Pontiac Trans Am UK

The bandit wouldn’t start yesterday, I’d just spent a couple of hours cleaning and polishing her with the new cleaning stuff I purchased, tried to fire her up and just got a clicking noise.

The previous owner mentioned he’d had a problem the day I picked it up, it hadn’t been started for four weeks and there was a problem with the starter motor. So, I had a quick browse around on the internet learning what I could about starter motors and what to do when they’re not working. In the end I simply rocked the front end of the car quite heavily hoping to unstick the drive gears, after that it cranked on the third try, fired on the fouth. Obviously it’s not a long term fix, but I’m learning along the way.

On a good note, I landed a couple of manuals on ebay, costing me £26.11 in total, a little cheaper than I would have had to pay on Amazon.

Update:I won another Haynes Manual on eBay, totally forgot about it to be honest, this one costing only £5.99 including postage. It’s well used, but that’s the way the should be. If it’s not used beyond the capacity for decent use, I’ll sell the as good as new one on.

A trip to Halfords on thursday night saw me purchase an outdoor cover and some cleaning equipment for the beast.

I’d looked around on the internet for car covers and found The Cover Company, who looked to provide quality products, but with prices upwards of £150, I decided to make do with a cheap one for now. They had two brands of cover at Halfords, but their own line only went up to Large, which wasn’t going to be big enough, thankfully the other line went up to XXL, which fits the length of the bandit neatly, but is a little slack on top. This cover cost me £64.99. I think eventually I’ll invest in a decent one, should keep it better in the long run.

We’ve got a bunch of car cleaning products in our garage, but I thought while I was there the bandit deserved new, so I got an Autoglym gift set, which came with shampoo, polish, glass cleaner, wheel cleaner, sponge and polishing cloth, all for £19.99. I also picked up a chamois leather cloth for £8.99.

I’ve been lucky enough in the last week to acquire a 1977 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am and I aim to tell it’s story on this website, as well as create a decent resource for American Car enthusiasts in the UK.

I bought the car through an auction on eBay and would like to thank Paul the previous owner and Steve his mate for ensuring a nice easy transaction. I’ve never bought a car from eBay before, but if this time around was anything to go by I’d definitely do it again. The pictures from the auction can be found here here.

In all the car cost me £5000, plus I’ve had to fork out £1044 for a years insurance from MCE Insurance. Need to thank my parents for fronting me the cash until I get a loan sorted.

In the weeks to come I’ll be detailing everything I can about the car, I’d like to learn alot more about it and no doubt will be forced to at some stage. It seems to be running nicely at the minute, but the car is nearly 30 years old so will undoubtedly have some problems. I’m currently looking into finding a Haynes manual, at which point I’ll attempt to fix the climate control. I’m also looking for a cover for the car, even if my Mum’s car wasn’t in our garage, the bandit’s more than 18 inches too long to fit in. Ideally I’ll look to rent garage space somewhere locally, but this may prove hard to find.