Team Associates 73 Grand Am Nascar race Car

[DoctorLarry]

I love the mid 70's GM Collonade cars and I love to see them done. I really like the Pontiac Grand Am, GTO and Lemans cars. They were few and far between in NASCAR but the one I always loved was the Herb Adams/ Team Associates Grand Am. It was recognized in many areas as one of the most beautiful Cup cars ever built. So I decided I would build one. Thanks to lots of help from yellowsportwagon (Tim) I got a pretty good idea of construction techniques. Kenny Youngblood did a cutaway of the car for a magazine but there are few surviving pictures so I am winging it somewhat. I am using one of my own resin bodies and a Revell 66 GTO frame. It seems a common construction technique was to use some of the stock frame and floor pans but add a Holman-Moody style front clip and nine inch Ford rear and essentially back half the car. I used the Bill Elliot Thunderbird for the front clip and rear truck arm suspension and cut out the floor pans, which I will re-do to mimic the style of the era. Engine from a Revell Firebird, wheels from the AMT 73 Chevelle, PPP tires and home made rear spoiler and decals. Should be fun.

[redneckrigger]

Wow! Keep the updates coming!

[yellowsportwagon]

Go for it Larry. Get some PPP wheels they are more accurate!

[DoctorLarry]

Thanks for the tip!

[yellowsportwagon]

Plus they’ll be easier to get under the car. Not as deep.

[dwc43]

They did not use truck arms in the 70's Would have had the stock gm 4 link under it.  Did not go to truck arms till the 80's metric chassis cars.

 

[DoctorLarry]

Here are some shots I used as reference. The first is from Stock Car Racing March 1973. Chevelle frame, Ford front clip, truck arm rear. The second is Cale Yarborough's 77 Olds. Clearly has truck arms.

[yellowsportwagon]

2 hours ago, dwc43 said:

They did not use truck arms in the 70's Would have had the stock gm 4 link under it.  Did not go to truck arms till the 80's metric chassis cars.

 

Absolutely wrong. First use of truck arms was in 1963 by Junior Johnson and Ray Fox on the 63 Impala with the Mystery Motor 427. They were used sporadically until 1971-72 when Junior built the   Monte Carlos. Almost all of the GM and Ford Cars 72 and up used truck arms. Cars built by Bobby Allison and the first orange Bud Moore Torino being the exceptions. All  rear coil spring Banjo chassis during the 70s used truck arms.

[DoctorLarry]

The picture is a Stock Car Products chassis out of California. They manufactured chassis components and the article was about the chassis they had just completed. Chevelle frame, Ford Galaxie front end and Chevy truck arm/coil sprong rear. Very similar to other pictures I saw.

[yellowsportwagon]

Yes sir this was common practice in the 70s. Is there any more pictures in that article? Notice it has a 9” Ford housing on it.

Edited December 17, 2018 by yellowsportwagon
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[DoctorLarry]

Yes-there are four or five. Rear mounts for springs and shocks were round steel tubing and the frame was notched in a few places for clearance. It also had a Panhard bar to keep the rear end centered. Single shocks and coil springs-looks like pretty standard fare for the day.

[DoctorLarry]

Here are some more pictures of the chassis and a page from the 1973 NASCAR Handbook:

[vamach1]

Looks pretty mean in black.  Is that the color your are doing?

[DoctorLarry]

Just like the picture. The decals were metallic background. It is a striking car.

[DoctorLarry]

Got some done last night. Got most of the floor pans done, crossmembers for the springs and shocks, and built the brackets for the panhard bar. Test fitted the cage but my front clip angle is off and the cage is a little wide. Tonight I will try to finish the cage and cut the hole for the differential oil cooler. The picture is what I am working from.

[bbowser]

Looking forward to this!  Love the colonnade cars.

[swede70]

Terrific project idea and happy to note the aplomb and thoroughness in evidence and you research and fabricate that which you need.  Being in SE Michigan, Herb Adams is something of a local hero.  Kind thanks and looking forward to each of your updates in turn...

Mike K./Swede70

[DoctorLarry]

Started work on the roll cage. The Thunderbird cage was too wide, did not fit the floor pan right, and the front bars were off. So I pulled a Michangelo and cut everything off except the side bars and the front loop and started from scratch. I did cut the shock mounts off and re-use them. Another reason is that in the Adams car, the remote oil filters are on the firewall and not the frame and the oil tank/cooler for the dry sump is lower near the radiator on the passenger side so the TBird locations were all wrong.

[yellowsportwagon]

You need to lose that small bar that runs up and down above the door bars. The short one near the frt. that wasn’t used till the eighties.

[DoctorLarry]

Missed that one in the Nascar manual. Out comes the X-Acto! How does the rest look? (it is not done yet)

[yellowsportwagon]

Looks cool I usually rebuild the whole top above the door bars. Usually it is too tall and doesn’t fit to the a pillar that good. But that’s just me. Look at the cars found to the rear of the car here. Theirs is a different chassis just an example of how they go

[MarkJ]

Looking Awesome so far.  Looking forward to more updates.

[DoctorLarry]

Test fitted the chassis last night and Tim was right (as usual). Cage did not fit well at all. So I went back to my junk box. I had a glue bomb Nascar Chevelle chassis and a left over Cannon Ball Run Laguna chassis. The cage was meant for a Collonade car and it actually totally copies the Nascar chassis manual picture I posted above so I will modify it and put it in. I also found a seat from a Buick Regal car that looks like the Olds picture so we are starting all over. I will use the Thunderbird clip but rob the rest from the glue bomb. I stopped by Hobby Town last night after school and stocked up on Evergreen plastic so I should not run out of roll cage tubing now!

[DoctorLarry]

Mocked up a new cage with my junk parts and some Evergreen plastic rod. Fits much better so now I need to finish  the floor pans and tunnel, fit the dash and seats, and make a window net.

[DoctorLarry]

Test fitted to the body. Front chassis hoop is too tall so it looks like more fabrication. I will probably just whack all of the tubing off and start from scratch. The rest of it doesn't look too bad, though.