| Mr. Ram Air's Website |
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| UPDATE HISTORY |
| FROM OCTOBER 12, 2000 |
| Production figures are finally in for the 2000 Model Year WS6 Ram Air Performance and Handling Package. I was able to get numbers for both Formula and Trans Am models, directly from ASC. I have not been able to come up with total production figures for the Firebird line from Pontiac... Trans Am: 8,189 Formula: 232 TOTAL WS6: 8,421 |
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| FROM MAY 9, 2001 |
| TESLA came to Pittsburgh and played Club M on Friday, March 30, 2001. What a great concert! They played just about every song I wanted them to play. Unfortunately, the venue was poor - bad sightlines and they had to be out by 11:00 PM so the club could get ready for the Midnight Disco. However, Diane and I had a pretty good spot at the left rear corner of the dance floor (when looking at the stage). Pretty far back, but we had room to move and a place to set our beers! Ashes to Ashes opened for them - a local heavy metal band that does mostly original material. Not bad, and better than some aspiring national act that may not be of a similar style to Tesla, in my humble opinion. Tesla came on stage at 8:10 PM. The set list: 1) Comin' Atcha Live 7) Song & Emotion 13) Edison's Medicine 2) EZ Come EZ Go 8) Changes 14) Heaven's Trail (No Way Out) 3) Hang Tough (my favorite!) 9) Signs 15) Mama's Fool 4) Lazy Days, Crazy Nights 10) Little Suzi 16) What You Give 5)Gettin' Better 11) Frankie's Acoustic 17) Modern Day Cowboy 6) The Way It Is 12) Love Song 18) Change In The Weather The house lights came on at 9:50, but Tesla did not take a break! As I said, the place had to be cleaned up by 11:00 PM. That barely gave the crew enough time to tear down. All in all, a great show. I am looking forward to the new live album they are recording and hopefully a new studio album as well! |
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| FROM MAY 30, 2001 |
| We just got back from the Philadelphia, PA area. Diane and I visited my sister and her family. We took the opportunity to attend the 2001 Memorial Run sponsored by the Trans Am Club of America in Bensalem, PA. I took some pictures, but the roll needs finished and then sent off to PhotoWorks for processing and hi-res scanning. The weather was predicted to be poor, and Mother nature did not let the meteorologists down. So unfortunately we did not take our Ram Air, but took the Grand Prix instead. We traveled on Saturday, May 26 to beat the Friday evening traffic. We hit rain by Carlisle. By the time we got to the show in Bensalem, it was pouring! Only four cars were at the Hooters when we got there around one o'clock PM. We met Ron, webmaster at TACA (see link on the MyLinks page), and he could not have been nicer to us. Sunday tirned out to be much nicer, and we spent several hours at the show. We (hopefully) showed my niece and nephew what real American Muscle is all about. I got to see another '89 TTA and my first Comp T/A in person. There was also a black '86 TA that was totally gold- and chrome-plated under the hood. AWESOME! Go here to see the photos TACA took. And look back on this site for my pictures, once I get them developed! |
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| FROM JUNE 13, 2001 |
| Curse of the Hidden Mirror, the new album from BLUE OYSTER CULT is available at a store near you. Or from your favorite e-tailer. It is a great album, and will probably be one of my favorites from BOC of all time. After many listenings, it only gets better. The virtuosity of Buck Dharma is very apparent on this album, probably more so than on any other BOC album. It is not as hard as Heaven Forbid (1998) but a more "solid" album musically. Not to take anything away from Heaven Forbid - I really like that album as well. But this ranks up there with my personal favorite, Revolution by Night and Secret Treaties. Too bad it is not getting any airplay, at least in Pittsburgh. Clear Channel Communications owns most of the stations and does not give older band's new music any chance for airplay. Unless you happen to be Aerosmith, the Stones or Skynyrd. |
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| FROM SEPTEMBER 15, 2001 |
| In light of the Tuesday, September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States of America, I wanted to post some photos I took of the World Trade Center back in 1984 and 1985. Click here to see the photos, or go back to the main page and click on the photo of the WTC. |
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| FROM OCTOBER 2, 2001 |
| A "new" 1979 Trans Am has joined the family! We bought a restored red TA on Saturday, September 29. It has the Olds 403 cubic inch (6.6 Liter) engine, not the Pontiac 400. We saw her at the largest car show I have been to so far. It was on September 22 at Cranberry Commons Mall in Cranberry Township, PA. It was the second weekend after the terrorist attacks, and everyone needed to get out and get on with life. Luckily we saw this beauty - we almost purchased a 2002 Firebird earlier that afternoon! Click here to see the photos, or go back to the main page and click on the photo of the red 1979 TA! |
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| FROM OCTOBER 8, 2001 |
| Due to the high number of hits I have had lately on this site, I have been getting little nastygrams from Yahoo! Geocities that I should sign up for one of their premier services that allow more bandwidth... (Translated: $9-12 per month fee!) So instead of signing up for that, I lowered the resolution of the small photos on the index page and removed the link-type photos from the photo pages. I made the pictures large so that there is no need to load a second page. If this does not reduce the bandwidth issue, I will open a second site for the popular photo pages and link there and back. FREE STUFF RULES! |
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| Well, it finally happened. I am fed up with Geocities cutting off access to my site. I have transferred some of my pages over to another site, still in Geocities. Hopefully this will balance the bandwidth between the two sites and keep both available all day long. I hope so! I decided to update the photo pages so that there are no more opening other pages. Large photos on each page. |
| FROM OCTOBER 22, 2001 |
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| I have moved some of the prior update information to the Update Archives page (see below). I reorganized the photo and information page links so that generally the automotive links are to the left and the cat and miscellaneous pages are on the right. The Tesla picture page link is the exception... I "mainstreamed" the 1979 TA and the WTC photo links when I moved the updates to the Archive page. I also added some new cat photos, mostly for Snow White! |
| FROM NOVEMBER 2, 2001 |
| OK, I know that I said that I would update the photos of the '79 Trans Am, the Car Shows, and the Cats the weekend of January 11-13. Obviously it did not happen. I have been extremely busy at work (getting home late) and with the Steelers run for the Super Bowl was taking up the weekends. Plus trying to take down the Christmas decorations. OK, the Steelers are out. I promise that I will post the photos this weekend. On the cat front, we found a great cat store in Mt. Lebanon, PA (a southern suburb of Pittsburgh). It is My Three Cats & Co. You can link to their website by either clicking here or from the Links Page. |
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| FROM JANUARY 29, 2002 |
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| Well, I finally added the new pictures. They can be found by clicking on the 1979 Trans Am Photo, the Car Show Pictures, and the two Cat Photo Pages below. The new cat photos are of Snowy, Cinnamon and Grey Guy. Added a "NEW Pictures Added" animation on this page to quickly identify where they can be found. (Only when new pictures are added!) |
| FROM FEBRUARY 4, 2002 |
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| Wow! Has it really been over four months since I last updated this site? There is not a lot new, other than Spanky being diagnosed with Chronic Renal Failure (kidneys). He is keeping us local this year. All kinds of fun administering pills three times a day and (for now) twice a week sub-cutaneous fluid. Especially to a 16+ pound cat! We have reached our feline limit as Grey Guy had to come in - three fights and $1000 in vet bills since Christmas finally did it. He is living in our garage and basement. Seven is too many for two people - especially when two of them have health issues! Some interesting rumors going around at the local car cruises regarding the F-Bodies. See "The Standard Story" below and look for the red text... We can all hope that this rumor is true. It comes from the same source that told me in 2000 that 2002 would definitely be the last of the current model due to the 2003 side-impact criteria. It comes to me second-hand, originated from a GM F-Body insider! Plus we will have the GTO as a stop-gap. Not too shabby... |
| FROM JUNE 10, 2002 |
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| OK, I finally figured out that the 2000 Ram Air Picture Page was screwed up. I got it fixed - all pictures now appear. Sorry about that - I guess I never moved the picture links over to my second website, and then proceeded to delete the photos from this website. Tesla came to Pittsburgh on June 21 at the Rib America Festival. Great show - they added War Pigs and a new song Heaven to their set. Got to talk with the band afterwards at the meet & greet! They are great! I just turned 38 on Sunday, June 23. Funny - I don't feel any different than when I was 22... I just look older! Go figure. |
| FROM JUNE 26, 2002 |
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| Changed the top images to show the evolution of the Firebird Emblem over the years. There were additional changes along the way (especially with the hood birds). The Fouth Gen actually uses two different emblems - the Fourth Gen up front and the Third Gen in the rear, except for the 1999 30th Anniversary and the 2002 Collector's Editions. These use Fourth Gen emblems on both ends. The "Bird on Fire" is not official, but I like it. It is basically a Third Generation Emblem. I found it long ago on someone else's site and heisted it! Firebird fanatics are generally cool about that - at least the one's I've chatted with. I recently replaced the power steering pump and pulley on the '79 TA. An easy job, right? Should have been, but it was quite the experience! I ended up using a billet aluminum March Performance Pulley when the old one turned out to be bent. I had contacted March directly, but they said that they did not have a replacement. Funny, though, when I contacted a local performance parts store, they crossed the Saginaw pump with a March pulley! It is slightly smaller in diameter, and only one belt, but the smog pump is long gone! Classic Plates (no emissions inspection) have their advantages... |
| FROM JULY 5, 2002 |
| I just bought a new book at Barnes and Noble - cool book for Firebird and Trans Am owners and enthusiasts. It is Firebird and Trans Am by Bill & William Holder. Great photos (in color!) of the entire line of Firebirds and Trans Ams. However, the text and captions are far from accurate. Take what you read in it with a grain of salt. Several examples are: describing a 1981 Turbo engine while showing a picture of a 1989 20th Anniversary engine; showing a 1992 TA but describing it as a 1993 TA; calling the 403 Olds the top engine for 1979 with 220 hp (the 400 Poncho engine was 220 hp, the Olds 185 hp); describing the 3100 engine as the V6 for the early Fourth Gen cars (3.4L actually); etc. I do recommend the book, though, for the great pictures. For a better text, buy Pontiac Firebird 1967-2000 Photo History by George Scala. This book is awesome - very accurate details of how the models changed from year to year, Firebirds, Esprits, Formulas as well as Trans Ams. The only bad thing is that the photos are in black & white. Both books are available online. In light of this criticism, I have corrected the Third Gen Emblem above - I had it facing left instead of right! |
| FROM AUGUST 7, 2002 |
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