Project Poncho: Daily Driven Muscle Car

As for theme/style.  

You have the name Budget Bandit and you want a Pontiac theme.

Be the budget bandit.  Paint the car black, even if that is flat black.  Paint the Bassett wheels gold and put a screaming chicken on the hood. 

In reply to John Welsh :

I always dreamed of being Burt Reynolds in a 2nd gen Trans Am...i think i'd feel wrong about making a ventura into a copy

Just wanted to quickly voice my agreement with the Malwood master cylinder comment earlier in the thread.  I'm really happy with the one I installed on my 1969 Cougar when I converted it to a 5 speed.  

budget_bandit said:

In reply to John Welsh :

I always dreamed of being Burt Reynolds in a 2nd gen Trans Am...i think i'd feel wrong about making a ventura into a copy

Skip the chicken if it makes it too obvious but black with some gold Bassets could be a subtle nod in the Bandit direction.  

Inspiration (you just have imagine the gold):

The Gen2 Trans Am was not the only Pontiac offered in black/gold:

Or, skip right over the Gen2 Trans Am and skip the Bassets but run GTA WS6 wheels on the Ventura.

Or, in stead of Bassets, reproduction snowflakes are available in modern sizes:

LukeGT said:

This is awesome! Great buy, these can be pretty hard to find but luckily Nova parts should fit for 90% of the car if needed. I had a 73 Nova SS that was me and my dad's father/son project car, I miss that thing every day. 

Was that the hatchback?  I knew a guy in college with a '73 SS hatch.  Regardless of how people today feel about hatchbacks, I thought it was brilliant.

Something I thought about while looking at your project Ventura.

Solder a ground wire to the fuel sending unit and run it to the body of the car.  On my Ventura this was the only way I was able to get the fuel gauge to read.

BTW, looking good so far.  And back in the day I wanted to put Trans Am 15" snowflake wheels on my Ventura, but the tires would rub on the rear fenders.

Something else I thought about doing but never did was add 1974 Ventura taillights. I thought those looked more Pontiac-ish than the stock tailamps.

Hydramat is impressive but costly and has a limited lifespan. Another option is to weld a sump - or a cake pan, it's cheaper and no more difficult - to the bottom of a new tank and use an external pump. It's also pretty easy to stick an in tank pump on the end of a stock pick-up tube, although this can run into fuel slosh problems when you run low. I've used both approaches.

My tentative plan right now is to adapt an LS1 camaro stock fuel pump bucket and just drop it in the tank. Ive seen that done and its pretty clean

More work on rust repair tonight. Trying to grab a few hours here and there. Driver's side floor is almost ready for new metal, I need to cut a little bit farther outboard in the bottom corner of the toeboard.

I've chipped out most of the fiberglass from the trunk to see how bad it is, and it's...not great.

I have a center trunk pan coming in the mail (basically the big flat spot in the center) and that will cover a good chunk of it. i'm the most nervous about the spot up at the top right corner of the trunk, seems to be two layers of material there. From what I can tell, overlap between the rear of the floor pan and the front of the trunk pan.

That spot is pretty close to on top of the rear frame rail. The rails themselves look decent, but I remember from my aircraft repair classes that the "skin" (floor) is a load carrying member for shear loads, so I may end up cutting out some metal on top of the rail and butt welding to the floor and then rosette welding that new metal back onto the frame rail flanges (rails are an upside down "hat" section where the return flanges go outwards).

I say make a bulkhead behind the rear seat for now, and go Full Napalm Nova. Remember.. What would Frieberger do

Also, just for inspiration, look up The Infamous Project on the youtubes. His Sh!tbox Fox and Foxidized projects might give some ideas as well

In reply to anger_enginering :

not having a floor isn't really on my radar...this car is supposed to be capable of daily driving duties so that includes having some cargo room. Also without a cage (which im not planning on) cutting the floor out of the car would result in a large loss of structural strength (it's a unibody car)

trunk pan is here!

that should help with a lot of this.

I started by cutting around the tank supports from the bottom (obviously not visible from the top).

after that, I went topside and cut out the center and both sides.

Since I don't have a spotweld cutter (and honestly, not sure I would have wanted to drill a bunch of holes in the tank supports and have to rosette weld the pan back in from the bottom), I ground the metal thin enough that i could "peel" the top layer off of the tank support.

thankfully, while crusty, the passenger side tank support is solid and can be reused (i wasnt sure that it would be). And the passenger side is way rustier than the driver side so i'm sure that one is fine too.

I also thought it was hilarious how Jegs shipped my gas tank:

are you absolutely positive that is the gas tank? lol

In reply to anger_enginering :

i guess they didn't have a big enough box? I'm glad the filler neck didn't get whacked in transit

I apparently somehow overlooked that the trunklid is super roached...so there will be a new trunklid in this car's future. Thankfully a brand new one can be had for ~$200. I love cheap old american cars!

spent another hour tonight pulling the floor pan off of the driver's tank support. 
 

this weekend is the anniversary so I expect to spend 0 time on the car...

I guess the gas tank's excited about this Poncho project.  
 

Izzat a snorkel?   

In reply to Datsun240ZGuy :

The gas tank is reflective of my excitement too

I've seen a few Venturas with the screaming chicken, and surprised me: actually looked pretty good. But I wouldn't, myself, cause, well you said it but the shaker scoop, and black with gold... something; that'll look good, I think. 

budget_bandit said:

In reply to Datsun240ZGuy :

The gas tank is reflective of my excitement too

😳

No physical progress on the car today (doing gardening with the wife) but i've been thinking about manual transmission options. Obviously a T56 is the easy button, but kinda expensive. I think i'd be in it for close to ~$3k for trans/bellhousing/clutch/flywheel.

Dodge challenger TR-6060s can be had for about $800, and i've been told the input shaft is about 1.6" longer than the GM version. I think that would let me make an adapter of the correct thickness and at least not have to worry about starter engagement on the flywheel. Of course i'd still have to make the adapter and source flywheel/clutch/slip driveshaft so that may not be any cheaper in the long run.

Have you seen this on the Tubes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzrI922pSoQ