I decided to take my 1988 Firebird Trans-Am while my friend rented a Challenger.
BHPian AKTransAM recently shared this with other enthusiasts:
This was a 10 day roadtrip that myself and 3 other friends did last month. We had been planning it for around a year, after we did a roadtrip last year in a rental. We kept the trip planning very flexible. We had a couple of things we knew we wanted to do, namely visiting Yosemite National Park, and driving the amazingly beautiful Tioga Pass Road from California into Nevada, but besides that the rest of the trip was planned on the go. This time I wanted to take one of my Firebirds for the roadtrip, while my friend was content with renting a car. Since we were going to be going across multiple high mountain passes (the Tioga Pass being a notable one) across a few thousand miles, I decided to take my 1988 Firebird Trans-Am instead of my 1977 Trans-Am for a couple of reasons: a) The 1988 is fuel injected, while the 1977 is carbureted. I didn’t want to deal with engine backfires or fueling issues that I knew would happen on some of the passes with altitude and thin air on a carbureted engine, and b) the 1988 Firebird has an overdrive 4 speed auto transmission, while the 1977 Firebird only has a 3 speed non overdrive auto transmission. I figured the OD would help with keeping RPM’s and fuel consumption low over the nearly 3000 miles we estimated for the trip (the 1977 Firebird has a 20 gallon tank, but only gives me 10 mpg with sedate driving).
Prior to the roadtrip, we had to do some preventative maintenance on the 1988 Firebird. The car was running great, but I wanted to go over a few things regardless since it’s a 36 year old car with 100,000+ miles on it. We took it into my friends garage since he has 3 lifts in there and it’s much easier working on this car while on a lift. We gave it an inspection to see what needed to be addressed in addition to the basic things I’d already planned. The 1st time on the lift we changed out the oil, took off the wheels to inspect the brakes, changed the rear differential oil, and also the fuel filter which is right by the fuel tank in this car. We checked the transmission fluid dipstick, which I’m glad we did. It was nearly black and had a burnt smell, which told us that the car had probably never had the transmission fluid changed since new in 1988. At this point we were hoping that the clutch packs were still in one piece! The transmission had always shifted great, but you never know! Anyway I purchased a transmission gasket and filter kit, and we brought it back to the lift a 2nd time the next week. We dropped the transmission pan and it was still the original gasket from 36 years ago. We weren’t going to drop the entire transmission and remove the torque converter, so we could only change roughly half the transmission fluid, with the other half still remaining in the torque converter section. But that would still be better than nothing. Unfortunately no shop in town does a transmission fluid flush here, which would have been the best way to go (at least not a shop I’d trust). Luckily the transmission pan didn’t have any excess metal flakes in the bottom, which told us that the clutch packs were still intact luckily! We changed the transmission filter and fitted the pan back with the new gasket. To access the transmission pan fully we had to remove the transmission crossmember, which was easy enough since this car doesn’t have any rust on it. However, the transmission crossmember mount broke in half while removing the crossmember (it was the original 36 year old metal/rubber mount from GM). It wasn’t unexpected that the rubber section of the mount had broken in half. At this time I also noticed that after taking the rear differential cover off the last time to change the fluid, I had messed up the RTV seal. So for the 3rd time, I brought it back to my friends lift after ordering a new polyurethane transmission crossmember mount, and also decided to take off the rear differential cover, refill it and redo the cover seal. At this point we were finally done! I had also changed the front disc brakes which were worn out, and all maintenance was finally done. We still had a month to go before the trip, which was planned as I wanted to drive the car after all this work to make sure everything was still running good.
Finally 2 weeks before the trip I took my car to the barge to have it shipped from Alaska to Seattle, Washington, which was the starting point of the trip. There’s no road access into or out of where I live in Alaska, with only air or sea access. Finally we got down to Seattle the day before the trip, and my friend picked up his rental which was a 2024 Dodge Challenger. The next day we went to the shipping company, picked up my car, and we were off. There were 2 people in each car. My main concern at this point was to keep an eye on the temperature gauge over the passes and if we got stuck in traffic. The 1982 to 1992 Pontiac Firebirds were designed by GM to run really hot (for emission reasons) before the electric fans kicked on (224 degrees F before the fans kick on), which is very disconcerting when you watch the engine temperature climb up rapidly. These cars were designed to have an air dam below the front end to funnel in air while moving since the design doesn’t have a front grill. Which is great while moving, but not when you’re standing still and the engine is running on a hot day! As it turned out the car never overheated even once, not in the few times we were stuck in slow traffic in +80 degrees F, or crawling up and down mountain passes in hot conditions and thin air. The electric fans came on as they were supposed to (I don’t care for electric fans at all-I prefer the old school mechanical fans). The 1988 performed flawlessly across 2700 miles, giving me an average of 23 mpg thanks to long highway driving, which is fantastic for a 36 year old V8 Chevy 350 engine! Photos of the trip below across multiple pages
Friends garage. Yes, he has a great collection!
Brake pad replacement
Fuel filter replacement
Changing out the rear differential oil
Redoing the seal. I had to remove the cover, drain all the oil out, redo the seal and refill the diff. No more leaks after this!
Changing out the transmission fluid and filter after dropping the pan. The red circle is the broken mount between the transmission and the crossmember
Replacing the transmission mount
Attachment 2689820
Day 1. The rental Challenger
My 1988 Firebird
My friends son took this pic from the Challenger as we drove by. One of the best pics of my car
Stop along the way to check out these falls in a National Park
Lunch Stop
Traces of a forest fire from not too long ago
We stopped in Reno, Nevada, for the night. We found out there was a small Cars and Coffee gathering the next morning, so we stopped there to check it out on our way out of town
Beautiful Oldsmobile 442
Pristine Plymouth Roadrunner
Had to park mine there as well! She was quite dirty at this point after the drive from the day before
Stop for the night in the quaint town of Mariposa, California, before heading to Yosemite National Park the next day, which was one of the planned stops
The Dodge Challenger is really quite a large car and completely dwarfs the Firebird
This showed up in front of us on the highway-I’m sure some folks will get the reference 
Continue reading BHPian AKTransAM’s road trip experience for more insights and information.
