My Car The Last Indian

[Last Indian]

2000 F.1 GTX (AKA) The Last Indian. Because the MS2000 platform was the very last American built, designed & engineered Pontiac!

 

Some bling for the front cover

[Robert]

2000 F.1 GTX (AKA) The Last Indian. Because the MS2000 platform was the very last American built, designed & engineered Pontiac!

Love the car, did you make that lip yourself?

 

[Last Indian]

Love the car, did you make that lip yourself?

I assume you mean the lower splitter? Yes, among many many other things with the car. Suspension, engine, interior, structural things as well as other exterior body appearance pieces. Car only has 39,000 + summer only miles on it.

 

[Last Indian]

As an example. The aftermarket SD front air dam was an add on to the front cover using two way tape. Dumb idea IMO. So I bought a new OEM cover & made a one piece unit. In that way it looks factory & finished. Even when off the car it looks factory as there were modifications made to the OEM cover to make it fit & perform as a factory piece. This was a planed around adding the lower splitter at a later date. So there were add in structural pieces incorporated into the new cover/SD air dam to attach the splitter to.

 

[Robert]

That looks fantastic! I like how you made it all one piece, it gives it such a clean, seamless look. Did you use plastic cement or fiberglass for the build?

 

[RebelRacer99]

2000 F.1 GTX (AKA) The Last Indian. Because the MS2000 platform was the very last American built, designed & engineered Pontiac!

Welcome

 

[Last Indian]

Welcome

Thank You! Good to be here.

 

[Last Indian]

That looks fantastic! I like how you made it all one piece, it gives it such a clean, seamless look. Did you use plastic cement or fiberglass for the build?

Well that would be a lengthy answer. The original SD air dam is made to over lap the cover on the inside face of cover at the wheel well. It also had a much lower projection in the front at the bottom, neither of which did I want. So in the pictures you will see that the portion of the dam that would over lap the cover in the wheel well area is cut away & the bottom lower lip of the dam is reduced by 2”. The air dam is not glued or cemented. It is attached through an array of very thin aluminum brackets I made that rivet to both the cover & the air dam. Those areas are countersunk & filled on final completion with body filler. The void space between the two pieces is filled with polyurethane foam, which gives the whole unit great one piece rigidity.
I well show some more detail pictures that will help with seeing how the assembly came together.

 

[Last Indian]

So, below are some pictures that indicate the attachment manner of the air dam.

 

[Robert]

So, below are some pictures that indicate the attachment manner of the air dam.

Thank you for sharing these! They’ll be really helpful for anyone looking to make similar modifications to their vehicle. Would you mind if we feature this information on our main website once the modification pages are live? We would link it back to this post.

 

[PierreNotPear]

2000 F.1 GTX (AKA) The Last Indian. Because the MS2000 platform was the very last American built, designed & engineered Pontiac!

Killer lookin car, that F.1 kit must be super rare bc you're the only other person I've seen with it. Welcome to the forums

 

[Last Indian]

Thank you for sharing these! They’ll be really helpful for anyone looking to make similar modifications to their vehicle. Would you mind if we feature this information on our main website once the modification pages are live? We would link it back to this post.

No I don’t mind at all. There is actually quite a bit more to this whole front cover build hat I will try to detail as I have a chance.

 

[RebelRacer99]

I think Rob's gold car is the F1

 

[Robert]

I think Rob's gold car is the F1

It's a replica with mirrored colors. The other one is from NY, the guy moved to FL and parted out his car so I got his good and wing.

 

[Last Indian]

Ok before I go further let me clarify. The Last Indian is not an official F.1 or Gtx. The F.1 was a sanctioned Pontiac dealer authorized aftermarket option done by MPD inc operated by Eric Peters, now out of business. And The GTX option was the same type deal with SLP. I knew Eric & we talk many times, & while I liked some of the upgrades he added to the GP there were others I didn’t want. The same held true for SLP’s & their upgrades. So other than the MPD F.1 hood all the changes are my designs. I use the designation F.1 & GTX because the F.1 designation is used for Ram Air & the GTX designation is used for experimental, both of which much of this car is!
Now to clarify that a little more I will say this. I knew exactly what & how to make the changes that needed to be made to create a intimidating ground pounder in the vein of the muscle car era ground pounders. Wheels, engine, transmission, suspension & aesthetics. Removing the mentality of a business to produce multiple pieces, so sacrificing the best way for the smart production way was not my goal. Example, SLP’s air box may function ok, it is better than the factory, but it is far from optimal! My setup, which is rooted in physics law actually is. So you folks might wish for me to continue to detail these. Yet if you believe this to be just BS. Than we’re good as is.

 

[RebelRacer99]

Ok before I go further let me clarify. The Last Indian is not an official F.1 or Gtx. The F.1 was a sanctioned Pontiac dealer authorized aftermarket option done by MPD inc operated by Eric Peters, now out of business. And The GTX option was the same type deal with SLP. I knew Eric & we talk many times, & while I liked some of the upgrades he added to the GP there were others I didn’t want. The same held true for SLP’s & their upgrades. So other than the MPD F.1 hood all the changes are my designs. I use the designation F.1 & GTX because the F.1 designation is used for Ram Air & the GTX designation is used for experimental, both of which much of this car is!
Now to clarify that a little more I will say this. I knew exactly what & how to make the changes that needed to be made to create a intimidating ground pounder in the vein of the muscle car era ground pounders. Wheels, engine, transmission, suspension & aesthetics. Removing the mentality of a business to produce multiple pieces, so sacrificing the best way for the smart production way was not my goal. Example, SLP’s air box may function ok, it is better than the factory, but it is far from optimal! My setup, which is rooted in physics law actually is. So you folks might wish for me to continue to detail these. Yet if you believe this to be just BS. Than we’re good as is.

I actually would like to know more about your build, I don't think anyone here is gonna call it BS.

 

[Last Indian]

I actually would like to know more about your build, I don't think anyone here is gonna call it BS.

Thanks Reb, I wasn’t saying anyone would, but if there was than ok, I just don’t want to be that guy that starts some big controversy!

So stepping through the front cover a bit more. The front cover was to become a secondary air inlet to the induction system! The primary modification that was made I thought I would cover under the engine section, but I guess it makes more sense to join them since they’re interrelated. If you look at the SD air dam the side of the dam near the wheel well has an scoop appearance with a opening. When used as an add on piece, I.E. not married to the front cover, so any water entering this slot simply drains our the bottom area between the two parts. In my design I wanted to incorporate this into a NACA duct system. Which is partly why the assembly is filled with expandable foam. Now I won’t go into tons of boring physics, but in a nut shell in the early “50” NASA did extensive research on low pressure on the fuselage of early jets & how to utilize it. In those jets the engines were housed in the back fuselage. The research was to determine the best way to supply air to the jet engine in huge quantities as it was essential for engine function. The NACA duct proved to be that. You can still eye them to this day on the side windows of NASCAR windows! For NASCAR it’s to deliver air the the cabin & driver. Now the configuration on the air dam is not a NACA duct, but it is a low pressure area & so in this design, which does incorporate Bernoulli’s principles in the upper air box as you will see in the post. The low pressure area of the air dam causes air to be pulled in to the open port, but the Bernoulli principle in the upper box more that triples the flow rate of air pulled into the port!
No doubt these will need additional expansion.

 

[RebelRacer99]

That's pretty slick

 

[Last Indian]

Ok, any of you who have torn the OEM air box apart know how restrictive it is! On the same hand safeguarding the ECM is paramount. So my approach was this. The box sits directly behind the headlight & these headlights don’t sit tight to any of the body, I.E. there is lots of air space around the light. Additionally the lights actually have a bit of an airfoil to them. So even with the headlight in place it has exceptional air flow characteristics. By literally gutting the front section of the box, section closest the headlight, & removing the entire face that is closest to the headlight to allow full air volume to enter the air box & then building a insert plate to cover & protect the ECM, you create a Ram air box! That’s not just a word I’m throwing out there! When you build it as I did with an incline floor & a flat opposite side floor or ceiling in this case, in a tunnel, moving from a larger volume to a smaller volume, the air sees this as a airfoil. This causes the air to increase in speed! This speed not only becomes Ram air, but the accelerant to Bernoulli’s principal across the reverse fish mouth protruding into the air box that will supply air from the NACA duct in the SD air dam via the hose that connects the two. What about the filter? A good quality factory type filter is more than capable of delivering all the filtration needed.

 

[Last Indian]

Building a splitter that actually works as a splitter, is an enhancement to the NACA duct Ram air function! Plus enhance the overall front end look! This final design developed over about a 8 month period.
First of all I wanted a splitter that would add to the look of the front end! What does that mean? Well some, or all may not agree with me, but while I love the throwback to the muscle car coke bottle shape of the 7th Gen GP. I have always felt that the front nose, especially from the side view looks weak! Why? Well, my opinion is the front nose from the side comes to a point just above the license plate cover. This is enhanced by stock hood which has a forward slope , than a sharper angle of the cover at the grille area. A short flat area at the license plate cover & than a step back angle below that. This makes a noticeable progressively smaller, top to bottom appearance as you move away from the windshield to the front nose.
I wanted to beef up the look of the front nose, I.E. make the nose look less slopped & more blunt as opposed to pointed. While removing as much as possible the slopped look of the hood towards the nose design.

So that first step was the F.1 MPD hood. Because this hood visually tends to raise the front profile of the hood. Than the SD air dam. This piece pushes the lower portion of the front cover out forward, giving the side profile a more blunt look, as well as beefier one. Still I wanted a little more blunt appearance & less roll at the very bottom of the cover. So the splitter needed to be that piece! Plus perform as a splitter & enhance the NACA duct! Notice that the first picture is with the stock front cover & the first splitter I made. The next two are with the add of the SD air dam & the second splitter I made, which was modified to become the final splitter used. Notice in the 4th picture there is an overall appearance of a more blunt front end.

Hopefully these pictures will detail that objective.