| This is the story of my KNIGHT RIDER Project. |
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| When i was a kid i used to love KNIGHT RIDER. It was and is still my most favorite TV show of all time. I allways dreamt about having KITT one day. About 18 Years went by and i had a chance to purchase a Firebird so i jumped on it. It was a 1985 Pontiac Firebird with a 1983 Pontiac Firebird S/E 305 CID, 5.0L - V8, that had been swapped into it. It was a maroon rust bucket. It had a 5-speed transmission. The car was the coolest beater that i ever had. It was too rusty to waste the money on to make it into KITT. So i decided to just beat the living shit out of that car unitl it just gave up on me. I had purchased the car in my Senior Year of High School, in February of 2002. I had learned how to drive manual on that car. The Transmission was allready pretty fried when i bought it, so the car was just my toy. I used to jump over some railroad tracks and get the car almost 5 feet off the ground. The suspension on that car was pretty soft so the landing wasn't too bad on the car. I also use to do alot of burnouts with it. By the end of Senior Year the car was dying slowly. It didn't even have enough power to do a burnout anymore because the carbuerator was messed up. One day when i got home from school, i found a note in my car. Some guy asked me if i was interested in buying another firebird for parts. So i called him and found out about it. The firebird was a 1987 Firebird Formula. It was in an accident at about 60 MPH so the front end was crunched up pretty bad. He only wanted $300.00 for the car, that wasn't a bad deal at all. So I went ahead and bought it. The car wasn't rusty, and otherwise it was in pretty good shape. It had a Tuned Port Injected 305CID V8. That made me happy. My old one was carbuerated. I hate carbuerators now. It even has a TH700R4, Automatic 4-Speed Transmission. The first thing i did was bring the car to the body shop to get repaired. I just had it fixed up too look stock. They used the front end frame and bumper from my old firebird. I had new fenders and a new bumper cover installed because those were damaged. I didn't make it look like knight rider yet. I was happy with the way the the car turned out. The Christmas of 2002 I was given the JCWhitney Scanner light as a present from my sister. I cut an opening in the front bumper cover to resemble KITT. It looked cool for the time being. Then on February 25th I was in an accident with the car similar to the first one, except only at about 40 MPH. This one wasn't as bad as the first because all the front end metal was welded up stronger then stock. This time it only cost me about $2000.00 too fix it up. I replaced all the damaged components that were on the car with the correct ones that were on KITT. I replaced the: -front fenders with fender from the 1982-84 Trans Am fenders -front bumper cover with Robert Yancey's Knight Rider bumper cover -1982-84 Cowl Induction Hood with a 1988 Formula Cowl Induction Hood-- (NO difference in appearance, just that the one i had on the car was all bent up from the accident) I didn't replace the scanner light though because i wanted to save up to buy the Marks Custom Kits Scanner light which is alot better, and brighter. I also primered the car in primer black. In the end of July 2003, just after i graduated from college, i decided to rebuild the upper part of the motor. I put on new Head Gaskets, Heddman Hedders Shorty Headers, new Valve Seals, and Chrome Valve Covers. I also installed a chrome, "Powermaster 140Amp Alternator". Now I am just going to store the car for a while so I can save up the money to have the whole body of the car restored and made into a full frame so that it can handle a high horsepower motor. |
| More to come on this story! |
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