'70 Pontiac LeMans, The Woes Continue! 461 Pontiac runs GREAT... then doesn't! Trans problems?

Ever heard the phrase one step forward, and two steps back? Well that seem to apply particularly well to our Pontiac LeMans project here and what is beginning to feel like a bit of a curse. Not familiar with this Poncho yet? Well it's been sitting since late summer so you may or may not have ever seen it, a little quick back story.

What you see here is a 1970 Pontiac LeMans with a "beautiful" patina but otherwise a very solid car. Floors are good, frame is good, body panels have just a little bit of surface rust. When we picked the car up a number of years ago one of the main things that drew us to THIS particular machine is what was under the hood. Gone is whatever powerplant that originally was in this car replaced with a 1972 Pontiac 455 block topped with 1976 Pontiac 6X heads, arguably one of the best combinations you can put together for budget Tin Indian power. Unfortunately shortly after purchasing the car some issues cropped up that made us question a few things so the engine and transmission were removed to be rebuilt.

The engine went to a company we were doing engine building with at the time Performance Research Inc and the TH350 or "Turbo 350" transmission was sent to Metro Transmissions for refreshing and upgrades to handle the planned power. After the engine build was complete and runs made on their engine dyno the engine and transmission were reinstalled in the car and it was ready to enjoy mid summer 2021.

Unfortunately as you'll quickly see after a few hundred miles, one awesome burnout at Indian Uprising 2021, and a couple lunch drives, something went terrible terribly wrong.

So what happened? Is the extremely expensive engine alright? Did the freshly rebuilt transmission fail? Is there something wrong with our big bad Boss Hog Outlaw torque converter from ACC? Did we put something together wrong? Just what took this thing off the road, and how expensive is it going to be to fix?! Come along and let's start answering some questions!