26th Aug 2006, 19:16

Hi

I just turned seventy yesterday and my son gave us an 89 Firebird with 88K miles on it about a month ago as an early birthday gift. He used to drive it as a commute car 100 miles per day, he said he got 27 to 28 mpg on the V6. It's real peppy so it must have the bigger engine.

It was vandalized in 1999 and he parked it in the garage until now. We put in a new battery and it started on the full tank of gas that had been in from 1999.

I replaced the t tops that were stolen and the passenger door glass that was broken. It has the VAT ignition key system so the weren't able to steal it. They did break the steering column cover around the turn signal lever. Now the high beams don't work.

The headlight doors don't retract unless you rock the switch right to left a few times. I suspect the contact are corroded and cleaning them will fix the problem. Someone else has the same problem and and was thinking about replacing the motors at $100 each. Hope he reads this and tries the switch jiggle first.

I have running lights, but haven't found the switch to turn them on yet.

My daughter has offered to repaint the car as the clear-coat is going bad. They have a body shop in Michigan and want us to drive it there for Thanksgiving.

I guess we'll call It the Phoenix Firebird as it is in deed a hard bird to kill.

My wife found this site so there will be frequent visit in the future. We enjoyed all of the comments and thank you all.

31st Aug 2006, 01:16

Hi

This is a follow up on our bird. She is a 2.8 V6 and passed smog check even with some of the old gas still in the tank.

Today we were in a cattle drive with the bird. Someone left a gate open and approx 250 cattle were loose on the road and there was no place to go. The bird is red so I'm glad the bulls were not loose also. Due to extreme fire danger you can't pull off into the dry grass. No damage done except the tires turned a little brown.

Thanks for reading my comments.

70 year old man.