Project Vendetta: The Full Explanation

Words and Pictures By: Elizabeth Puckett

We introduced our two XM employee project cars back in July, and you may have noticed a lack of coverage on one of them. That’s because I basically broke my camera the same week I promised the introduction would be done. Bummer, right? After picking up a new camera (that was paid for in parts money, so double bummer), and fighting for some decent lighting for good pictures, I’m ready to share the story of my Formula so we can start posting about the projects.

Project Vendetta is my car, I bought her when I was 17, she was 6-years old. People thought I was silly for specifically seeking out a 1998, but it was the first year of that body style, and the first year of the F-Body LS1, and that meant a lot to me. I also specifically wanted a Formula because it looked more refined than the Trans Ams; yes, the Trans Ams are sexy cars too, but the Formulas have a smooth coolness about them.

After sorting through some major junk, high-mileage leaky cars, and expensive but not-worth-it cars, I found my perfect car. She was listed as having 100k miles more than she really had due to some miskey on the website of the dealer I bought her from. Thanks to someone’s flub, I got a showroom clean, showroom condition paint, 25k mile 1998 Pontiac Firebird Formula with LS1 and 4L60e for $12k when they were going for at least 10 grand more than that in 2004.

This car was well-loved by someone before finding me, it was hard to tell if anyone had ever actually sat in it, if you didn’t notice the 25k on the clock. It clearly had never been smoked in, ate in, drank in, or had kids in it. No leaks, no imperfections, it was just a perfect car. It came with all of the maintenance records, and ran as good as it looked.

I could have stuck this car in the garage and waited for Mecum 2050 to make some major money on it, but I am a driver, so she was getting driven! Not to kill the suspense, but she now has 110k on the clock, a lot of those being racing miles too.

After owning it and racing it for many years, she looked flawless. This was taken about a month before lowering, putting on the new hood, and new wheels.

After I got her, I became pretty involved in my local car scene, befriending two gearheads who had 10 years of car scene experience on me first. These two had a Cobra and a heavily modified C4 with LT4. I raced the Cobra (untimed) and got the owner pretty bent about it because I pulled away so easily. The next day, we took it to the track and I raced the C4, and I could not believe the results! My stock car, no weight reduction, on a cold day, managed to run a 12.95 e/t pass in the 1/4 mile when I raced the C4 (who btw got a 12.00 flat). After having to let my two competitors inspect the car for ‘hidden mods’, I realized I had tasted blood and I wanted more. It was this run that prompted the local car clubs to refer to her as a ‘factory freak’ car until I started really messing with things.

From there came the bolt-ons and weight reduction, and for a little while, it was on the top 50 fastest bolt-ons via LS1Tech, but this was before LS swapping into lighter cars had really become a ‘thing’ and knocked me into oblivion.

Being one of the fastest bolt-ons, I was taking out cammed cars left and right, which earned me some enemies in the LS community, but it also led me to meeting some really helpful people who wanted to see how low we could get her with just bolt-ons.

It was fun and all, but I found myself wanting a cam, so a cam I got! I got a custom ground COMP Cams 237/242 .605”/.610” 114 LSA cam, and just loved it right away. It stayed like that, with full bolt-ons, for about a year. Then came a 3600 stall torque converter, and I hated it. It felt so lazy, partially because of the stock 3.23 gearing, but I just wasn’t a fan. I got a set of heads to try and help it out, and just never really liked it after I put the high stall in — I even had it rebuilt wondering if it had something wrong with it, and it still, just…sucked.

As I watched my times drop, with my miserable street car, I kept it like it was until a main bearing spun during a track event. It was in such a horrible position, why that bearing? It was the first real ‘problem’ I had ever had with her. To this day I’m not sure what happened, she was babied, the oil was checked between each pass, and only the best products were used. Anyways, it’s hard to get through this part without pointing fingers, so let’s just say that it was a group effort – the engine pretty much exploded — connecting rods snapped, holes punched in the block, the whole-sha-bang.

So engine number two came along, a friend of mine had bought a test engine meant for a GTO, it had little to no mileage on it, and sold it to me for practically nothing because he wanted to see my car back on the road — at this point, I was 22-years old and broke, it would have sat otherwise (thanks Gene!).

Back to the track she went with a new cam, same specs (except a lower LSA), just a different one because the original one has melted aluminum all over it. It also had rebuilt/resurfaced heads, and intake. It doesn’t have the exact same bolt-ons as before, I had sold some of those to pay Gene for the engine (that’s how broke my car had left me at this point).

As a form of stress-relief, I like to hand polish all of the cast pieces in the engine bay.

Another two more years of weekend racing, and the transmission had enough, which was fine by me, I had enough too. I was burnt out on racing, I was burnt out on that horrible torque converter. I had a motorcycle too at this point, so I took to it for a while and sold my transmission and torque converter to someone in my car club for $100.

After a mishap with my bike, I was ready to get back to my car. I had enough time to kind of reset and process the whole ordeal, so I was ready to get back to it. But racing every weekend had taken its toll on me mentally; I am too competitive, too hard on myself, and too hard on my car — I was ready to just enjoy it for once. So instead of replacing the 4L60e with another automatic, I decided to do the six-speed swap.

I bought a transmission, clutch, hydraulics, etc. from a friend, again for cheap (thanks Tyler), and friends Laura and Chris helped us put it in. In between, I paid a guy who claimed to have worked for Tremec to rebuild it, turns out he didn’t because it’s never gone into 3rd with ease, but I was too unfamiliar with the T56 to notice the problems right away.

Since the transmission swap, she’s been a great street car, but I’ve lost interest in putting her on a drag strip — not that I’ve lost my love for drag racing (Dad, stop turning in your grave). I took the money I was saving from not going to the track and breaking stuff constantly to have her tuned by Spartan LSX in Auburn, GA and I didn’t even know how messed up it was until after the shop owner/tuner, Josh, had fixed it. There were so many drivability issues that I had accepted as being part of owning a car with such an aggressive cam, but they were fixed with the tune. I’m not talking dyno tune here either, they took her out on the road and did a full street tune so it finally had some practical and applicable tuning.

Josh also talked me into getting 4.10 gears (can you believe after all that it still had the stock ones?) and that was one of the best investments I’ve made for the car. Having Spartan do the gears is also the only time work (of the mechanical persuasion) has been done to my car without my involvement. That was about as hard as dropping my kids off for their first day of preschool, but I pulled through it since the install was done in a day or two and I knew I could trust them since they did such a phenomenal job on the tune.

After the tune and gears, I took her home and put a new VFN Smoothie-Q hood on my car (I get asked about that hood every time I take her out), lowered her about 2” all around, and put some C6 black and polished deep dish wheels on her. Since lowering her, the traction has been terrible, even with an adjustable torque arm, BMR LCAs and some other adjustments. She recently got an adjustable UMI pan hard bar, and that has made a world of difference, but she still needs some more upgrades to get ready for her second coming as an autocross car.

That brings me to the upcoming plans… A (real) transmission rebuild by Spartan and clutch replacement is needed to drive her again, I’m ironing out some logistics on that, but I can’t let her sit for too much longer. Then it’s suspension overhaul time, then brake overhaul time. New springs and shocks (the ones I used to lower initially belong in a landfill somewhere), then bigger rotors and better pads are priority, then tires, sway bars, etc. Just pretty much upgrading anything that’s managed to stay stock. The interior is stock, and sad, it’s the only thing on my car that’s showing age, and I’m going to totally modernize the entire interior when I can decide on a material and pattern for the seats and headliner.

That’s the short version, I know it seems like I covered everything, but it’s been under the knife so many times (and a special thank you to all who have helped just to help), I couldn’t possibly retro-cover it all. I’ve made a lot of mistakes working on her, mainly, I didn’t invest a lot of forethought into how certain mods would compliment (or not) each other, or how I would like driving it after mods (i.e. that devil of a torque converter that almost turned me into a full-time biker), but it’s been a really fun 12 years, and I have no plans of getting rid of her. She may get a big brother when a certain special trim Camaro comes out next year, but I still plan on working on Vendetta and getting her on the track again soon.

I couldn’t think of the best place to but this, but I wanted to thank our friend Joe who has easily offered up more parts and time turning wrenches on Vendetta than anyone outside of this house. Pictured changing my hydraulic fluid, in the rain.

Specs (take it easy on me here, I will probably forget half of what’s done):

Owner: Elizabeth Puckett

Hometown: L.A. to Atlanta transplant

Vehicle Year/Make/Model: 1998 Pontiac Firebird Formula

Engine: Stock displacement LS1

Cam: COMP Cams

Heads: Patriot

Transmission: T56

Shifter: MGW

Intake: Fast Toys Performance air lid, MAF, Spartan ported throttle body

Headers: Pacesetter long tubes (painted white because I’m fun like that)

Exhaust: Custom true-dual exhaust, built on the car, feeding into Moroso Spiral Flow mufflers