After a long 6-1/2 year restoration journey, "The Bird" is finally home. The House of Hotrods in Mansfield really did an outstanding job of body, paint and reassembly work, readying the car for delivery at the end of July. I spent more than a month after that working through carburetor issues resulting from damaged internal parts after a specialties shop restored the quadrajet (not House of Hotrods). After replacing idle tubes and channel restrictors, I've finally got a reliable cold start and reasonable idle qualities.
I needed to have it running well for a trip to COTA in Austin to meet up with Overboost at the TransAm races, and the 600 mile round trip was just what it needed to shakedown the last few items to address like.....working windshield wipers.
I could not complain about the 19mpg running at 3100 rpm at 75mph.
But I did come to realize it had been over twenty years since I drove a car without automatic headlights after finding a post-it note on the driver's window stating, "You Left Your Lights On" which explained the dead battery.
It sure is a good feeling to have a ton of torque under the right foot again though. One of the pictures at delivery is with my Dad, the original buyer of the car when it was new. It looks right at home sitting next to the CEO's F32 in the garage.