Update after a full week of daily driving it for the first time. I’m halfway thru the gear break in - 250 miles on them now. RPMs at 65 are about 1700…not too bad.
I can’t be too hard on them yet but I think this is a good ratio that adds some more oomph off the line, still easy to modulate without spinning the tires, and not too high of RPMs at cruising speed. I don’t do a huge amount of freeway driving anyways and I actually prefer taking a few more minutes to go to work but backroads.
Unrelated to the gears - found a few more gremlins but fairly easy to correct. My hood was vibrating on the left hand side a bit and also was rubbing up the fender. I had previously adjusted it to finally get it level with the fender on both driver and passenger sides but the driver side fender was too close. Had a friend help me pull the fender out a tiny bit while I tightened the front top fender bolts. That cleared enough room and made it look pretty even with the passenger side hood gap.
The hood latch was also a tad too high up leading to the play in the hood. I was able to get the radiator support to lower a bit by adjusting the bolts in the middle of the support. It’s a little harder to close the hood now but it fixed the vibration issue.
One thing I’m noticing is that the rear suspension is a bit noisy / creaky sounding. I don’t think it’s squeaking. Guessing this has to do with the leaf springs. The top leaf spring pads look like they’re cracking. I had replaced them when installing the PTFB springs many years back but wondering if the wrong lubricant was applied to them and screwed up the rubber. If anyone else has suggestions on how to best lube the rear suspension let me know. I think the entire suspension needs a full lubrication but the rear noise is much more noticeable. However the handling is still really good despite the noise. Between the stereo and exhaust I can drown out that noise but I’d like to address it. I bought some new spring to install and will lube it up at the same time I replace those.
Last item I noticed is that my front spoiler on the driver side is hanging much lower than the flares. The spoiler and flares are Danko repops and look to be missing the brackets to connect the flares and spoiler. For some reason the passenger side is aligning without the bracket. The flares aren’t drilled with holes to mount the brackets so I’ll have to drill into them. Bought these spoiler brackets off Amazon.
https://a.co/d/aSiqkxkThat all being said I’m starting to like driving the Trans Am a lot more than my truck so we may keep this going post break in.