1983 PONTIAC TRANS AM

25TH ANNIVERSARY DAYTONA

PACE CAR REPLICA

The instructions said to loosen the exhaust and drop it down.  I didn't want to do this so I used a breaker bar and jack to carefully flex the exhaust away from the floor.  Then I slipped the front of the frame tie between the floor and exhaust.

The second step was to loosely bolt the back end to the front of the lower control arm on the passenger side.

Then I used a bottle jack to push the frame tie up tight against the floor.  After that, the carpet needs to be pulled up a bit to access the floor where the bolt heads will be, and to keep from drilling thru the carpet.  I removed the kick panel, and the door threshold plate and slipped a small piece of 2x4 under the carpet.  I then drilled holes through the floor boards using the frame tie holes as a template.  Then I attached the nuts, bolts, washers, and lock washers that came with the frame ties.  You slip a washer over the bolt, put the bolt down thru the hole you drilled and thru the hole in the frame tie, then slip on a lock washer and the nut.  Since I didn't drop the exhaust system, I couldn't drill one hole on the passenger side.  Only three bolts on the front passenger side... I plan on getting the frame ties welded in, too, so that shouldn't be a problem.  You can see the empty bolt hole just above the bend in the exhaust above.

The passenger side frame tie has several bends in it to conform to the floor pan.  My floor pans are bent up pretty badly, so part of the front mount didn't sit along the floor.  I used a longer bolt to pull the frame tie front "wing" up tight against the floor, then put in the supplied bolt hardware in a second hole.  Once that was done, I removed the longer bolt and put in the proper hardware.

Once the front bolts were in place, I drilled the hole thru the control arm mount and installed the bolt hardware.  After that, tighten up all the bolts, replace the carpet, kick panel, and door threshold and the passenger side frame tie is installed.

Best shot I could get of the installed frame tie.

The driver's side is easier to do - no exhaust to get in your way.  Installation steps are the same as for the passenger side.  The whole frame tie installation took me two-and-a-half hours to do once I got the car up on the ramps.

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