Yellow Indy Joins Family!

[Rettax3]

Okay, so I've wanted a yellow Indy for quite a while now, and I've never really had a good opportunity to buy one close to me or for the kind of money I would spend on one. Along came this car, for a fair (if not great) price, needing repair to the driver's seat, reinstallation of the driver's side door panel, a new hood, possibly a new front bumper-cover or at least some body-work to the current one, and a new paint-job (about half of my cars need that). Mostly, it needed a new wheel-bearing up front, the head-liner reglued, and a serious interior cleaning. You can see the small twist in the left-side upper radiator core-support, but I think I can push-out the faint dent in the passenger-side fender. The dash has the usual front-end peel, some slight distortions, but is uncracked. It still has the chin spoiler, which looks like a replacement from a GTU, but it will need serious help before going back onto this car. The car came with oodles of spare Fel-Pro gaskets, spare headlight and tail-light, spare digital instruments, a few spare drive axles (a pair look new), and a spare NOS "BERETTA" windshield banner. It even came with the original owner's manual and a clean Chilton's book, perfect timing as I was ready to buy one to supplement/replace my old Haynes manual that is finally falling apart. The engine was replaced some time ago, and now has ~50k miles on it, while the car has 150k total. It starts and seems to run great, and has very healthy oil-pressure. Unfortunately, it has an automatic (for now) that is overdue for servicing, and does not have the sun-roof I wanted in my next Beretta. It also has power windows and locks, like my other Indy and my GTU (and my old Z-26, for that matter), and I honestly prefer the manual windows in my '90 turbo 'T-Type' 'Retta.

The front needs some cosmetic help. The angle of the wheel also shows how bad the bearing was.

Nothing too special in the bay, but everything is where it is supposed to be.

The car has a glass-pack on it, which actually sounds pretty good so I'll likely keep it on there for now. I just got the new wheel-bearing on it today, so I'll have to take it out for a test-drive later and see how it is doing, but I don't expect any serious problems.
So now I have a GTU, and a matched pair of Indys, all with the digital instruments... I am seriously glad I've found out that I can change the backing-color of the panels, especially if I do finally retro-fit these clusters into my '97 Z-24 and my '86 Fiero GT...
I'll update soon, once I have a chance to clean the car up, and run some test-drives.

[GTU89]

Sweet! Any idea of what glasspack it is? I know I have a Thrush glasspack and a DC Tip (it has baffle things in it, it actually seemed to have affected the tone believe it or not) and mine sounds good, a little raspy cold but that goes pretty much away when warm.

Looks like other than the front the body is in nice shape!

How can you tell if the lip is from a GTU or not?

[Rettax3]

Sweet! Any idea of what glasspack it is? I know I have a Thrush glasspack and a DC Tip (it has baffle things in it, it actually seemed to have affected the tone believe it or not) and mine sounds good, a little raspy cold but that goes pretty much away when warm.
Looks like other than the front the body is in nice shape!
How can you tell if the lip is from a GTU or not?

Thank you! I am actually pretty excited about this car, other than the automatic transmission. I'm getting a little tired of converting cars to five-speed, but I think this one is worth it. It will be waiting for a while though, and unless I drop-in the 3.4 Dual-Twin Cam engine I have with the Getrag 284 five-speed, I might need to rebuild one of my old Muncie five-speeds unless I can find another 282 in the junk-yards. The one in my GTU will likely be pulled and upgraded soon here, and if a new set of synchros will fix it, then I can eventually use it in this Indy. I've also got a pair of old Fiero four-speeds, but the only real advantage to them is the weight, or lack thereof, and the VSS wouldn't be compatible with the Beretta's speedo, which would leave me in the same predicament I'm in with my '90 turbo 'Retta -no thanks.

The muffler is a "Cherry Bomb", and has a fairly decent-looking tip with a carbon-fiber decorative insert, I haven't looked too closely at that yet, save to say that the rear hanger-bracket needs to be bolted back on to keep it from drooping. Thrush is pretty good too, I welded one onto my brother-in-law's Chevy C2500 for him several years ago, it sounded great and lasted forever.

The body is pretty clean, though not perfect, there are some really shallow dents in the roof from the hood coming open on the highway (but the windshield is pretty new ). I'm hoping that I can push those dents out sufficiently when I yank the headliner. The main plus is the virtually complete lack of any rust. The paint actually looks pretty decent everywhere except for the nose, chin spoiler, and hood, where it is chipping/peeling and faded pretty badly.

The chin-spoiler is partially primered, partially painted, but there is red paint under the yellow that looks factory.

[lolwut]

If you cram a quad cam into one of these things you'd be disproving everything I've heard about those engines fitting into Beretta engine bays.

Do it

[Rettax3]

If you cram a quad cam into one of these things you'd be disproving everything I've heard about those engines fitting into Beretta engine bays.
Do it

Oh, I'm pretty sure they fit. I had strong intentions of putting my 3.4 DTC into my Z-26 a couple of years ago. There was a bstuff member that had one mocked-up in his early '90s J-body, same framework and engine bay as our Berettas. He had some issues around the brake booster, as I recall, but I think the engine could have been rotated just a bit to clear it. Besides, haven't we all heard for years that the Northstar will not fit our bays? I would almost bet money that everyone who says that they will not fit hasn't actually tried. I'm not certain I'll actually do this project, and it won't be for a couple of years at least, but I think it would be fitting to have a 3.4 in an Indy Pace Car, and I just don't want to do another 3.1 MPFI/3400 hybrid like I did for my turbo 'Retta, and a simple 3400 install is boring to me. Now, if I had an aluminum Bow-Tie block like the actual Pace cars used...

I've started stripping-down the interior, the front passenger seat is out, apart, and the coverings removed. I'll probably move on to the rear seat and headliner next, and throw them into the washing machine. I'll save the driver's seat for last, as it is borderline salvageable, and I might even look for a clean Z-26 (or GTZ) seat to swap in instead, and just keep the Indy head-rest and sew in some yellow fabric for the accents. The passenger seat foam is in surprisingly good condition, I wish the outside was as nice. Honestly, if I had the time and patience and money to do it, I'd have custom black seats made with the yellow accents and stitching, and swap the rest of the interior to black (if I could find a complete clean '90 black interior -I have a decent dash and five-speed center console, and the carpet and head-liner wouldn't be a problem, I think I have the doorway surrounds too, But I know I don't have the rear quarter-window surrounds).

[MY91GT(Z)]

Nice and cant wait to see what motor itll end up with

[Rettax3]

Nice and cant wait to see what motor itll end up with

...I almost feel that my unpredictability is becoming too predictable...

I finally got the car out for a decent test-drive today. Basic issues are as follows:
1) Instrument cluster goes dark when the lights are turned on, the previous owner had a switch wired-up to run the interior lights straight off of battery-power and that works, so I suspect a bad light switch (the digital gauges are supposed to receive a dim-signal with lights on, and then brighten back up from the conventional dimmer control), probably an easy fix, and I already have a spare switch or two.
2) Engine 'surges', not too bad, but enough to make me want to fix it. Probably a bad IAC or dirty EGR -the EGR will be deleted and blocked-off anyway.
3) There is a slight hesitation when first depressing the accelerator. I suspect the TPS may be going bad, and it actually stalled on me once while cold. I'm not sure I have a spare one hanging around in a convenient location, but I can always 'borrow' on from one of my other cars for diagnostic purposes...
4) Half of the interior is still disassembled. Hopefully I can start putting the washed covers back onto the seats tomorrow, and maybe pull the driver's seat apart and wash it. I may need to look for a yellow fabric dye paint, as there is still a lot of discoloration on the rear lower seat accents. I don't have any headliner adhesive right now, so by the time I get to Autozone for some, I may have talked myself into finding something more.. entertaining.. to install than just plain grey. I was thinking about putting in some grey with yellow stripes to compliment the seats, not too sure though. I might do something with the sun-visors too.
5) The steering-wheel was put on upside-down. Definitely an easy fix, I'll probably make that a priority, as that seriously irritates me.
6) Not so much of an issue, but the suspension is EXTREMELY stiff -and no, it does not have poly bushings in it. You can practically feel every little bump the car is hitting. That said, it takes speed-bumps and the like a little smoother than my GTU does. My GTU is essentially an FE3/Z51 hybrid, and is a pretty stiff-riding car itself, but the Indy, with the FE7 'Active' suspension really does seem to ride a bit different. I'm looking forward to really putting these two cars through their paces to better evaluate the differences.
7) The right headlight needs to be replaced as one of the mounts are broken, so it shakes a little. It came with a spare though, so I am covered. I am considering swapping-in a set of BMW E36 head lights, but I would want to pull the outer lens off and tint the inner lenses yellow if I do that. And no, I won't be installing an 'angel-eyes' set -that has been done to death on these cars, I would have to swap in a 3400 if I did that.
I already know the tranny needs servicing by the color of the fluid, but I don't know if I'll be putting enough miles on the car before I go five-speed to really justify the time and cost. I'm not into destroying transmissions just for the heck of it, but I doubt I'll be able to resell the tranny later anyway, and I still have the rebuilt unit originally from my GTU still collecting dust.
9) The OAT (Outside Air Temp) sensor wasn't reinstalled when the nose was replaced before. Luckily, I have a spare couple of those, too.
10) Hood, front bumper-cover, and chin-spoiler are all cosmetically 'lacking'. And the chin-spoiler needs to be reattached. These cars lookwrong without either the spoiler or at least the base-model black bottom trim.
11) The high-beam dimmer switch sticks, and the only way to relax it so it can be re-toggled is to swivel the tilt steering -this is kind of a PITA, so I'll try to fix that when I straighten the steering wheel tomorrow.
12) The car needs a serious bath. Wheels need some serious attention, the inside smells like cigarette smoke, and the parts I haven't removed and washed already are kind of gross. I want to take my family around in this car while I do some serious work to the GTU, and right now I wouldn't let my neighbor's dog in this car (as a side note, I won't let my neighbor's dog in this car after it is cleaned up, but for the opposite reason!).
13) The left side reverse-light is out. A new 1156 will cure that.
14) It is due for an oil-change, and I have everything I need for that, it might happen tomorrow too.

The pluses however still make me feel very good about this car. The engine has very healthy oil-pressure, even when fully warmed. It has enough torque to spin the wheels completely through first gear -my Z-26 couldn't even do that, even with a 3400 intake and TB, so I am impressed. My Z-26 might have had better rubber on it though. Despite the surging at idle, the car runs very smooth. It warms up nicely (one of the immediate issues I need to address on the GTU is that it doesn't warm up well inside anymore -I recently replaced the heater-core hoses, and went away from the molded ones I had, so I had to change a fitting from the engine to a 3/4" fitting to match-up with the heater-core, and it doesn't angle the same direction as the old fitting, so my new hose is pinched just enough to restrict coolant flow to the heater-core), and the fan blows hard. The car takes corners very well, but that was expected. The windows are tinted to the darkest allowable by local law (that is my story, and I am sticking to it!), they are not purpling, and they actually move rather quickly when asked to, so the regulators are good.

I still need to test the windshield wipers, cruise-control, and rear window defogger, and maybe put another hundred miles or so on it before I'll really trust the car. I'll likely pull some or all of the plugs to see what tale they tell, and when I go to replace the plug-wires eventually, I'll go with the yellow Accell wires. Hey, you've got to remember that I replaced the yellow oil dipstick handle on my GTU's 3800 with a red handle from an auto-tranny dip-stick to match the red Belden ignition cables and red grooves I painted in the valve-covers!

I'll get some more pics up once I reassemble the interior, and I may post some pics of the disassembly/reassembly for anyone who is curious.

[3X00-Modified]

It has enough torque to spin the wheels completely through first gear -my Z-26 couldn't even do that, even with a 3400 intake and TB, so I am impressed. My Z-26 might have had better rubber on it though.

Final drive gear ratio has a lot to play in that as well.

[Rettax3]

It has enough torque to spin the wheels completely through first gear -my Z-26 couldn't even do that, even with a 3400 intake and TB, so I am impressed. My Z-26 might have had better rubber on it though.

Final drive gear ratio has a lot to play in that as well.

Absolutely. I remember back when all the 'American Muscle' guys (I'm kind of one of them -my second car was a 383-powered four-speed Plymouth Road Runner, and my third was an Oldsmobile land-yacht with a 455 under the hood) couldn't figure out why their 300 HP and 400 Foot-pounds of torque were getting their steel kicked off the tracks by the little high-revving imports with half the numbers. Part of that was the lighter weight cars, part of it was gearing. Even now, the Nissan GTR kicks around with 600+ HP Corvettes with 'only' 480-525 HP, in no small part due to the gearing.

It always amuses me when people think the only number that matters is peak horse-power. I'd trade that for superior torque any day, and please give me a flatter horse-power curve and keep it in-line with the torque-band so I can actually use the HP I have. I'd rather have a real-world drivable fast car than the bragging-rights of a higher HP number with an unusable peaky power-band. That said, I also want control over what I am driving, thus my preference for a manual transmission, and I prefer low RPMs at faster highway speeds, so the TH125 is one of my least favorite options for this car. All-in-all though, the TH125 does shift crisply, and actually feels like is has a lighter rotating mass, it just doesn't feel as ponderous as the 4T60E to me. I'm certain I'll miss the Over Drive once I start driving this car around a bit though.

[Rettax3]

So I haven't had as much time to work on the car this week as I was hoping, but the passenger seat and rear seat-pan (bottom half) are finished (although the yellow stripes on the back seat could still use some help).

Front passenger-side seat cleaned and reassembled.

The driver's seat has been pulled, and I decided to pull the carpet out too, because the car stinks of cigarette smoke and the carpet is just plain gross -moldy food under the front seats, trash everywhere, and very dirty overall. I couldn't put the cleaned-up seats back into the car the way it was. The carpet is in good shape structurally, no holes, reasonable wear, but the $140 replacement cost for new carpeting has already approved since I've already pulled the old stuff out, so I am investigating ACC's "Chrome Yellow" carpet color. If I go for it, I will hang on to the original grey for the V-8 teal Indy, since her carpet has a hole worn through on the driver's side.

Unfortunately, five Berettas was pushing my luck too far, and I finally have one with the dreaded firewall leak, hence the wet carpet on the driver's side. I'm investigating that now, which has also delayed other work on the car, and one of the other cars in the family needed one of the seat-perches repaired, so I've been fabricating/welding-in a repair piece today. Ironically, I found out the Indy also had a repair welded in for one of the seat-rail mounts, it looks like they did a good job on it though. I suspect the recently-replaced windshield might actually be the source of the leak, since there seems to be little or no water-damage aside from unhappy-carpet syndrome. Hopefully I'll have solid info on that soon though, as it is one of the biggest hold-ups keeping the car from being a driver.

The headlight switch is not bad, so I'll be tracking-down the electrical issue for the dash lights (yes, the fuse is good) to fix the blacking-out instruments problem. I also pulled the orange lenses out of the spare cluster that came with the car, and replaced them with a white fibrous material which provides a cloudy look to the unlit portions of the instruments. With the incandescent back-lighting, the display glows a nice warm yellow -perfect. The only issue is the odometer now reads 208k, instead of 150k, but I don't really care that much.
I fixed the upside-down steering wheel a couple of days ago -much better. I also fixed the high-beam dimmer switch, the actuator rod had been installed on the wrong side of the steering-column mounting bracket and was sticking on that. I also welded-in a small hole drilled into the floor-pan for some accent-lighting that the previous owner had installed (and which I removed).

Another issue that has come up is the driver's side mirror -being of the GTU/Indy line, it has the special mirrors, and the hinge-point is loose on this one -my teal Indy has the same problem too. Hopefully that won't be too hard to fix, I already have the mirror out and the boot pushed-back.

More updates as they come up...

[Travelor]

Just tighten down the screw for the mirror hinge. It's a spring and bolt style assembly.

As for the mileage on the DigiDash, did you remember to swap mileage chips?

[Rettax3]

Just tighten down the screw for the mirror hinge. It's a spring and bolt style assembly.
As for the mileage on the DigiDash, did you remember to swap mileage chips?

The screw is seized, or it would have been done last night when I pulled the boot back. I'll have to see if the spring is broken too, since the screw is still tight but the joint is loose.

I didn't want to push my luck on the dash by pulling the board with the chip (if I was even looking at the right component -it was the only obviously removable piece though). I seem to have fried the Z-24 Cavalier digital gauges I had for my '90 turbo 'Retta by playing around with them too much, and since I put in a Z-24 Muncie 282 which uses a different (and incompatible) VSS, I am now without a speedometer for that car. I've put in a really nice set of rebuilt S-10 Blazer digital gauges, but the VSS is different for that too, and I don't think that the VSSB (Vehicle Speed Sensor Buffer) can be properly calibrated for use with the Z-24 VSS unit. I can plug-in a Dakota Digital calibration unit for ~$80, but I'm too cheap to do that, so I'm still working on it.

Okay, back to THIS car:
The failed interior lights seem to be caused by what my old Haynes manual refers to as the 'Remote Dimmer' (my Chilton's manual doesn't even have a diagram for the interior lights... ), which is the component with the huge aluminum heat-sink attached to the so-called 'convenience center' under the dash by the steering column. I do have a spare one of these, still attached to the '90 GT black dash I have waiting for the teal V-8 Indy, but I won't be able to go get it for a couple more weeks, at least. I might take a trip out to a junk-yard instead, but I'm not too concerned about this for the short-term -I can always hot-wire the instrument lights like the previous owner did.

The firewall leak was caused by two small stress-cracks behind the left strut-tower, under the wiper-motor, and failed body-seam sealer in the same spot.

Leak is in the aqua ring -a spider that failed to hold the crack secure with his/her web is in the red ring. He/she was evicted for the web's failure... ;)

This zoomed-out shot gives a better idea where this crack is, and the size of the spider (actually pretty small). The failed instrument light 'Remote Dimmer' is visible here too.

The stress-cracks are barely visible in the rings.

So it is coming back together. I'll probably end up going with the yellow carpet with grey floor-mats, and a custom yellow-banded grey headliner. There is a guy on ebay selling a set of Indy 500 Pace Car floor-mats, black with orange (or black) edging that would be PERFECT in this car with yellow carpet, but at $240, they are waaaay too expensive... Too bad.

[Rettax3]

Haven't updated for a while due to the Holidays, and due to slow progress on the car, but the firewall leak repair is done, and all the seats are washed and reassembled, and I've driven the car around a bit more now. It still has a slight hiccup when touching the accelerator pedal, and it has stalled a couple of times -the IAC may be sticking a bit, or the idle may just need a relearn. Here are some pics of the firewall repair.

After welding the seam and its' two small stress-cracks and priming the area, I applied a high-grade automotive silicon to the outside of the area to keep it sealed. If I have any trouble with this spot again, I will remove the silicon and go back to my original plan of using butyl-tape to seal it.

From inside, under the dash, I finally decided just to use a construction-grade flexible, paintable sealer on the inside. I've used it before, but I haven't seen long-term tests on it yet, so we will see.

I let the sealant cure over the weekend, and topped it off with Rustoleum's "7747 Sunburst Yellow",which is darn near a perfect color-match for the car.

[Rettax3]

As for the seats, They are as good as they will ever be again.

The driver's seat was almost toast...

Even the lumbar air-bladder brace was broken -welding this was like welding tin-foil, but it eventually came out okay. Unfortunately, the bladder is leaking at the hose inlet, and is too brittle to repair.

I used foam to repair the crushed edge of the seat-pan and the hole in the side of the seat-back. Because it isn't as dense as the original foam, I cut it over-sized and relied on the seat-cover to compress it into shape...

Overall, the covers cleaned-up pretty well, and although far less than perfect, even the stitching repair turned out acceptably.

I haven't stripped the rear seat-back for washing because it wasn't that bad. A steam-cleaner with an upholstery attachment will suffice. The rear seat pan cleaned up well, except for the yellow stripping which has some discoloration.

Next up is the headliner. Then I'll have to see about the carpet...

[Rettax3]

..I am still playing with the possibility of BMW E36 (3-Series) headlights, but I'm still not certain. Without the outer lens, the assembly looks a bit more aggressive, and has stronger hints of the Euro style Beretta headlights, just semi-round rather than rectangular.

Probably the best part of separating the outer lens from the assembly is that severe modification or removal of the car's header panel (the plastic framework that holds the headlights and the grill in place) is not necessary. I would almost rather put these lights on my GTU, but they look really good on the Indy, which otherwise looks a little plain to me -but I haven't gotten the chin-spoiler back on yet either, so that may be the difference this car needs...