The Official H-Body Internet Community

Hello all the way from Norway im a new guy here. So I guess i have to tell my storie of how i got my hands on a Pontiac Sunbird.

I was born in 1988 and my mom and dad broke up in late 1989 so i never got to meet my dad before 2003.
When i was gonna meet my dad for the first time i remeber i saw a black car sitting in a corner on his property
and my first words that day was Hey thats a Pontiac Transss emm no thats not a trans am its to small what is it?
And my Dad told me its a Pontiac Sunbrid.

And that was how i was Introduced to the Pontiac Sunbird

Some years later in 2008 my Dad was cleaning up his property and got rid of some scrap cars and some other junk
so i did ask him what are you gonna do with the Pontiac? and he told me he was gonna scrap it
At that point i asked him how much he wanted for the car and he just gave me the car.
And that was a big moment for me since i always wanted an old classic Muscle car. I know the Sunbird its not a Muscle car
but it used to do 0 to 60 mph in under 2 seconds with the old engine.

So now i have a 1978 Pontiac Sunbird with no engine and a Seized transmission oh and thats not the best part
it got rust

When i got the car home it sat for a year before i got around to it and its in a bad shape.
I know why my dad did stop driving it and thats because of a crack in the engine block and 2 pistons was bad.

Im gonna post some more pictures at a later time but i have a small problem more like 4 small problems.
Since 2008 i have tried to get some rims that fit my car and ive hit a wall every time.
Thanks to this forum i've learned that the bolt pattern is 4x101,6 or close to it but what is the offset?
To this day there is 2 Bmw wheels in the front and i have no idea whats on the back wheels and all 4 rims have the 4x100 bolt pattern.
I did try some rims that was 13" 4x101,6 and the offset at 0 but it hit the caliper and thats a no go :/

I like to apologize for my bad English since i had to learn english true movies and video games.

Some more pictures.

Can you send a picture of the trim tag? or type in what it says? If it has one.

marco_1978_spyder wrote:Can you send a picture of the trim tag? or type in what it says? If it has one.

Sorry i just checked the engine bay and the firewall and the doores and i dident find anything.
The only thing i have on the car is the vin number.

Anyway here are some more pictures

5 more pictures

I got some more pictures.

And more pictures.

God Bless you if you can fix all that rust....................Thats bad..............I would look for a donor car.

Wheels are 4''x 4 bolt pattern, some British cars have that pattern.

4 on 4"

Austin-Healey Sprite
Crosley - all '39-'52
MG Midget
Jensen Healey
Opel Manta, Kadette
GM H-body
Buick Skyhawk '75-'80
Chevrolet Vega, Monza '71-'80
Pontiac Sunbird, Astre '76-'80
Oldsmobile Starfire '75-'80




Doug in P.R.

Factory steel wheel ( 13'' diameter) backspacing is 3.5 inches

http://h-body.org/library/hbodyfaq/index.html

Doug in P.R.

JHCRAGGAR wrote:

marco_1978_spyder wrote:Can you send a picture of the trim tag? or type in what it says? If it has one.

Sorry i just checked the engine bay and the firewall and the doores and i dident find anything.
The only thing i have on the car is the vin number.

Anyway here are some more pictures

( near the wiper arms when you open the hood)

Like this:

Doug in P.R.

HI WINDING MONZA wrote:God Bless you if you can fix all that rust....................Thats bad..............I would look for a donor car.

Wheels are 4''x 4 bolt pattern, some British cars have that pattern.

4 on 4"

Austin-Healey Sprite
Crosley - all '39-'52
MG Midget
Jensen Healey
Opel Manta, Kadette
GM H-body
Buick Skyhawk '75-'80
Chevrolet Vega, Monza '71-'80
Pontiac Sunbird, Astre '76-'80
Oldsmobile Starfire '75-'80




Doug in P.R.

Thank you good sir.
The closest donor car is 8 houers away and thats one way + its a Chevrolet Monza and it has no engine and no transmission
and he wants 1800 dollar for it :/ And thats more then what i want to pay for a car that dont run.
And i cant bring my self to start tearing down a good car for parts.

Here are some more Pictures of my car

Warning may contain some rust.

Hoy JHCAAGGAR,
welcome to the best forum in the world concerning H-Body cars .

That is a lot of rust
It is like Doug says, better look for a donor car .

And your English ... mine is even worse, and here they understand it .
So, no problem .

I wish you all the best with your project .

Grtz

Peter from Antwerp

( near the wiper arms when you open the hood)

Like this:

Doug in P.R. [/quote]

Thanks again i dident know that
Im learning something new about my car.
Im gonna go oute to the gerage an check if i cant find the trim tag

The little i do know about my car is it had a 2,3 liter engine and no ac when it was stock
and i dont know what transmission i had but when i look at the brake pedal im thinking it had a manual transmission
i might be wrong about that but in my Suburban the brake pedal is bigger.

zzip wrote:Hoy JHCAAGGAR,
welcome to the best forum in the world concerning H-Body cars .

That is a lot of rust
It is like Doug says, better look for a donor car .

And you English ... mine is even worse, and here they understand it .
So, no problem .

I wish you all the best with your project .

Grtz

Peter from Antwerp

Thank you
When i first found this forum i could not believe it i was like NO WAY
add to favorite add to favorite cant add to favorite fast enough.

Sorry Doug i cant find the Trim tag i dont think its been on the car for a very long time

I know my dad found the car in pieces in a sand pit when he got it
and im guessing he dident care to put the Trim tag back on the car again since he only restored it so he could go Drag Racing with it.
He also put a v8 in it and not the stock 2,3 but he never got that on the registration papers on the car and thats not good.
And im trying to talk to Amcar Norway to get some papers from them so i can get my engine legally on the registration papers.

Oh and Amcar Norway told me that the Sunbird only came with the v6 engines
I did ask the guy i was talking to why do the registration papers on my car say i have a 2,3?
His answer was he dident know but in the book he had on the sunbird they only came with a 3,8 v6
but he told me its the same car as the Chevrolet monza so if i want a v8 in my car there is not a big problem.
They only need the numbers that are on the engine to confirm that the engine i want to put in is not bigger then what the monza have.

More pictures of my Sunbird.