Well i finally have another third gen...camaro number 5 haha. Anyway i picked this little guy up for 600$. Runs and drives surprisingly well. I went over the car before i grabbed ti looking for the usual rust...floor, bottom of the doors, hatch, around the windshield...found nothing. However the car got hit pretty hard in the front virtually toasting the front part of the frame. Found a straight bird and hacked off the front of that and am currently having it sand blasted to remove the small amounts of surface rust from it. Anyway recently i pulled off the fenders and found alittle more damage. I dont think its anything to really worry about but w/e, i wanted some peoples opinions. Ive never built a tbi car...ive always been tpi..had my fair share with a cammed 92 and a 383 stroker..edelbrock heads and tpi system..they were fun but im looking for something new...so i picked up this guy. I figure i can just weld the cracks and be fine right? Then eventually get the front end welded in and stick it on a frame straightener and have the small crease by the battery tray pulled back straight..

Were you ever on brevard f-body or the f.i.t. site?

yup...used to have the 92 and the 88

Sweet, can't wait to see how this one comes along.

Well time for an update. I started hammering away at the front end yesterday nice...drilling out all the noticeable spot welds..then worked on it for about 2 1/2 hours today and finally got the bitch off. If you plan on doing this...air tools are god, especially a good air chisel. 50% of the time you wont drill out the spot welds perfectly and thats where a good air chisel comes in handy..it will free the panel with no problems. For a first time do'er i'd say it came out damn near perfect..the driver side gave me some trouble and i cut up some pieces a bit much but nothing a small weld couldn't fix. I would just like to state here i am 19 and have no unibody repair experience, I have done some body work..but nothing that involved cutting the frame of the car..but i will always dive head first into the unknown if it means im going to learn something knew. If i can do this then YOU can too..

So here's what we got so far...Im still waiting for the front end of the bird i cut off to come back from getting blasted so i weld her up. Ill get all that documented and up on here as soon as i get it back..

Almost off...



Cleaned up and all removed..

are camaro and firebird fronts interchangeable? i am thinking on putting a camaro front end on my bird and because of the head lights i thought that i have to replace the radiator support to get the new bumper cover to fit. Am i correct or there is simpler way of doing it? You stated that you are going to put a bird front end on, does that mean that you will have to go with the headlight set up from a bird as well?

subframes are the same from what i can tell i gave it a breif looking over when i had them next to eachother..nothign caught my eye as being any different..
----------
you can bolt a bird's nose to it...I believe that latch and a few minor pieces that BOLT TO the subframe are unique to the bird b/c of the headlight and different nose design.

Finally got the front end piece back from blasting..couple of spots rusted through so its gunna need alittle extra metal but nothing serious. I also removed the crash bar to further access the damage...bit of warped metal...i might be able to straighten it but i will probably wind up using some pieces from the new front end to fix the crash bar mounting points on the frame. Anyway here's a picture of the new front end piece..

Removed the radiator support today and dolly'd out some of the warped metal...its getting straighter

looks like it's coming alone pretty good.
P.S.you can put a new cam in that motor while you have easy access to it

good point lol

motor is super tired though...it will come out once i recover from this whole projects hit on my wallet

well, if you are not planing to drive it with that motor then you could yank it out of there while it's easy to do so.
Do you think you are going to have any problems with the headlights because of the firebird piece?

This is my daily driver...right now ive been piling miles on my new 2007 Daytona 675 so i will have to live with this motor for awhile.

And no the frames are exactly the same so no troubles

Update: still waiting on the front but i managed to get that pinched aread straight again...since it was twisted and bent i opted for cutting on the pinched area, straighting it and then making a new piece to weld in there. All in all im very pleased with the results..

do you have any more updates? looks like it's been coming alone pretty good

am i correct in thinking that this is going to be a camaro/firebird mix??? camaro with a firebird front end??

if so, i want to see this!!!

lol no no...just the subframe is being welded into the camaro...subframes are identical (at lest the front piece is)..go into the appearance and detailing thread...the whole build up from what ive accomplished so far is in there. Right now im doing over the motor and freshing up the transmission a bit.