Here's sound advice for every young man in America: If your mother offers to take you out and says, "Order whatever you want," make sure you go to the closest Pontiac dealership-not the nearest fast food restaurant-and order the best and most-powerful Pontiac available.
Sound farfetched? Not really. Every young man's automotive dream list includes an entry about taking his parent(s) into a dealership and choosing for them his favorite car. The addendum to that dream is, of course, "How then do I talk them into giving that vehicle to me?"
Such is the story of Wayne M. Peters of Olmsted Township, Ohio, whose dream came true in 1985 when his mother, Barbara Scherrer, allowed him to take her to a Pontiac dealership and order whatever he wanted. Wayne agreed, and in doing so, he acquired a taste for a Trans Am that he satisfies to this day.
In 1985, Wayne was a 25-year-old motorcycle-parts and service-shop manager at AA Cycle in Parma, Ohio. Both he and his mother loved the looks of the then-current Third-Gen Firebirds introduced in the '82 model year. Barbara, a manager with Ohio Bell Telephone Company, had already bought a new '82 Firebird SE, but it wasn't built for performance, nor was it particularly reliable. After three years of ownership, she sold it outright.
Wayne watched the Firebird model-year changes closely as his hunger grew, but it wasn't until the release of the '85 and '86 Trans Ams with their 5.0L 305ci Tune-Port Injection (TPI) motor did he feel that performance had successfully returned to the model.
He then talked his mother into giving Pontiac's F-body a second chance, bringing her to Axelrod Pontiac-Buick in Parma, Ohio. "I picked out the meanest T/A I could find at the time," Wayne recalls. He checked off the 5.0L TPI engine (Code LB9), the WS6 suspension package, black upper and lower body paint (Codes 41U and 41L), Carmine custom interior (Code 72C), silver, red, and orange lower body stripes (Code 80A), power door locks (Code AU3), power windows (Code A31), and removable hatch T-tops (Code CC1). You see, when his mom said, "Order whatever you want," Wayne Peters took her statement literally. He was hungry not for a 59-cent burger but for a Trans Am.
The screaming chicken is in...
The screaming chicken is in single color and listed as RPO Code DX-1. This Trans Am didn't gain this option from the factory, so at the customer's request, it was dealer-installed. It doesn't appear on the Trans Am's buildsheet.
A dealer search revealed that a brand new '86 T/A with the same colors and factory options the family desired was in a showroom at Foster Pontiac-Buick in Agincourt, Ontario, Canada. The Pontiac was shipped back to the United States, its metric-style kilometer/speedometer was replaced with a mph indicator, but the Canadian oil pressure/temperature gauge remained. Axelrod Pontiac received the T/A on January 23, 1986.
Wayne and Barbara's Trans Am's TPI engine was the top-of-the-line performance powerplant producing 205 hp in '85 and 190 hp in '86 (the same as the L69 four-barrel H.O. engine in '86).
This small-block Chevy-based engine features a 3.74 bore and a 3.48-inch stroke that equates to a 5.0L displacement (305 ci). The block is stamped with factory code DKJ.
The two-bolt main block contains a nodular crank, steel connecting rods, and cast-aluminum pistons. Compression ratio is 9.5:1, and the valve sizes check in at 1.84/1.50. Cam specs are 179/194-degrees duration with 0.350/0.385-inch lift. The TPI system features a set of long, tuned intake runners to boost torque and port injection to feed fuel to the engine. An electronic control module (ECM) incorporates a mass air flow (MAF) sensor among others to control the system. The 700R-4 four-speed automatic came with a 2.77:1 rear-gear ratio to complete the drivetrain.