Hey everyone. I figure I'll start off with some history of the car. Its a Arctic white 91 camaro Rs with a 3.1l v6/automatic transmission. It has a clean carfax and a pretty clean body with barely any rust. I picked up this car when I was 13 for $1000 and have been slowly working on it since then(I'm 15 now). When I got the car it was not running and had 132,000 miles on it, the paint had a little bit of clear peeling but over the past couple years its gotten much worse. After we bought the car it sat at the house for about half a year or so before I actually started working on it. I got the car running and it still isnt running perfectly(mainly should just needs some tuning). Right now i'm working on the body work getting it ready for the paint. The paint will be a bc/cc blue metallic which I already have picked up. I recently swapped in a posi/disc rearend out of a 94 z28. The gears are 2.73 which I know was a downgrade from the 3.23's but I'm hoping to get a set of 3.42's or 3.73's within the next year. When I did the swap I replaced the brakes on all 4 corners of the car with new pads, calipers, rotors, earls stainless lines, and I have a new body line that isnt on the car yet. I put Koni Sports in the rear and will be picking up the fronts later on this year. The first part of this thread will be the body work/paint. The goal is to get the all dents/dings out of the body, and get everything lined up. The car will be painted bc/cc blue metallic. Afer that I am going to coat the whole underside and interior with either POR-15 or RustBullet. I want to go through and completly seal up the T tops following the directions that were posted here http://www.thirdgen.org/ttopleakfix. To start of I've never painted a car or done body work before. A friend of my family used to do body work and paint and still does it sometimes on the side. I have seen a car that he fixed the whole front end and repainted and helped him buff it and he knows what he's doing when it comes to body work. Noa is helping me and we are doing most stuff together so that way I can learn by working with him. We meet once a week and work on the car and then I have different things i'm supposed to work on throughout the next week. At the moment the car is mostly stripped down, I replaced the front bumper and passenger fender with used ones that needed much less work. At the moment we are working on fixing any dents, dings, or body damage that need to be fixed. The camaro only had a few dents on the body and no major damage. The biggest challenge is going to be the passenger door which you can see in the pictures. The rear bumper has been sanded down and was coated in filler primer. The rear bumper was wetsanded and needs a little bit more work but that will be with a body filler(small chip on passengers upper corner). Both B pillars needed some bondo work so those are mostly finished. There was a slight dent on the drivers door and another one on the drivers fender which have both been fixed. The Passenger fender had two small dents which have been fixed. Last week we started to work on the front chin spoiler which had four cracks in it. We have one layer of fiberglass on the outside to hold the piece together for now. Later on we will shape the outside of the piece and we are laying multiple layers of fiberglass on the inside of each crack for more support. The car came with a 91-92 z28 spoiler that had a crack on the drivers side which we also fiberglassed. The hood has been removed and stripped down to bare metal. I have removed the carpet, seats, most plastics, and one of the door panels so far on the inside. Thats all the body work we've done so far that I can think of but there will be more updates to come. I will try to check the thread daily but sometimes I wont be able to due to school, work, and other things that come up. I should be updating this thread atleast once a week, hopefully more. The plans for this year are the following. Exterior: 1) Finish body work 2) Paint the car. Will be blue metallic w/ black headlight buckets 3) Coat inside and underside of car with either POR-15 or RustBullet 4) Seal up T tops completely (check all other seals for leaks,etc...) Interior: 1) Swap to black (currently gray) 2) 4th gen 98-2002 trans am seats 3) Fix Dash pad Engine: 1) Finish tuning and get it running well 2) Finish exhaust. I have a dynomax catback and i'm hoping to get headers before I start driving 3) In a few years i'm planning on swapping in something more fun (hopefully GN turbo 3.8l) Suspension: 1) Probably one of the following-Eibach sportlines up front/Prokit in rear. Or Ground control weight jacks 2) adjustable panhard rod 3) Koni sports (already have rears) 4) LCA relocation brackets 5) Lower control arms (front and rear) 6) subframe connectors 7) Wonderbar 8) 36mm front sway bar (not sure on rear size yet) 9) Front steering linkage Wheels: 1) Polished ZR1 rims That is what I hope to have done in the next year but its not all definate. I've been on thirdgen.org almost every day since i've had this car but havnt really done any posting just alot of reading/studying. This is my first thread so if anyone has any suggestions for things I should work on that would be helpful Thanks for looking and i'll keep you all updated ~Tim Oh yeah and I will post up pictures in a few minutes (I'm going to try to figure out photobucket or atleast the best way to post them on here)

Here are some pics of the car

This is the first day I brought the car home.



This is just a random picture I took last year (you cant really see it but the clear is definatly peeling)


These are a couple pictures after the 4th gen rear swap









This is the car as it sits right now


Close ups of the work so far on the front chin spoiler





More to come

Here are a few more


Passenger side fender (the front was just hit with a canned primer due to rain coming. Since then it has been sanded down and primed right with filler primer.)




The hood stripped (the surface rust is because I had just hosed off all the chemicals. It will be wetsanded.)



This is the color the car will be painted



This shows the damage to the passenger door/rear quarter panel


Rear hatch area


Front passenger area (I still dont have the right torx for the seatbelts so the carpet just has to hang out for now)


Drivers door panel off



Thanks for looking
~Tim

Looks like you have a nice project there. Good luck with your resto.

Kevin

Update: I wont be working with noa this weekend due to some family things that came up. Nothing to exciting has been going on with the camaro. Mainly just lots of sanding. Anyways i'll keep you all posted.

~Tim

Well the works been on hold since last saturday due to snow. Its supposed to continue throughout this weekend so I probably wont be able to work at all until next week If any one has any input/suggestions that would be helpful.

Thanks
Tim

Well at the moment we have around 3 feet of snow and now starting tomarow their calling for another 10-20 inchs. It seems like I wont be working on the camaro for a while. Sorry to everyone if it seems like I started a thread and have made no progress...the weather wasnt expected and I was planning to have a lot more work done.

Anyways thanks for looking and I will get back to work asap

Tim

where the brake lines hard to do for your swap?
and its pretty cool to see another teen fix up a camaro especially a third gen.

Thanks ty759. I love working on this car and spend as much time as possible on it. Its great knowing theres a bunch of people who care about these cars. The earls stainless lines were easy to do and I havnt installed the front to rear body line yet. I will be installing that line after the car is painted.

~Tim

Looks good! I might have to look into a 4th gen rear swap for my Iroc. IMO it looks like the wheels stick out just a bit further with the 4th gen rear end.

Looks like a fun project . Two things for an FYI... that paint may be hard to lay down with that much flake and using fiberglass on the chin isnt the best idea. They make a product for fixing plastic parts. The fiberglass wont flex if you hit something

I second Nichols92's post. I used fiberglass/resin on the chin spoiler and it sheered off when I hit a low curb. I have since used a product from 3M called Duramix.....it's a plastic weld and is so far the best fix. I'll get the product numbers and post them up.

I like the color you're going with, it should look nice in the sunlight.

Thanks for the input guys! The 4th gen rear was a good swap to do Imo because I think it makes the camaro's stance look even meaner. I cant wait to see how she looks when I get the zr1 rims. It should bring them in slightly and look really aggressive with the 275 tires. For the fiberglass on the chin spoiler its more of a tempory fix for now but since i'm not to far in I will look into other products. Later on down the road I plan on picking up either a used piece with no cracks or getting a aftermarket piece if this one cracks again. jb3829 i'll definatly have to look into the 3m duramix product so if you could post it up that would be great because i've only layed down 2 layers of fiberglass on the outside as of now so I might still switch over. I'll have to do some more research online and talk to Noa and see what he thinks of the idea. Also I start working again this week so I will have a better budget to work with (one advantage to the weather putting the project on hold). I'm really looking forward to seeing the color on the car because I feel like with a color like this it should look really nice in the shade but will really pop out in the sun. Nichols92 I'm pretty confident with the paint laying because Noa knows what he's doing when it comes to painting cars but I will definatly keep that in mind and mention it to him when it comes time to actually lay down the paint. Well the snow is still out there but we've had a few sunny days so its starting to melt down (I can actually see a decent amount of the car now)

Thanks again for the input guys
~Tim

Also Jb3829 i'm guessing your car has the same single piston calipers/brake setup in the front as mine. Did you run into any problems with the earls stainless lines? I ordered mine for the 4 wheel disk because I needed them in the rear and I wasnt sure if there was a difference up front. If you could let me know that would be really helpful.

~Tim

Wth happened to it?? It looked great in the first couple pics!

Where did you order your paint from? What type of paint? Enamel? Urethane? Are you doing a clear coat? Will you be painting the engine bay? Door jams, crease around the trunk? If so what are your plans?

Awsome-X the car doesnt look bad in the first couple pics but if you looked at the camaro up close there was a lot of clear pealing, the paint on the front bumper was cracked and there were a few cracks in the front bumper itself, the chin spoiler was pretty cracked up, and mainly there were just imperfections throughout the whole body. I just decided that I really wanted to fix any dents and imperfections in the body and lay down a fresh coat of paint. Also I wanted to learn how to do body work and this seemed like a good way to do that.

The paint is from trinity auto paints and is a urethane bc/cc. They arent as big of a company but I did a lot of research and all I heard was good things so I figured I would give it a go. This is the kit I got http://www.paintforcars.com/kits_5star_metblue.html
I plan on doing the engine bay in black. The door jams and the crease around the trunk are being painted. The plan is to remove everything when I paint it (windshield, seals, hatch, etc...)

Thanks
~Tim

I just figured I would let you all know that the snow is almost completely melted so work on the camaro should start up again sometime this week (finally). I'll update later this week and let you all know whats going on.

~Tim

Dude, awesome work, your younger than me (im 18) and you have moved further along with your car then much. keep it up!
btw, you might want to rethink your gear choice, 373 at 80 miles mph will equal 4500 RPMS with the 700R4. I looked into it and stayed with my 273. 323s are ideal 342 max. just so you know. if you had a 5 speed, that would be different
4th gen swap, everything bolt up correctly? it seems bigger. any problems going from drums to disk?

Hey Chezoom thanks man...Thats a nice looking camaro you have. I will definatly keep that in mind and do some more research when I get into the rear gears. As far as the 4th gen rear swap it was pretty straightforward. I dont have the E brake cables hooked up and looking at it now I will probably just pick up some new 91 rear disk lines because they should work without any mods. I'll be sure to put up pics and let you know how it goes once I get the new body line in and the rest of the brakes squared away.

Progress: I havnt done any work yet after the snow melted. I was originally working on it with Noa saturday but I had a buddy call and he needed help with a job and I figured it would be nice to have a little extra $. I spent my saturday taking apart a playground in Mannassas VA. The plan for this week is i'm going to finish taking off all the ground effects and a few other body parts. Noa should be coming over this saturday and last I talked to him we were going to do some bondo work on the slight dents in the hood and then spray it with primer. Then I think we will continue work on the chin spoiler. After discussing it with Noa we will still be using the fiberglass on the chin spoiler because he's used different plastic welders and other plastic repairs and he has found that using his fiberglass method has held up better in the past to cracking.

I'll have another update later this week
~Tim

Sorry its been a while since i've updated the thread. I've been really busy lately and havnt had much time. So I spent a good portion of today working on the car which was great after all the snow/rain we've had. All the ground effects have been removed and lucky for me there was no rust hidden underneath. The carpets out and a few of the seatbelts (ran out of time and had to head to work). I got any leftover crap on the hood sanded off and then layed down some epoxy primer on it. There are a few slight dents that will need some bondo work so that will be done in the near future. The rear drivers B pillar is finished being shaped. Other than that I started shaping up the excess fiberglass on the chin spoiler with a grinder...Nothing to detailed just trying to get the basic shape down because we're not finished with it yet. This week i'm hoping to get the rest of the interior plastics, etc... out, mabee work on the chin spoiler some more. I found i'm going to need to remove the drivers fender to fix the whole in the floorpan but it looks easily accessable so i'm not to worried about that. I took some pics today but its late and i'm exhausted so i'll try to get them up some point this week. I should have an update on here later this week. Next weekend Noa and I wont be working on the car because i'll be in OC for the weekend but we should be working on it week after that.

Anyways thanks for looking
Tim