Hi, I'm François, I'm 21 and I live in the north of France near Dunkirk. I'm a fashion design student and a big Firebird fan. My first is a 1979 Firebird Esprit that is being restored completely, she's a rust bucket. I had written a big thread but it has been removed with many others I can't find. So here's my 1984 Trans Am HO 5 speed as she was just after I brought it home from the UK, where I bought her for a riduculously low price. I won it on eBay, seeing the number of options and the relative rarity I couldn't let it go. 82-84s are very rare in Europe : Here's a quick photoshoot I did two days after I got it :

lmao love the custom licence brake brackett

The SPID sticker, not many options are missing :


And the radiator support tag :



I quickly sold the nice Knight Rider front bumper to firebird78, so I could put an original 84 nose with the Aero spoiler. It was only missing the two filler pieces.


I repaired the complete wiring harness, and removed the old alarm system. Every single electric component worked ten times better after that

Second photoshoot, after installing the original front bumper. Our horse training field makes awesome photos :

The last shots before I started disassembly :




PS : those 92 tail lights were here only for the inspection, they were removed shortly after.

The floor, only one tiny rust hole. I got lucky on that one, and the insulation pads were completey wet !


Can't wait to restore that motor !


Here she is right now :

So my plan for her is to partially restore her. I won't touch to the drivetrain for the moment, she will get a fresh paint, upholstery and motor thorough check.
I'm trying to find the right materials for the upholstery, it's harder than I thought.

I'm still not sure on the paint, I'm hesitating between :
- white on silver (my personal favorite, also white is cheap ^^ )



- light gold on silver or gold
- very light metallic blue on silver
- black on gold
- black on silver



- original (82U/82L/16A), but I'm not crazy about this color at all

Personaly, I love black on silver but, you know, It's my KARR side...
I also like all white. But, I guess you prefer 2 different colours on.

I did a bit of welding yesterday night, and repaired about 50 percent of the rust

Before



After



I filled a small hole that was next to a seat thread, and three other small holes around the T-Tops edges. I still have to grind them.


All I have left to repair is the hole under the dash :



And finish (grinding and painting) the one that was already repaired on the other side :



That's nothing compared to my '79 Esprit.

Wow, I'm going to follow this. I have an 83 that I plan on slowly restoring.

Should be pretty cool when it's finished.

Oh thanks guys, I hadn't seen your replies.

I just picked up a pair of original 5.0L HO headers and the CC distributor. Those parts come from a friend's 1984 Camaro Z28. You can see some videos of his car on Youtube :
http://www.youtube.com/user/mancamar.../2/k_-sM2yWx04

He had already given me quite a lot of original parts this summer : Y-pipe, AC compressor, AC hoses, various connectors, vaccuum canister, some various brackets and hoses.

looks like a fun project on a solid car! Ive been looking for a L69 driver/project for about a year now, but most in Ohio are rusty beaters or overpriced. Good work, looking forward to seeing more pics

I found the time to work on the car this afternoon, I've restored the intake manifold. I didn't take pictures before disassembling so here's an old picture :


I decided to go the natural aluminium look instead of the original black. The manifold had already been repainted before in an ugly grey paint that was flaking anyway :


The valley pan, it looks clean to me :


So here's the manifold after the first coat of paint. I used a zinc based paint for aluminium, I have used it earlier on the alternator and the AIR pump :

Here's the AIR pump after rebuild. I will sand and paint the pulley and brackets later. I got it for free with a bunch of parts. It was stuck but after disassembling, cleaning and greasing it, it spinned nicely. :



The alternator after rebuild as well, it stopped working suddenly on day. I bought a kit on eBay to replace some of the interior components. The shell was cleaned, sanded and repainted. Worked like a charm after this. The pulley looked like crap, but the other side looked brand new so I reversed it :

How can I say if a camshaft is good or not ? I got the original camshaft with the car, and I would like to put it back as I'm going the stock route.

I can't feel any scratch or defect and there is no obvious wear, but there is some light visual pitting on it.

I took some pictures of the camshaft, with the flash it looks quite horrible :

Haven't updated this thread for a while, but here's some progress :

The hole on the firewall is finished, but I still have to grind the welds. Is still need more training at welding.

The rot cut :


The firewall part finished, it's not perfect but it's prettygood for a first time at shaping sheet metal considering I only have a bodywork hammer and a vise. :



All the parts welded. I will add the seam sealer later !



This is a small portion of the pile of parts I have to paint !


The floor is getting stripped, I found a few more rust holes. Nothing major. The paint is flaking on every original spotweld, I'd suggest anyone who remove the carpet to apply antirust paint or primer on those.


The new door from my 89 parts car. I wonder when they went frome the big heavy stamped brace to the tubular brace on the doors ? :

The K-member is in amazing shape, the welding heat marks are still perfectly visible ! There a bit of surface rust, but most of the frame was covered with undercoating early in the car's life, so some parts have been well preserved. :




The products I'm using to protect the metal. I was amazed by POR-15, if applied properly, that thing is really tough like a powdercoating, it's very hard to sand. To get too much paint or you will get drops AND small bubbles everywhere :



And then I found this on the frame It's next to the transmission crossmember mounting points...more welding.

nice thread... subscribing!

I'm starting to put things back in ! It's a great feeling.
I've added the sound insulation (tar coated with aluminium), it sounds much sturdier now, but I can't wait to test drive the car. The doors harness and rear speakers harness are in place, as well as the firewall insulation.


Here you can see the sound insulation :


I've finished applying POR-15 to the floors, I will cover the area with sound insulation.


As you can see, I've restored the drain plugs as well.

Sure it will be a little heavier (40-50lbs more max) but I'm sure it will be well worth it when I'll turn the music on.

If you don't have the original lifters, and know which lobe they went with, you can't re-use the original cam. I'd either leave the cam in the car where it is, or buy a new cam and new lifters matching the stock specs.

Thanks for the answer, I do have the original lifters but those who changed the cam put them in a box randomly.

Engine bay, wheel wells and windshield pillars are PRIMED ! Damn it feels good to actually DO something instead of removing stuff !

Ready to be primed, just before some POR15 on the radiator support and a final cleaning :




After the first coat :





And then, when spraying in some close area, some windshield glue dust came out :/ I was sure I had removed it all

An then finally, after applying the body sealer :





The only problem is that I will have to spray again some areas, the primer reacted to the POR15 is a few areas. No big deal.
Nearly two liters of epoxy primer to do that area, there's quite a lot to spray here though and I've been generous.

Tell me, should I apply the paint directly over the epoxy primer in the engine bay or should I apply high build primer even here ?

PS : remember I've never ever done this before, so forgive my mistakes :P

Final coat of epoxy primer before high build primer and paint !

I'm done with the paint on the engine bay, the runs blent nicely with the next coats, even though it's still a bit visible but not too bad.

That color is fantastic, too bad I had to use my old cellphone camera to take pictures because it looks much better that these :









Next step is clearcoat !
Can't wait for it to be dry and to get some clean parts back on the car !

nice job, resto is looking good

Always good to see these cars get restored! good job bud

I've applied the clear.
Now I'm a little scared because I've been a bit overkill with the first coat, trying to get a wet coat. I didn't notice the runs at first, and my test on a flat panel looked good and smooth so I thought I was doing it correctly. But that's where the problem is, I've done a few tries on a FLAT surface, so with an easy access and a good visibiliy. Now applying clear coat on an engine bay is a different thing.
I have a lot of runs...most will be hidden and a good part of the runs got smoothed with the second coat, but not much. It's somewhat ok in the wheel wells, but not so much on the firewall...
Now what scares me the most is that I don't know how it will dry. I hope I won't get any problem like milking ir cracking or whatever...



Other than that, it looks good in my opinion, I've been more careful on the visible areas and they look quite smooth. But can we judge a clear coat just after it's been applied ?

There are a few tiny dust crap in places though, and a damn mosquito landed on the front edge. Had a hard time removing this idiot since the clear had already hardened a bit.

Nice work!!

Thanks !
A couple weeks ago, I've finished sanding the rear of the body to get it ready for primer, again, small rust spots were a nightmare to remove.

I've also painted the struts towers and the brake booster to a nice semi flat black :



Some parts are placed in their location to remember what goes where before the final reassembly :


This is the area between the roof and the quarter panels, it's a little flat here from the factory, so I took care of that problem :



The whole rear is in epoxy primer now !
But I've made a lot of runs...shame on me. Oh well as long as it's not paint of clear, it's easy to take care of. Most of them are already gone as I'm writing this. I'm out of epoxy so I will have to buy more. I will apply another coat to make sure everything is smooth and covered.

Primed !



Sanding to remove runs, dammit:


Smooooooth :

Still need a bit of body filler here :


Soon :