I towed home my father-in-laws 83 firebird that he was going to get rid of, It had a 5.0 and a auto tranny with some worked done to both, replaced the battery, hatch and hood shocks got it running drove it on to the black top to jack it up and the jack points under the rocker pannels are very badly rusted i was able to put my thumb through the floor from the inside and the other sides jack point was cracking and starting to push through. Is that a death sentence for the Bird?? I dont know the first thing about body work at this point i was hoping to learn on this car, but now i'm not sure the car is worth it??

 

I could be wrong here, but for what it would cost to repair that properly you could probably buy a much newer, better condition third gen.
10 years ago I was quoted over $1100 dollars to replace both rocker panels inner and outer, and the car had no holes in the floor.

 

it's true it gets pretty expensive to replace them. my old 87 camaro had some pretty bad issues with the rockers, floor, and the drivers side quarter was f'd. But it was my first f-body all those years ago and I knew a bit about body work. ended up by 3 other junkers at the yard for pretty cheap and ended up only spending 3000 to restore the car to a nice stock look. nothing too extravigant. I'm always all about fixing them and not letting them die. so I say fix it. do some searching around your town for a good body shop that won't charge you your first born for the repair.

 

if the rot is that bad, just junk it. you can pick up a pretty good bird for less than 4000

 

If you junk it, maybe you should keep the engine and tranny since they both had work done to them. Just a suggestion.

 

If you wanna keep it to learn on get a junked car with good floor pans and buy a welder and go to town.

 

that's pretty much the best way to go about it.

 

problem here is useing hte rockers for jacking points in the first place, i've seen it RUIN so many cars, my car is no exception, i had to rebuild those places on mine because rust had gotten to them from them being crushed when the car was lifted over the years. ALWAYS use the actual frame rails to lift/jack the car up.

 

Thanks for the info guys. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do at this point but I am leaning toward giving it a try by myself the car was free so if I destroy it totally no big loss but it will have to be on hold until next summer when I have a garage to work in. Thanks again

 

I see most of you guys on this thread are from the east coast > If anybody is looking to buy a car think about southwest cars out here 99% of the cars are 100% rust free. It cost about $1000 to ship a car cross country but thats way cheaper than rust repair even if you do it yourself.Start with a better car it will save you a lot of headaches in the long run.I used to live in CT so I know what the cars look like there.