This lightweight piece of yellow sunshine is ready for a new home. It’s rust-free with no accidents under it’s belt and the body is straight. The only reason Marc Ramos is selling this project is due to personal circumstances. He just bought a house, and has one toddler with another baby on the way. We all know we’ve had to sell our toys when family matters happen. Even with his priorities straight, there is no doubt he is upset about letting this jewel go.

Marc shared, “I once owned a ’73 Vega with a shop built 350SBC and T5 trans, but sold it due to multiple issues that made it less reliable than my fuel injected project cars. But it was by far the most fun I had in a car.”

“I swapped in an S10 rearend to handle the LS1, and added tubular control arms. I purchased a chromoly front K-frame with a custom Mustang II steering rack and chromoly upper/lower control arms. For the fuel setup, I had a custom aircraft aluminum fuel tank built with baffles and used a WS6 fuel pump assembly, this all fit in a custom trunk where the previous Spare tire was located,” he said.

Everything has been done to this swap other than the wiring and the fuel lines from the fuel cell. The gas/brake pedal assembly also needs to be installed. The ECM for the LS1 needs to be reprogrammed and installed.

“The Firewall and trans tunnel were completely removed and modified by pushing back the firewall about three inches and the tunnel widened to fit the LS1 and trans comfortably,” Marc said.

That is one less thing to be done to get it on the road. He describes what he did to the interior, “The interior is completely gutted and I have a custom aluminum racing dashboard for it. The steering wheel is out of a ’92 Nissan 240sx, but it needs a new column connected to the Mustang II rack using Flaming River joints. I also have a spare front bumper, spare driver door, and all the original plastic pieces as well.”

The WS6 brakes were swapped over to provide better stopping power. Even though the rearend is a Chevy 10-bolt, the posi-traction unit from the WS6 is available as well.

Now, let’s get to the most important part: the engine. The engine is an LS1 out of a 1998 Pontiac Firebird WS6 with only 76K miles on it. Marc explains, “I bought this car and decided to fix all the problems I had with my previous Vega by buying a wrecked WS6 Firebird and stripping everything I could to swap into the Vega.”

The LS1 is mounted in the engine bay with custom motor mounts fabricated out of the original engine brackets, they were cut and welded to steel plates and use original rubber motor mounts. The Engine was completely refreshed with new parts and an LS6 intake manifold. The brakes are mounted by using S10 front spindles which have a custom mounting kit installed.

So what do you think? Is this a project-underway that is worth finishing for you? It’s still listed, and could make a sweet street machine when completed.