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

K.I.T.T's Front Nose Test Fit

Just test fitting K.I.T.T's Front nose. The nose is not bolted on just resting on the front support plate. I have some things to take care of in order to make the front nose fit properly but as you can see it's well under way.

Preparing the Underside of the Turbo Hood

Doing a little prep work on the underside of the Turbo Hood before painting. Ran out of black sandable primer so I will need to get more.

Need to prep my back room with some plastic and put an exhaust fan in the window before breaking out the paint gun. When I'm ready I'm going to do the underside of the hood first just to get a feel for how my new paint gun handles.

Must Have Book

I picked this Service Manual for '82 Pontiac Firebird up from eBay.  I'm finding this to be a must have book to understand the internal workings of my Trans Am.  I would highly recommend one of these for anyone who is building their own Knight Rider. it's packed full of helpful diagnostics, how to illustrations, electrical diagrams, troubleshooting... you name it!!

Turbo Hood Parts Prep

Turbo Hood parts being prepped for painting. I was going to just leave these parts attached to the hood but then I figured I might as well take them off and that way I can do a much better job of cleaning them up and prime them all individually before reassembling them back onto the Turbo Hood.  The hood struts were shot so I pulled those off and trashed them seeing how the ones currently on the other car hood are perfectly fine and I can just swap them out.

I primed the fixed up rust patches on the underside of the hood with some sandable Red Oxide primer.  I really need to pick up some good de-greaser and give the underside a good going over before priming.

Turbocast Rims Cleanup Continued

Well the rims are starting look a heck of a lot better now after hours of scrubbing with Easy Off Oven Cleaner and Aluminum polish. They still have  good deal of work left but they are definitely a vast improvement from how they looked when I took them off of the parts car. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get them gleaming like new again but I'll sure try. If I have to I'll prime, paint and clear coat them if they look like they will never get a good shine on them.... Time will tell ;-)

New Tire Changer

I picked up a tire changer from Princess Auto for around $85.00 I figured seeing how most places charge about $11.00 to remove a tire per wheel and that I have to

1 - Remove the tires from the aluminum Turbocast rims so I can clean those up for K.I.T.T.

2 - Remove the tires from the Trans Am thats being converted into K.I.T.T.

3 - Put the tires onto the cleaned up Turbocast Rims and then put the wheels back on.

At a grand total of $132.00 approximately before taxes I was well better off to buy the tire changer, learn how to use it and already it will have paid for itself. Plus I figure it's not like I'm not most likely to need to do it again at some point ;-)

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.

So What's Under the Hood??

OK so not knowing a whole heck of a lot about car engines I figured I would take a few pictures of what's under the hood. If someone much more knowledgeable about cars can tell me what type of engine we have here that would be great. From what I can see it looks to be in great shape for a 1982 model Trans Am. Looks like it needs a bit of a cleaning to me but hey... what do I know lol ;)