possible $2015 '98 Pontiac Bonneville

While dorking around with some old computers I realized that some of the stainless cap screws that hold the motherboard and whatnot in place looked like the same size as the sensor hardware and don't require security torx to remove. I figured I'd give it a shot and they fit! So a dot of thread lock and a hex key later the sensors were re-installed and looked good too.

The mesh screen was a little dinged up so it got swapped with the one from the parts car. and here it is in all it's glory:

I think it looks pretty good on the motor. pic of that a little later.

That's about the last of the engine cosmetic mods.

With most of the motor sorted out we turned our attention to test fitting the pipes. Bonnevilleclub members stared telling us in droves that the speed daddy headers were cheap and the last batch's bends didn't fit properly. worried that we would have to cut the crossover pipe and reweld them we test fitted them.

neither myself nor my buddy can weld. Yet. This build is a real learning experience for me...

anyway we slapped the pipes on and sort of got an answer:

ooooohh...

Ahhhhhhh....

Ehhhh...

The bolt holding the motor on the stand was in the way of the pipe. But it looks like everything will line up. fortunately these pipes have been sitting around long enough that they were not part of the crummy batch. a little exhaust tape on the crossover and some fancy clamps and this'll be done.

Looking good

Thanks... She wasn't intended to be a show car but I needed something I could do in the weeks away from the car so everything I could carry home got painted. I didn't do the block or heads though. It's not going to win on the concourse... but it was never intended to be on a concourse...

The original motor was a big of a big oily mess so we yanked that out, stripped the accessories and sent it away to claim out core.

But it came out pretty easily leaving us with this lovely engine bay... at least nothing will be rusty... eh?

a quick blast with the pressure washer

Yeah that's way better. To the left there you can see the plastic cover for the heater box hes turned brittle and pieces have fallen off exposing the insulation. Being the cheap bastid I am, alumatape to the rescue.

should keep the water out, reflect heat and look less like crap. Also it was $2! Sound's like a winner too me.

That heater core plastic falling off happens to just about all of the Bonnevilles of this era. For some reason, the heater box plastic on LeSabre's seems to hold up much better. Guess the blue-haired set is a mite nicer to their H-body then original Bonneville owners were. I was going to fix mine with the Dynamat underhood stuff but your fix should work at least as well and be much cheaper to boot. Good job!

That is true. my le Sabre is 6 years older than the bonnie and she's holding together pretty well.

We took advantage of the empty bay to swap the differental from the parts car into the ACG car. Going from a 3.06 FDR to a 3.29 Heavy Duty. Still an open diff, but with a much larger diff pin. Should make the old girl a bit perkier. I thought about doing a Phantom Grip LSD but figured that $400 for more understeer probably wasn't the path to victory...

Much easier to do this with the motor out of the car...

Will the Speed Daddy headers bolt up to the factory exhaust headpipe?

Engine looks great

They actually come with a downpipe that I think will bolt to the factory cat... but I am unsure. We plan on fabbing up a custom exhaust anyway so we never really looked into it. the plan is to mount the Moroso muffler midships, then turn the exhaust so that it exits the passenger side just in front of the rear wheel.

Ideally we'd like to run it through the passenger compartment so that it exits through the door sill to preserve ground clearance but since this will be the project where we learn to weld, might be better to keep it simple at first.

Out of curiosity, why do this the a front driver, since you are sticking N/A why not use an 3.8 fbody.

With the prices I see for challenge worthy camaros around here I dont see the bonnevilles being much cheaper. Plus the Fbody has stuff like cheap readily available LSDs and manuals, is probably easier to work on, and I would think it is lighter.

Is it your fondness for the platform?

Ive always wanted to see a GRM style 3.8 Fbody built.

Considering that this Bonneville was free, I don't see how a Camaro could have possibly been cheaper.

Ahh Free. I see now.

Yeah the car was given to me by a friend because he didn't want to pay to fix it. If you're curious about the build up until now there's a thread you can read to get caught up here

The last thing I wanted to do while to motor was out was mount up the front sway bar. Much much easier with the motor out of the car. The bar on top is the stocker, a 28mm bar. The red one on the bottom is a 32mm F41 bar from the SSE. Should help keep this beast level. I'm still looking for a 34 mm bar but they are very rare, and only found on the C-bodies. It'll have to do.

We already had the passenger size suspension disconnected to mount up the diff and HD axle so we decided to snake the bar in through the wheel well. I wouldn't recommend this. It's actually easier to drop the rear of the cradle... so should we find that 34, that's how we will be installing it.

The bar will be anchored in place with these poly centres. A rarity in the H-body circles. Nabbed them many years ago on closeout from Rock Auto for like $12. Don't know what they were supposed to be for but with a bit of trimming we made them fit.

The ends will be linked to the control arms with some energy suspension links.

The rest of the suspension will be sorted out later. but with this all back together the chassis was ready for the motor.

With all the little stuff sorted away it was time for the lift. Easy... eeasyy... ...eeeeasyyyyy... ...eeeeeeeeeeeeeasyy...

huh... That was easy. Usually it's a right cvnt of a job but she just dropped right in in the first go...

With that victory we quit while we were ahead and went inside for mead and bacon.

Mead, bacon and Buick powered Pontiacs? You sir, are winning!

Looks great! I'm glad I won't be the only FWD V6 at the Challenge (I'm bringing a '95 Maxima..hopefully).

I've been following your Maxima build and have decided that you're probably going to be my only real competition due to the similarity of the cars, and I cannot wait to pit them against one another. It should be a good race.

I do wish you were closer, because I'd love lend a hand in your build.

In reply to AClockworkGarage:

Thanks for the kind words, although my "build thread" has been all talk up to this point. Hopefully once I actually get rolling it will be better. I'm still just trying to get all my parts together, though. Should be a fun time! We'll have to make sure we get to line up next to each other at the drags!

Yes we do. I'll be running the drags myself but I'm flying in a guy from Williamsburg VA to handle the Auto-x. He's got more h-body experience than me, figure he'll put down the good times.

In reply to AClockworkGarage:

Nice! Williamsburg, huh? Maybe he should just catch a ride with me, I'm only 45 mins from there! I'll convince him to drive yours slow on the ride down to FL...haha. I'm no auto-x or drag expert, so hopefully I give my car a fair shake. I'll probably have a pro do at least one auto-x run, although I'm there more for the experience than to actually win (obviously, since I chose an automatic family sedan as my starting point )

sethmeister4 wrote: I'm there more for the experience than to actually win (obviously, since I chose an automatic family sedan as my starting point )

How are you not going to win? As near as I can figure only one team gets a trophy, but everybody who get's to play is a winner.

I hear you on the auto-4-door-family-sedan. we looked into doing a Getrag swap but since it's never been done before. We'd be in uncharted territory.

We're opting to beef up the 4 speed with the HD diff, a massive trans cooler and redo the shift tables in the PCM (Goodbye torque management and traction control... We can tune out everything!!!!!! Ahahahahahahahahahaha!)

The thing about this build is I am literally building it on a shoestring budget. If I sell a clock, I buy parts. No sales... No progress. so we can't undertake anything major and risk funding drying up midway.

We started our morning with a fuel line repair. A miserable tedious job but one that would prevent us dying in an ever-expanding fireball. So it was placed on the necessary repair list.

With that complete we dug the headers up. They would have to be installed from the back to the front so we crawled under the car, fed the rear pipe up and used a ratchet strap to hold it in place while we threaded the bolts in.

At this point we had to swap out the oil dipstick with a Pontiac Gran prix unit. which curves just enough to clear the pipes. I have a pic somewhere, but you guys all know what a dipstick looks like...

Next we wrapped the crossover to prevent heat soaking the TB and slid that into place. Some versions of this brand of header had improper bends on the crossover requiring cutting and welding. this was really our first test so we held our breath...

Excellent. it fits, now it's just a matter of fitting the front pipes which will be easy... Thunk! What was that? Thunk! Thunk! Seriously?

Crud. The header primaries and the transmission mount were trying to occupy the same space at the same time.

The upper horn of the shock absorber was just too tall and had to go. fortunately the earlier style mounts did not have this shock so the the... should... fit without any problems. the search was on. Find one local. Now.

We called every shop in town trying to find the old style mount. As the two are interchangeable... normally... and the shock ones are better, most stores didn't even carry the old style. We did find one eventually and $16 later were we back in business.

The new one is on the left, the old one on the right. With that nonsense taken care of the slid the front manifold into place. Thunk!

Just kidding. locked into place without any further trouble.

We bolted on all the band clamps and stood back to admire our work. she looks good with the pipes. I can't wait until they blue up... I hate chrome.

Our next session will be spent trying to figure out how we will run our exhaust. Neither up us knows how to weld yet so If anybody is an experiences, space coast dwelling welder who works for beer, we can really use your help.

I hear you on the auto-4-door-family-sedan. we looked into doing a Getrag swap but since it's never been done before. We'd be in uncharted territory.

I remember seeing a build thread someone did on a 2000-ish Impala that did a getrag swap in it and is pretty much the same thing.

EDIT: It was a Grand Prix