal,

it's hand painted,

the same goes for the Pinstripes. The theme continues into the 18 by 12 snowflake wheels and up front, the honeycomb grill that was once blocked out is now painted to match the rest of the accents.

The original four square headlights have been transformed,

two modern sealed units

and the tail lights have been brought up to date with a series of blinding led

s

the rear glass was reworked and the front glass was made to mount flush with the rest of the car and don't forget the T tops. The epitome of seventies cool.

The bandits stance has been lowered for more aggressive profile but the body lines have been left alone.

The shaker hood

side scoops and rare spoiler where they're all original. Hey, why mess with perfection

inside the gauge cluster door panels and banded logo were all custom made just for this project

and a five point harness holds the driver and the performance leather seats that are just waiting for Sally Field. The visual cues when you're in the driver's seat are 77 trains a

the feel of the car however, is completely different

ha ha as it should be. A 7 L LS seven is what drives this bandit

modified heads and upgraded cam crank out 605 horsepower,

a five speed gearbox and 12 B

rear and get it all out to the road and a set of four inch rotors and six piston bare brakes, bring it all to a halt.

A custom fad three inch exhaust keeps the LS seven breathing right.

And the magna fla mufflers let everyone around, enjoy all those ponies just as much as the driver.

The original front Subra has been replaced with a tubular aftermarket clip along with tubular upper and lower control arms,

fully adjustable coil over shot front and rear and a four L out back, bringing this car's handling and road gripping ability to the next level from a performance standpoint, the cars are, are really phenomenal. We knew that since we're going to build this series of cars and a car that we wanted to drive and enjoy performance had to be a big part of it.

Now, if you're a die hard smoking the bandit fan or if you just want to get your hands on the ultimate Pontiac. Your one is building them to order with three different levels to choose from. You're sure to find one to make your getaway in,

stick around. We got more muscle car after the break

coming up, the Le

Mans gets its day in the sun.

After hundreds of hours of work, our project budget,

Lamon

is finally ready to hit the street, but before we can cruise it, we need to get insurance on it just because we're big TV. People doesn't mean we can get away without it. So I'm bringing in a guy here, Barry Potts, he's gonna come in and give us a hand

doing

good. He's a professional appraiser. His job is to come out and tell us what different things are worth.

He analyzes every physical aspect of a car from engine and interior to paint and even upgrades, but it doesn't end there. A lot of research goes into finding the value of a car. So don't expect to get an on the spot estimate.

So you said that, uh, we can expect an appraisal back in a few days. So wonderful. Well, let me get you all the paperwork and the receipts and stuff that you requested and, uh, we'll get, you, get you out of here. Let's go.

It's finally time for me and Brent to give our own appraisal of the Lamont

and nothing but good old pedal to the metal testing. That's gonna tell us what we really want to know.

Hit a man

so he hit the streets. It's the first time the girls seen daylight since her carcass called into the shop almost a year ago.

It's a great feeling when all the hard work finally pays off.

I really can't get over how smooth it runs.

Yeah,

we were both itching for some seat time. The first d we put in it was the one under the gas pedal. This thing feels like every bit of 350. Y Oh

yeah, you can feel it.

No stock 326 ever pulled like this

birds like a kitten going down the highway. Man that does.

And with a little finessing of the clutch now those bfgs didn't stand a chance.

Now that was fun. But for real monster burnouts, nothing beats a limelight.

We're running out of daylight and rubber, but we managed to squeeze in just a little more destruction.

The

three days later, well, we got our appraisal back and it's got everything in here that you're gonna need to get an accurate insurance policy written on your ride. It's got pictures, documents, whatever they might require. Now, Barry set the value of our lemons here at 24 5, which is great because our budget was 23 5 and we actually even came in a little bit below that. So we're looking great

and I gotta tell you,

we took this thing out and beat the tar out of it for like eight hours straight. And the only thing that's worse for wear,

just poor tires back here, they're looking a little ragged. But, hey, that's what building muscle cars is all about, man.

So we got the lemons done and we gotta move on to our next project. So for now

we're out of here.