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V8 Turbo Trans Am

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beygon

New Member
Joined
Nov 9, 2003
Messages
63
I just saw a V8 Turbo Trans Am, 1981, today, are they common and I just haven't paid attention or????
 
yeah 81 had a couple options for engines.. The 4.9 V8 I think was lame.. lasted one year...I have not seen to many.
 
they had the turbo 301 in 80 and 81 in 80 they had a indy pacecar edition that they made 5700 of them and 81 they had a nascar edition they made 2000 of them plus all the regular turbo 301 cars made. they were boat anchor engines though. i have had a lot of 70-81 f bodys and never had a running 301 turbo car the engines are either blown up or replaced with something else. hope this helps
 
the money you would spend fixing the quirks and getting it to run right(had problems with pinging cause of the turbo running with a carb) you could get pretty close cost wise to doing a swap in a third gen t/a instead.
 
It was the same design used on the turbo Buicks of the day.
Here a link to read all about the 80 and 81 Turbo TA.
Go to this link and click on the 1980 or 1981 TA link on the left side of the page.
http://www.iwaynet.net/~gl&lisk/transam.html

They made about 30k turbo Trans Am between 80 and 81, and not a bad 345 ft/lb of torque, most didn't run well due to the poor gas of the day, they required 93-94 octane.
When I was looking for a 2nd Gen TA, I test drove at least a half a dozen 80 Indy Pace cars and all were pigs, even those with under 20k miles.
 
It's kind of too bad that 80 and 81 T/As ended on such a sour note. Turbo issues aside, the 301 was a POS. The deck height is different so you can't use different heads, strong rods etc. The crank made of rubber. The block was lightend so much it's too weak to make more hp anyway. Dam shame. Cool looking car stuck with bad technology. It would be cool to retrofit a Turbo T/A with a TB. That would get some heads being scratched. On a good day the T301 would run in the high 16s maybe.
 
turbo V8

Thanks for all the good information, I was thinking about that car, it is for sale. I will stick with my Buick.

Dean
 
Back in high school in 1979, there was a guy who had one new and I had a chance to pair off with him in my Dads 78 Caprice Classic 350, 2.41 rear.. and beat him 1/2 car race after race. That tel you have fast they were?? lol
 
once you get past the small cam, ****ty heads and the restrictive intake it was a great motor ;):D
 
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