cool! do you have the original articles, can you scan them and post em here? that is very interesting that you have that car, how did you end up with it?
i built up a TPI based 87 formula in the early 90s, we were shootin in the dark making those TPIs run back then. you can read the whole story here at grumpy's:
i was a huge GM fan as my grandpa worked at the chevy plant in janesville wisconsin for many years. when the horsepower wars started heating up again in the mid to late 80s there was no way i would ever consider a mustang, had to be a firebird or camaro all the way. but in 87, the average 5 litre mustang came equipped with a 5 speed and weighed on average 400 -500 pounds less than the average iroc or TA, which GM saddled with automatics 9 to 1 due to customer demand, higher profit margin and less warranty costs with no burned clutches in the warranty period.
well, i knew the way around this dilemma: for 87, pontiac rejoined the budget hot muscle game with the re-introduction of the formula package, priced similar to a stripper 5 litre mustang. i shopped salesmen til i found one who was actually excited about special ordering me a lightweight firebird with the 305 tpi and 5speed, first year for manual tpi cars.
the only other options were ws6 susp, which required limited slip and rear discs. two tone delete, stereo, and no a/c rounded out the package.
the car cost 12,700 out the door which was easily 4 to 6 k less than the irocs and T/As were going for that year.
after ordering, the 6 week wait was excruciating. early march of 87 brought the phone call that the car had arrived, i called off the rest of the work day!
it was fast, agile and gave a good race to many a stock mustang and camaro. but of course after my first try at the drags i wanted more. and the modded mustangs were starting to get much faster.
being a broke young father at the time, my buddies dave and john convinced me that for a couple hundred bucks we could port the stock heads/ exh manifolds, raise the compression ratio with thinner head gaskets, bump the lift a little with 1.6 rockers, homemade aircleaner ducting along with some mickey thompson sticky street drag tires, my qtr mile times dropped a full second.
my mustang buddies were spending tons of money on tunnel rams with the wrong cams, blowing stuff up with nitrous, other silly mods that were not carefully matched.
dave john and i spent more time researching and learning sometimes than we did wrencihing, the naysayers called me 'mr charts and graphs' as they laughed at me. but the laughing stopped on race day.
the car later went through a full teardown and rebuild , eventually reaching low 12s NA on mostly stock (but ported) tpi stuff, pretty wild for '93. now, 21 years later it still races every weekend as an SCCA racer, it has been a race car all its life thanks to my ordering a special lightweight car. i will post the 355 buildup in a later thread to illustrate what the early days of modding TPI were like for those of us in new mexico and arizona.
thanks grumpy.
part 2:
part II of the 87 formula story i posted on the other thread.
after 3 years of daily driving/weekend bracket racing, coinciding with my new construction company 'taking off ' in terms of profit, i planned a buildup of my custom ordered, stripper 87 TPI/5spd formula firebird mentioned in the other thread.
picking up story, late 1991:
i pulled the Formula into my construction warehouse ( nice 1500 sq foot garage with high ceiling), tore it down to bare body/frame.
little did i know that it would be 18 months til the completion of the job.
i had access to a 4 bolt main block out of a 4X4 chevy pickup CIRCA 1974. i laid in a muddy field unbolting that engine from the hulk.
took it down to our local 'racer' engine shop. ( AMS in albuquerque, locals know doug and his great builds), i had them balance, blueprint and otherwise skillfully build the best 355(.030 over) bottom end possible, using the parts i brought them. the cast crank was lovingly deburred by yours truly before the motor build began.
i researched as many TPI articles as i could find in hot rod & car craft. ( other chevy, hot rod mags had not caught on to the EFI trend by '92). john lingenfelter had a breakthrough article in hot rod, late 80s/early 90s. he had taken the TPI setup to new extremes by porting, etc and was the first to get the hot rod magazine writers to get excited about TPI. by crossbreeding a 4 inch Porsche Mass Air Sensor ( vs the GM/bosch +-3.5")he had gotten a corvette running really respectable qtr. mile times while getting incredible day to day driveability.
SLP engineering was up and running at this point, but i was unimpressed with their customer service after my friend Dave Pike had received poor followup on a mfgr's faulty setup of their after market 3rd gen posi rearend.
i decided to use ( new at the time) Accel runners instead of the available TPIS larger runners or SLP tubing runners because the accel's were affordable at SUMMIT and were cast aluminum, instead of tubing. this allowed me to 1/2 siamese the runners, instead of the full siamese of Arizona speed and Marine's 'siamesed' runners ( large diameter tubing runners siamesed with sheetmetal), by going only halfway down the runner area by connecting the ports. my previous porting experience came in handy.
i used graph paper to chart out the torque/hp curves of all the published info ( scarce at that time) in modded TPI based setups. this got me the nickname of "mr' Charts and Graphs" with my racing buds, who normally only had their cars disassembled for no more than a month at time.
using the research, i decided that the torque curve of the stock TPI combined with the high RPM breathing of the prototype superram lingenfelter setup was the best of both worlds. i chose a cheapy summit brand cam ( made by crane hahA ) similar to lingenfleter's grind and brodix street alum. heads from summit. they had good flowing ports and only needed slight milling to achieve my important 10.5:1 compression ratio.
i carefully studied the cam indexing articles i could find, bought a degreeing wheel and indexed the cam perfectly to mfgr's specs using summit's adjustable timing gear set.
i ported the brodix heads nicely, and also gasket matched them carefully to the Mr.Gasket intake gaskets. from there, i ported every bit of the stock GM manifold base, until the aftermarket Edelbrock ports looked small by comparison. the GM plenum was ported, along with smoothing on the stock 52 mm throttle body. later, a simple air divider was added.
to be sure that the porting work was working to max effect, i trial assembled the TPI setup at least 8 times, using specially bent inspection wires and tiny scribe marks on each interface to perfectly gasket match every single component in the TPI intake setup. this was very time consuming, but critical in ensuring that every drop of airflow increase was being utilized. upon final assembly of the TPi setup, each scribe line was micro-aligned to ensure that the port matching was complete.
with the complexity of assembly that accompanies the stock TPI assembly, i don't see how anything less than the above method of assembly would assure maximum airflow results.
due to budget constraints, stock coil, distributor, fuel pump, injectors , t5 trans etc were used. total investment was under 20k including the purchase price of the car in 87.
i rebuilt the stock style water pump using summit's inexpensive 'low drag' impeller kit. summit had an inexpensive windage tray, so i adapted it.
the rear diff was rebuilt using aftermarket GM perf. parts australian BW 3.70 gear set. ( $ 270 or so at the time), since my factory rearend was the Aussie borgwarner.
i made my own custom floorboard-fitting driveshaft loop since i knew i would be running slicks and needed to meet NHRA req's for slicks.
i installed extended studs on my rear axles.
also required for slicks was a scattershield bellhousing. these were cheap from summit, but needed extensive modding to fit a 3rd gen Fbird at the time.
the car, after a year and half, roared to life in the warehouse. in the meantime, i had managed to cut 250 pounds of dead weight out of the car - bumper beams, emissions crap and other bracketry/sound deadening, etc.
the car now weighed 3070 ( vs the actual stock weight of 3320), and was ready for testing of the new, mighty, heavily modded 355.
keep in mind, that in 1992, the people who were modding stock-based EFI systems were a new and rare breed, made up of mostly Buick GN guys, 5.0 mustang dudes and a very few Fbody freaks like myself and Dave Pike.
