I am planning on starting my Restore on my 88T/A. The Car is in great shape except for the front end which is tweaked a bit, the body shop said around 1k to fix...Now in writing this I think I just answered my own question but....I was offered the opportunity to buy an 89 6'r for 900. Now....I am planning on taking about 4 or 5 years to rebuild this thing because I am in school...Which one would you guys rebuild? Would you keep the T/A and spend the money to fix the front end or buy the camaro rebuild it and turn it into an 8?
and finally....how much work is it to drop an 8 into the 6? I still plan on doing the full rebuild so I dont think it will be much of a problem...

 

Which style do you like better?

Changing the 6 to an 8, even if you are rebuilding the car, would mean finding all the 8 cly stuff in the engine bay, takes a lot more money than restoring an existing 8, all the engine brackets are different, trasmission for the 6 won't bolt up to an 8 so you need a trans too, 8 cly ecu, wire harnes, etc. etc. etc....if you search the engine swap board you'll see what I'm talking about...

 

I figure the 6 to 8 will be the least of my problems at I can take the engine mounts off of the T/A and I will you the 700r4 from it as well. I can also take the ecm from the T/A if I needed to. The biggest problem I am facing is if the frame is bent. I dont want to do all of this work to find out that the frame is worse than i thought...you know? i am also wondering if I do get the frame fixed, I heard the frame will still not be as good as new.....

 

I see...I agree
I wouldn't put money in to a car that I had any questions about the integrity of the unibody, even if it had been repaired, I wouldn't be comfortable with it. I've always been told that they are never as good as new, that other problems can come up that seem unrelated to the repair. Maybe the point these people have tried to make is you never know exactly how much was damaged, some things may not be obvious.

If you use the T/A for parts for the swap..then yeah no problem..you already have everything you need...