R.I.P. "Bandit"

[Yuri Bezmenov]

Burt Reynolds died today.   

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/celebrity/burt-reynolds-movie-star-who-played-it-for-grins-dies-at-82/ar-BBMY3KT?ocid=spartanntp

[Icequeen]

Just saw this on Twitter. 

RIP Bandit.

[DirtDawg]

Yeah, heard earlier.

Funny thing, I have a brother-in-law who looked a lot like Burt in his early days and he HATED this. Yeah, my BIL is a handsome guy, but also one tough mother fucker of a construction worker and any reference of him resembling a pretty boy was met with a grab to the collar and possibly a threat.
No one can help themselves, though. Kirk looks like Burt, PERIOD!

Anyway, RIP  Sharky!

[DirtDawg]

Does anyone follow car auctions?
Barret Jackson has a Reynolds owned Trans Am coming to auction this month. EDIT:  OOPS!, sorry this an older auction, it seems. never mind!

I have owned three Firebirds in my past. All while I was young and trading cars right and left with a partner. My first was a blue '67 convertible with a 400 Tri-pack and four speed transmission. Damn thing rocked, except that there was something fatally wrong with the linkage to the triple carbs. If you got too far into it, the linkage would do some kind of "over center" thing and not return when you took your foot out of it. Only thing to do was shut it off and get out and jiggle the linkage.
Now, I had a decent mechanic "friend" as a partner and we both decided that we would never ever drive it until we figured that shit out. After waiting forever, I mean fucking forever to get a Chilton's manual that had this particular engine in it, he got it fixed properly and we drove it a bit, then sold it as was the intention from the outset. It was the only convertible I have ever owned (except for an E-Type Jaguar, few years later, but that car totally sucked compared to real American muscle cars) and I could NOT drive it. FUCK!

I also had a very cherry, almost never driven in '79 when I bought it - '71 455 HO Trans Am, again blue but now I had a racing stripe, shaker hood and some motor shit to back it up. Wow! What a car. The HO motor was a little rare, but I did not know it at the time. I helped, but with my partner's ingenuity we pulled the heads off of an engine that only had  twenty thousand miles on it and he proceeded to work his magic on them.
Once we got it all back together and he really rocked out the Quadra-Jet, gave it a dual point distributor and super hot coil, etc, etc, but still basically all stock, we dyno'ed it at over five hundred HP (Pontiac was sand bagging a bit with the advertised 335 HP, I believe. NO valve job on Earth props one hundred and seventy HP!) AND it would idle at 300 RPM. Nothing I have ever heard sounded like that fucking lazy ass HO motor. But if asked you could do an endless burn out or mid thirteen quarter mile with street tires. Third day day after I bought it I sprung for BF Goodrich fifty series Radial T/As. I hated smoking them, but they sure got you going down the track. It came with Polyglas bias ply and I burned them up in two days.

Other one I owned was a '74 Formula 400 Ram Air with luxury features like electric windows, tilt wheel, power seats. Not so much of a beast, but still a very fun car.  It was black with silver accents, looked great, but after the HO 'bird it just did not hold my interest. Only had that one around for a couple of months. We were in the business of flipping cars after all.
I would give up all my teeth to have any one of those cars today!


Never had one like this one offered at auction, though!
https://www.barrett-jackson.com/Events/Event/Details/1978-PONTIAC-FIREBIRD-CUSTOM-COUPE-201749

[Icequeen]

Uncle had a 77 red Trans Am, lost it to my Aunt in their divorce broke into it and trashed the entire dash ripping the stereo out 3 months later.

SO had a 69 Chevelle SS (red & black) when I first  knew him, later a 67 red Charger, that we took on our first date. It was 3 days out of long term hibernation from a dusty garage and we had it out for the first time for about an hour until sunset when we discovered the headlights wouldn't retract from the grill from never being used for who knows how many years. 

It was one of those low mileage things you dream about finding in a barn covered up somewhere. Took about 6 months to work out all the little bugs. 

Been around a lot of cars and spent a lot of time holding ratchets and smelling like motor oil while helping guys work on them. 1970 hopped up Buick Skylarks, a 64 Chevy Truck, Chevy II's, and some assorted Camaro's.

 

[DirtDawg]

Awesome!!
The only one of those Firebirds that was actually mine was the '71. The other two and about fifty other cool things from that era were jointly owned. Only had one Charger, '68, my favorite year, '67s were very cool though.
At one point I owned a '69 and '70 Mach 1 Mustangs and a '74 Grande Mustang. I was THE coolest guy in town, except for the guy who owned a '68 GT500 Shelby in red and his twin sister had the same in blue. That was fairly cool. There's both had 428s.

[odeon]

RIP