History / OriginalityGot a question about 1982-1992 Camaro or Firebird history? Have a question about original parts, options, RPO codes, when something was available, or how to document your car? Those questions, answers, and much more!
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Hmmmm - the cars shown on that website look suspiciously like those on the latest Thirdgen.org T-shirts. So.......are there plots within plots, wheels within wheels
Typical.. they left out a whole Firebird model, since they didn't happen to care about it! Clearly they're just playing around with their spare time and are not serious. (aw hell, who cares about the S/E!? those things were for grannies!)
I think the across-the-board inconsistency with our cars' manufacturing process will become a major problem area for the Concourse book and its credibility, if the book ever happens.
Already on this thread for example, we can't come to a decision that makes everyone happy, regarding whether the cowl was supposed to be bodycolored or black. When was the cutoff point for the color change? Was there any overlap in procedure during the change? Did both assembly plants do the same thing at the same time? What about this guy's car over here that seems to be a total rule breaker, but he swears it's original? Etc., etc.
It's sort of like a top-secret CIA project where nobody knows the whole story; almost every one of us knows a little piece of the f-body puzzle with 100% certainty, but I'll say that it will be absolutely impossible for a few people to get together and know the ENTIRE story and come up with an accurate book for it. If such a book is ever published, it will be laced with dozens if not hundreds of errors, primarily about the overlooked pre-TPI cars. Count on that..
I hope I'm wrong. I hope my factory-original water pump on my 3,500-mile T/A, with its extraordinarily sloppy Pontiac-blue engine paint, will be deemed to be original.. 'coz it is.
Good luck, I'll be looking at this thread
Those are the questions that need to be asked of the community... we have enough cars with enough vins that we should be able to figure those things out. 1982 will probably be the worst year as they where trying to get those "wrinkles" in production figured out. Kind of like the "chrome" vs black bolt heads used on the door hardware.
You are correct, no small group of people can figure it all out... lucky for us TGO isn't a small group.
It IS possible to figure out EVERY VIN that is registered in the US...
John
Ok John, I'll play. How can we get all the VINs ? Lets say I wanted to get all VINs for 1992.
Mark
__________________ 1992 Trans Am "RARE 92" ----- Jamaica Yellow, L98, 147K, All Original CA car 1991 Trans Am GTA ------------*2,800 miles*--1st Place Stock, TA Nats 2009 1992 Trans Am "PMD 92" ------47K, Best of Show, ThirdGen Fest 2008 1989 Formula 350 "PMD 89" ....Sold.... Redline Performance Machines
Well...
Ever hear of CARFAX & Autocheck? You already know EVERYTHING you need to know to get any VIN for any model if all you have the sequence number... For the Camaro's in 1992 for example there are only 4 possibilities for each VIN, and for FIrebird's there is 6 because the Trans Am/GTA and the Firebird/Formula had different VIN designations... If you know how to decipher the Check digit...
Granted I am not sure how legal it would be or is, and you may find your stuff confiscated by the Police, but if you did not flood the sites with a thousand checks in a day, chances are they would never figure out who you are or care, or just use a public computer like a Library computer... Of course if you bought "unlimited" then what would they have to complain about? Of course it would be possible to do it without getting a subscription...
Well...
Ever hear of CARFAX & Autocheck? You already know EVERYTHING you need to know to get any VIN for any model if all you have the sequence number... For the Camaro's in 1992 for example there are only 4 possibilities for each VIN, and for FIrebird's there is 6 because the Trans Am/GTA and the Firebird/Formula had different VIN designations... If you know how to decipher the Check digit...
Granted I am not sure how legal it would be or is, and you may find your stuff confiscated by the Police, but if you did not flood the sites with a thousand checks in a day, chances are they would never figure out who you are or care, or just use a public computer like a Library computer... Of course if you bought "unlimited" then what would they have to complain about? Of course it would be possible to do it without getting a subscription...
My suggestion is not to try it.
Need I say more?
I believe a little movie called Gone In 60 Seconds already proved the illegality of it. Of Course they also hacked the DMV database in the movie so they went one step further. One time for kicks might be fun but if one keeps on doing it or people keep on doing it then it gets a little tricky. However, if you have the unlimited then you could claim that you are putting a book together about the history of the car you know the rest
Well...
Ever hear of CARFAX & Autocheck? You already know EVERYTHING you need to know to get any VIN for any model if all you have the sequence number... For the Camaro's in 1992 for example there are only 4 possibilities for each VIN, and for FIrebird's there is 6 because the Trans Am/GTA and the Firebird/Formula had different VIN designations... If you know how to decipher the Check digit...
Granted I am not sure how legal it would be or is, and you may find your stuff confiscated by the Police, but if you did not flood the sites with a thousand checks in a day, chances are they would never figure out who you are or care, or just use a public computer like a Library computer... Of course if you bought "unlimited" then what would they have to complain about? Of course it would be possible to do it without getting a subscription...
My suggestion is not to try it.
Need I say more?
I'm almost certain you can't do that anymore. ...used to be able to when the systems first came out. (for a while you could right special code that would allow you to process a string of vin's....not now.)
Well as far as the Carfax process goes, what would be illegal about it? Time consuming, yes, but illegal? We know the sequence #s, so it would be a guess and check game of running a sequence number as a TA or a Firebird, each with 2-3 engine codes, and a check digit for every possibility.
All that guessing aside, all you would be doing is running your assumed VIN through Carfax to see if it is a legit VIN, if it does not recognize it then its time to change some numbers around to see what works. Of course very very time consuming but what it illegal about it unless you actually hack into somewhere?
__________________ 1992 Trans Am "RARE 92" ----- Jamaica Yellow, L98, 147K, All Original CA car 1991 Trans Am GTA ------------*2,800 miles*--1st Place Stock, TA Nats 2009 1992 Trans Am "PMD 92" ------47K, Best of Show, ThirdGen Fest 2008 1989 Formula 350 "PMD 89" ....Sold.... Redline Performance Machines
I think the idea of a '3Gen Encyclopedia' is very cool. Maybe it could start out small, just a high-level summary with pictures and descriptions, and more detail as it becomes available from members. It would start to be useful right away to collectors and for that matter some judges at shows.
I hope it's integrated into this site. To me, 3GO is one-stop shopping for all things related to these cars. There are already menu choices in the site actually, such as for each year of each car. Why not just start adding detail there, for now?
__________________ 1984 Camaro Z28 - blue metallic, L69, MX0
To get us back on track www.fbodyreport.com is a great start. I think with some good people over there to share, and with good pictures it would really be a GREAT resource for the future. Especially anyone trying to restore the cars. Fortunately for the 1st gen guys they have books about how things are supposed to be. UNFORTUNATELY for us we have 11 years, thus why something with this kind of undertaking really deserves many people with their expertise. Unfortunately if people do not share what they know and have pictures some of the history like the V6 and I4 cars may go away and be forgotten.
As per the off topic conversation I do not think it is illegal yet. That is my worry. If someone were to do this technically I can foresee finding something illegal with it and it becoming illegal... I do not know how or why I just feel that there may be some consequences to doing this, especially if someone crashed CARFAX because they were sloppy and did too many VINs too fast.
Does one have to log in to get any of the info on fbodyreport? I went there out of curiosity but there is no information anywhere. And if I do sign up and log in can I edit some of the pages so there is actually information in the system? I have books that I can reference but naturally there will be changes from others who might know that the information is incorrect or know more about some options. We really need something for restoration reference. Sure we have the PHS but even then we are still dealing with Group options like B20 Luxury group it would be nice to know exactly what was in that group for various years if the SPID sticker is gone or the buildsheet is gone. (I only used B20 as an example so I am not looking for an answer)
The site is apparently down right now. but you should be able to look at the info. Unfortunately it is in its infancy, so there is not much there. I did some in the 1982 Firebird section IIRC.
I was wondering, what all kinds of data are folks thinking of getting from a mass retrieval of Carfax data? I've used Carfax in the past and it really doesn't provide all that much deep data. It has the registration history and some basic info on a given car's engine.... but that's about all. I don't think having that info from hundreds of thousands of VIN's would be all that insightful for the purposes being described here. (Not to mention the huge task of sifting thru, reformatting and organizing such data - Carfax does not make it easy to store reports - they tend to make the reports only available when you are logged in).
I thought the purpose of this online Concours book was to describe, with a lot of pictures and descriptions, the many configuration aspects of our cars. Stuff like has already been shown in examples - placement of differential ID tags, color combo's of trim (wouldn't it be nice to have pictures on one web page, of all the stripe color combos for all the 3gen Camaros?), and details on the many options available, more detailed than is found already in the Camaro White Book. I have a copy of the White Book; it is a great resource. But we need more detail than that...
One example, my Camaro had misrouted spark plug wires when I got it (one wire was even burned a little by the manifold ). I just saw a thread on this site where someone asked for pix of people's wires... and it was a big help.
Basically a list of all the VINs would be interesting, For Camaro's for example you could break out the number of SC's from Berlinettas that had the LG4, same goes for the Formula and Trans Am, S/E, Firebird etc, you could get a real good idea for the number of cars that had a particular engine.
Beyond that there would be no other reason. Honestly you could do that JUST by putting in VINs with the "Free Check." For all intents and purposes you do not need the entire report... Although all of the mileages would be interesting to see, but I do not know if you could set up a program to gather that information easily, that would be a one by one basis. And of course which cars are "totaled" to give a rough estimate of how many cars are left. Granted I have an ECM from a badly burned Z28 that was in a salvage yard that comes back as a clean title so it is not infallible...
I still think it is probably illegal, not 100% but leaning that way...
The reason that I am interested in getting a full list of VINs for 1992 is so that I can run them through the GM parts computer to get RPO printouts for all Firebirds in 1992. Then I can have exact OPTION COMBINATION production numbers. That is one thing that GM never kept.
How many Jamaica Yellow L98 TAs were built in 92? No one knows. I have one, havent seen another one. We all know JY cars are very rare. Would def like to know if it is one of one. Running RPO codes on all
92s is the only way of doing that, but I need VINs, Carfax is just a way to figure out if a VIN that I "assembled" is an actual VIN.
In fact I wouldn't need to subscribe to CFX or even run the reports at all, just the basic query would either confirm that the VIN is correct or not, then I can run RPOs on them.
BTW, I am only interested in running Trans Am VINs for RPOs, not all 27,xxx Firebirds, that would be plain insane. I figure once all the VINs are on a list, pick all the 1G2FW cars and that should amount to less than 1000.
There is a 1LE JY T/A that I have seen at the Trans Am nationals. He is a member here. Also I have seen a JY Trans AM Vert at the T/A nats, his name was John, also a member here.
__________________ 87 FORMULA - 5.1 LB9/A4 T-tops 3.73 Modified (Yellow/Black)
87 FORMULA - 5.0 LB9/M5 T-tops 3.45 (Yellow/Gray)
89 FORMULA 350 - CONVERTIBLE 3.27 All original (Red/Gray) www.3rdgenformula.com
I know Leo and met John last year, and tried to get him to sell me his car for a few hours. Leo's car is an LB9 car so I am still looking for a non-GTA JY L98 TA.
__________________ 1992 Trans Am "RARE 92" ----- Jamaica Yellow, L98, 147K, All Original CA car 1991 Trans Am GTA ------------*2,800 miles*--1st Place Stock, TA Nats 2009 1992 Trans Am "PMD 92" ------47K, Best of Show, ThirdGen Fest 2008 1989 Formula 350 "PMD 89" ....Sold.... Redline Performance Machines
The 82 & 83 Quarter Panel has a sharper crease above the Wheel house flair than the 84 & up... Its VERY minor, but evidently different...
John
I wonder why they changed only the rear? Maybe the stamping die wore out on the sharp edge there and they rounded it over to increase the lifespan? That's one thing that bugs me about my 92 Camaro, if you look close the rear flair has a nice radius there but the front flair has a sharp crease, looks unbalanced to me, I have thought about adding some lead filler there and making them match when I do a repaint someday, but of course that would not be "Concourse", but neither will the LS engine I have planned!!!. Attached are pics of my 92's flairs.
). I just saw a thread on this site where someone asked for pix of people's wires... and it was a big help. 
