Air cleaner Sensor Hookup Issues

I have been having some troubles lately trying to find out what order the hoses get attached to the air cleaner sensor. Both my Haynes and Pontiac Service manual simply say to just replace it in the same order as the previous one.... well I never took that into account when I took it off... I mean I kinda did as in I had that 30 second thought of;

"Maybe I should take a picture of this before I take all of the hoses off?"

But then thought;

"Naw... there should be plenty of info on how these things are hooked up properly."

lol Silly me to actually think that I guess huh? Anyways, I still need the 10" "O" ring seal and I also discovered that the post that the large locking nut goes onto that holds the Air Cleaner assembly on is a tiny bit short for this nice shiny Air Cleaner.... so I'm not sure if there are longer ones available out there or not??

Tail Light Blackouts Preparation

In preparation for installing the Tail Light Blackouts I ordered from Knight Designs I haves removed the tail light assemblies and have removed the smoke covers.

Billy from Knight Designs forgot to include the nylon spacers, hey these things happen ;) So I'm waiting for him to send those out on Monday, but in the mean time I figured I might as well get most of the prep work done. Here I have the tail light housings and black powder coated steel frame laid out on my work bench.

I have my holes already drilled into the tail light housings as per Billy's instructional video so now all I need is the nylon spacers and then I can attach the frame to the tail light housings. I also have to clean up the inside of the tail light section of the car, when I pulled out the assembly there was a lot of dirt and debris inside there. Other that that it was in awesome condition. I may give that a paint job before installing the tail light black outs.... we'll see. 

On an interesting note, while I was removing the tail light assembly I came across a "Hide-a-Key" hidden in a compartment near the tail lights on the drivers side containing an extra ignition key, but not the same key I had that came with the car. Perhaps the car was re-keyed at some point and this was an original key that had just gotten forgotten. Found a fire extinguisher in there too... working condition... questionable lol

Cleaning Up The Turbo Hood

I started cleaning up K.I.T.T.'s Turbo Hood from the donor car this evening, sanded off a good deal of the scratches and paint chips. Overall condition of the hood is pretty good, it's mostly cosmetic stuff that needs doing. I still have a fair  amount to do on the top of the hood but this is a pretty good start.

Back of the hood had some deep surface rust close to the front. I used that liquid gel rust removers I got from Princess Auto, some stage 1 auto body sand paper and my dremel to remove a lot of the tough stuff, the rust removing gel did pretty much the rest. I think I have most of the rust off, I'll give it a closer inspection in the morning and see where I'm at. With a bit of hard work I should be able to prime this sometime this week depending on how many imperfections I find.

Turbo Hood Removed

I removed the Turbo Hood off of the red donor car, that was fun by myself I'm here to tell you, not impossible but it would have definitely been an easier job with two people. lol

Soon K.I.T.T will have the correct hood installed.

As you can see this hood is in really great condition. Just a few minor light surface rust spots on the underside near the front, nothing some sanding and priming can't take care of.

I got the whole car for $500.00 bucks and I know there are a lot of people paying way more than that just for these Turbo Hoods which are getting scarce. You can find nice fibreglass reproductions for around $1,200.00 - $1,500.00 but I really prefer the original steel hood.

I will definitely get a helper to help put the new hood on once it has been refinished, either that or rig up some kind of harness and lower it into position carefully.

Please keep in mind I know next to nothing about cars so all of this is pretty much a BIG learning experience for me, kinda learn as I go. I'll listen and welcome suggestions but I'm pretty much a "do it yourself" type… more fun that way eh? ;)

More Parts For K.I.T.T.

My brother John and his girlfriend from Calgary came in yesterday night for a visit and to drop off the car I bought from Kijiji for spare parts another 1982 Trans Am Firebird.

 I bought this one because it has the correct wheels and hood, but from the looks of it, it has a whole load of other parts that will be good also.

 The front Turbo hood looks to be in great shape, the rest of the body not so much but that's OK so long as the hood is OK that is mostly what matters.

The tires on the Turbo Cast wheels look to be in great shape too which will be an added bonus. Overall for $500. bucks this was a great deal to get all of those much needed parts for my Knight Rider conversion.

More Parts for K.I.T.T.

Just arrived in the mail today from eBay a new driver's side mirror assembly. The one currently on the car has an incorrect replacement mirror glass and is a manual mirror, this one is a powered mirror assembly so I'm not sure if it can be made to work. I'm willing to bet it can, but I more got it for the replacement of the correct mirror glass. The price for it's condition could not be beat so if I can get it to work then I'll be in the market for a passenger side powered mirror assembly. That dash and inner consoles has a lot of dummy switches that can be hooked up to anything so I might as well make as much use of them as possible lol.

Finishing the Bowling Ball Hub Caps

I finally finished off the Bowling Ball hub caps last night. All they need now is the clear coat which should go on pretty easy.

I was thinking more last night about getting these caps to fit after market rims or rims other than the Turbo cast rims that originally would have been on the 1982 Trans Am Firebird. I noticed that a lot of people in the Knight Rider community seem to use Zip Ties to hold their rims on. I have not seen any examples of how this is done but last night I had a thought about possibly creating some kind of adapter that would use Velcro to hold the hub caps in place, my thought was that if this could be done right it would hold the hub caps on quite securely even better than the tabs that originally hold the caps in place on the Turbo Cast rims. The Velcro would also make taking the caps off a lot less of a chore VS the zip ties I hear of so often. I'm pretty inventive so I'll put my inventors thinking cap on and see what I can come up with in this department.

As you can see from the photo on the right that from the day the Bowling Ball hub caps arrived from eBay to how they are now (Top Left) that they are looking much better now that they have had the centre logos removed and have all been sanded and refinished. Once the clear coat is on they will look even better.