I've finished my car just in time for the snow. Yeahh..uhhh...crap. I put the car in storage this year exactly 8 hours before it started snowing. These were pics I took just before saying goodbye for 6 months.

I had just finished the final paint and trim work. The paint was finished on 9/9/04 but I still had to do the trim around the back window, vent grills, etc. The work included all new carpets, seats from a 2000 Firebird, new headliner and sail panels from AABest, new t-top weatherstripping, new window sweeps and weatherstripping, and I added a 2-gauge A-pillar pod (oil and trans temp). All the interior needs now is a new shift boot. (I got screwed on E-bay with the one I ordered and never came).

The wheels have been sand blasted and powder coated with Argent Silver and a clear powder coat. My friend an I did them ourselves with an Easy-Bake oven we made out of an old fridge and nychrome wire.

The pic at the bottom was taken when I bought the car six years ago. I stayed with the factory #26 medium blue but got rid of the silver I always hated.

 

Looks awesome. The car being all blue looks alot better than with the silver. That's cool you did the rims yourself. They look sharp. Was it an easy process?

 

Looks really good man..
I love the your car
nice and clean

 

I went through quite a bit to get the best look on the wheels.

The clear coat was yellow so I used aircraft stripper to take it off. It took the clear coat off fine but did not touch the dark gray on the spokes. I realized that polishing was going to be a total waste of time so I decided to go the sandblast route and start over.

My friend and I have a sandblast booth made out of a plastic 55 gallon drum. We used his sandblaster to clean the wheels up. It just did not touch that gray paint either. After 30 min of trying I gave up and spent $15 per wheel to have them professionally sandblasted.

It was around this time we had rigged up the Easy-Bake oven. We took an old two door fridge. Ripped out the guts and pop riveted the doors together. We then lined the sides with firebrick that we held in place by using drywall screws screws from the outside. Then we put nychrome wire in a zig-zag pattern on each side wall. We wired it to a big ol' 3 prong 240v dryer plug. Then we ran a 240 wire and outlet to the garage to power it. The crowning touches were the temp gauge off a Weber and the Danger High Voltage sign.

With a powdercoat gun we bought at Eastwood, we applied the Argent silver to each wheel and then baked for 10 minutes. Once the silver was on all the wheels, we applied a clear powder coat to protect and make it wasy to clean. In doing some race car wheels we found the silver was really prone to brake dust.

We did two wheels a night and each wheel needed two coats so it took a couple of weeks to finish. They clean up great now and have no signs of wear. For what it would have cost to buy new wheels, I got new looking originals with a complete powder coat setup that we use for finishing panels on our NASCAR Modified and other projects. This winter I want to make a grilling table with stainless steel top and a powder coated frame.

 

very nice, love the colour

 

How did you get the powder on? did you have a powdercoating machine laying around? Im curious to know because I powdercoat on a daily basis

 

wow! thats one sharp car! man you did a great job! Those rims loooooook sooo nice and clean! :hail:

 

Before this project, we had bought this powder coat gun from Eastwood.

http://www.eastwood.com/shopping/pro...ProductID=5572

We had played with an old oven but is was not big enough. We originially started the Easy-Bake oven project because we wanted to powder coat body panels on our Modified instead of painting them. Cleanup and mixing the chemicals is always such a pain. We can now fabricate and powder coat every panel on the car except the hood (because it is fiberglass) and the roof. We have to use a factory Cavalier roof and it is too big to fit.

Being able to do the TA rims was a big bonus.

 

looks really sweet. love the color and the interior looks sweet

 

Your car looks ultra-clean, its all those little things that count, I too am tackling the interior soon....and there are alot of parts that are minor but make a big difference when replaced.

Great job man

 

TunedPort 335 your ride looks sweet also

 

Thanks man.

Mikey G - Are those seats out of a Formula? Or are the normal V6 firebird ones the same.

 

hey what wheels are those... because they dont look like the ones u bought with the car? they arent dished.......or should i say resessed... if i spelled that right

 

look like later model formula wheels, but i could be mistaken.

 

oh, and the seats are 4th gen firebirds, got the same ones in my 85.

 

Those are the 85-87 Trans Am 16" wheels. These were also used on the 84' Trans Am 15th anny car and the 87' formula.

 

The seats were from a 2000 Firebird, but I do not know which model. I like them a lot because of the better bolstering. They are also lower than the original seats which helps with my head room issues (6'4")

The wheels were off an '86 Formula my friend had. He was selling it and I wanted the bigger rims so we just swapped. Mine had better rubber, so he got a set of decent tires to sell on the car. I knew I was going to refinish the wheels and dump Pep Boys specials he had on there. I found a set of Goodyear Eagle GS-C 245/45-V16 for $70 each. To have more fun with autocross, I would need 18" wheels but the car is getting a new motor before I drop $2000 on wheels and tires.

 

Must have been an 87 formula, there was no 86 formula...

 

Nice. Your interior looks very comfy.

 

car looks good man. i have mine in the shop right now as well. new paint, carpet t5 swap, disk brake posi rear and other misc work. i see u live in pitsford. i live in dansville just south of there maybe next summer we can set up a car club or something

 

I like the all blue paint scheme.