1980 Pontiac LeMans Station Wagon - G-T-faux (stuck with it, and can't shake it... like a bad case of herpes)

[motorheadmike]

Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

 

[motorheadmike]

Been up to a lot lately...

Repainting our truck's bumper, laying sod, building a play set for our daughter, and adding A/C to the garage. Plus, some vacation.

 

[motorheadmike]

But wait! There's more...

Got my LEDs from China. And the fun part was figuring which end was up... or negative; so I made a little test fixture. Once I was done there it was time to start filling the gauge clusters.

 

[Blake442]

Better late than never... Here's the class III hitch on my wagon.





Hope that helps in some way...

 

[motorheadmike]

Better late than never... Here's the class III hitch on my wagon.
Hope that helps in some way...

It does a lot, thanks! It tells me that I can't run my exhaust with that hitch style. Which got me thinking about something like this:

And connect it under the bumper so that I can run this:

 

[motorheadmike]

Okay, thanks man. The gauges look good, BTW. They have more of an OEM appearance, rather than your typical aftermarket style.
I've held onto an extra gauge pod(s)for that purpose. The OEM gauges don't offer much in the accuracy dept. :?

The OEM look was my goal, I studied a lot of factory Poncho gauges and chose the font/layout that looked most like something that could have come from the factory.

I believe that 1980 was the first year for the red back-lighting in a performance Pontiac (http://www.hemmings.com/mus/stories/200 ... ture9.html) "The aircraft-inspired red dash lighting and even the boost gauge, integrated into the offset hood scoop, seemed high-tech for 1980..."; which is why our gauges are red back lit with red needles.

and out of a Judge GTO:

 

[motorheadmike]

Had a pretty busy weekend doing wiring... yeah, not exciting. But, the payoff should be worth it.

I moved the main harness off the bench and into the car. From there I had a great time running the wires and laying them out in their correct locations. One of the challenges I faced was what to do with all the extra wire I added to the harness; about a 30% increase in wiring from the stock '80 harness. The work around, and one of my side goals was wire management, in this case it was how not to reattach any wires to the dash itself. You can see in the photos the nylon clamps used to tie everything to the firewall, HVAC box or other accessories.

The nitrous is all wired in inside the cabin (switches (the panel shown is temporary) and the window switch), the under hood hook-ups are pending things like an engine. The remote starter is in, just need an engine to take advantage of it (see a theme developing here?); as well, the car is now fitted for remote power mirrors.

The wiring for the gauges is in but not connected to anything (pesky lack of an engine again), as is a junction box for some of the LS1 ECM wiring that needs an interface inside the cabin.

Hopefully I will have the column cleaned up and back in this week, and tear down and clean up the under hood harnesses. After that I'll be repairing and recovering the dash.

 

[ssn696]

I ran a pair of Monte SS tailpipes back from mufflers located under the back seat area and the pipes fit outboard just fine. No issues with the tank either.

 

[motorheadmike]

I ran a pair of Monte SS tailpipes back from mufflers located under the back seat area and the pipes fit outboard just fine. No issues with the tank either.

Thanks for clarifying that. I'll keep a lookout for a used one. Cheers!

 

[motorheadmike]

Looking at buying a Strange S60 for this thing - I was originally going to steal the 8.5" out of my Buick (which is again for sale) and try living with the 3.08s with an OD trans which may or may not work with the cam at low RPMs while cruising (plus it has the LS1 brakes already installed). The other option was to take the 8.5" out of the Monte and fit it with LS1 brakes and 3.73s in place of the 4.56s currently in there - but, that just sounds like a lot of work and money sunk into a used rearend of questionable condition. Or as mentioned: get an all new S60 with 35 spline axles, relocation brackets, new guts, and the brakes already set up ready to go - ready to handle 700+hp. Might even narrow it .5-1.0" per side to improve my wheel selection options...

http://www.strangeengineering.net/high- ... ounts.html

Total damage less shipping is $2000 (half of what I paid for the car).

Here is an article I used to weigh my options:

http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/gene ... ewall.html

Any thoughts on this?