You Need This: Pontiac Trans Am in one-year-only Martinique Blue

I remember reading an article once where Kyle and Dennis Mecham, the brothers behind the dealer modified Macho T/A, said that a huge amount of performance could be unlocked just by going through, fine tuning, and using different metering rods in the Q-jet.  They said that alone would wake up a 400 or 403 immensely.  

In reply to A 401 CJ :

I've got an old copy of How To Build Max Performance Pontiac V8's by Jim Hand. It spends A LOT of time going over things like recurving the distributor, porting heads and stock intake manifolds, and Q-Jet tuning to get basically free horsepower out of these things. When I was building my Pontiac 400, I used this as a guide, and was able to piece together a nice little mutt of an engine with decent factory parts. I was able to recurve the distributor with this guide, and it helped quite a bit in choosing the right springs and all that. Still need to go through the carb at some point and re-jet it. 

Tony Sestito said:

In reply to A 401 CJ :

I've got an old copy of How To Build Max Performance Pontiac V8's by Jim Hand. 

That was pretty much the bible for Pontiac enthusiasts, it's since been replaced by an updated book from Rocky Rotella that includes most of what Jim wrote along with newer parts and technology that have come along since Jim's book was published.

I grew up in a small rural town of ~2000 people.  Back in the mid 1970s, there were seven or eight Trans Ams running around town including a 1972 455HO and a 1974 SD455, which I thought was a pretty high per capita amount.  There were also several GTOs including a 1969 Judge, and there was one guy with a GT-37.  Of course there were a number of muscle cars and pony cars from the other manufacturers as well, I don't remember them all but the parking lot at the local drive in restaurant was pretty crowded on Saturday nights.  I didn't have any money so I had to make do with my worn out '61 Catalina four door sedan; I did manage to find a 389 tripower engine out of a '64 GTO and swapped that in, but the added HP killed the weak slim jim automatic transmission after about 20 miles and that was that.    I went off to college and never got around to fixing it, but to make up for it today I have a '61 Bonneville two door hardtop, factory tripower/four speed car.