My 4+ year project is slowly coming to a close (at least the major work).
Within these 4 years, we have completely gutted the car and started over:
-New 383
-New T56
-Baer Brakes
-New Rear End
and a whole host of other crap that I know I am forgetting.

Now comes probably the hardest part of them all...body work.

My buddy Vic and I have been working on the body for about 1 year now.
The body was not bad to begin with..it just had some minor door dings. The paint was original from the 1990, and for its age, it was nice, but not nice enough. We set on a mission to make this car show worthy.
Some of the custom body work includes shaving all emblems, custom hood cutouts with louvers cut, and a 91/2 style nose with the side vents filled in to look like a stock 90 nose. The reason we did this is because the 91/92 nose is more agressive.
We did all of the body work in my garage, and now it is time to paint! As you can see from the pics below, we had had some fun with the plastic sheeting! Hopefully we will begin the primer stage tomorrow. We are doing this all in the garage. The new paint will be black.

Here some pics showing the stages of work:

The patient getting ready for yet another round of surgery


Hood mod:


Garage before Plastic:

 

THE HOOD LOOKS REALLY GOOD I WAS THINKING OF DOING THAT BUT WAT ABOUT IF YOUR DRIVING AND THE ENGINE GETS HOT THEN IT RAINS LIKE CRAZY DONT YOU RISK MESSING UP YOUR COMPONENTS AND OR CRACKING THE BLOCK

 

The car will never be driven in adverse weather.
It is a weekend cruiser.

 

Why Mr. IROC-Z? Why?

 

I've always wanted to cover the garage in plastic, and have a blower going to suck out the overspray, but was always too afraid.. How did it work for you?

 

i covered my garage with plastic and painted my jams and engine bay, the plactic worked well, and no over spray got into my house.

 

Don't worry, she will come out of surgery 10x nicer than when she went in...kinda like the $6M man.

It was just time for a change.

 

you took my idea! how did you fill in the aero scoops on the nose? looks awesome, I planned on doing that as well but i cant even find a thrashed one at the jy

 

nice what bellhousing did you use on that tranny set up

 

very nice looking - looking forward to after pics

 

looking great as usual! Cant wait to see progess pics.

 

the plastic spray booth scares the **** out of me, you know the car bags you buy when your doing a spot repair, they always hold a lil dust, i guess its the static, that might be ok if you paint it before any thing gets inside your garage, but it might make a mess. Car look killer btw are those 16'' irocs or 17s?

 

We have done everything we can to minimize the dust. We wiped down the ceiling, covered and cleaned the garage door tracks, and almost anyting else that could cause havoc.
The rims are 18x8 and 18x11.

Thanks,
Tommy

 

looking good!

 

NICE! Do you have any more pics of the hood mod? I was thinking of doing this very thing. Now I REALLY want to!!

 

it looks great. I love it an i really like the hood and ground effect mod. It Really looks awesome. Nice work -Matt

 

Here are some more pics:

 

I remember asking years and years ago if that could be done to the hood LOL.

 

Not to change the subject, but those wheels are awesome!!!!

 

hey lookin real good, cant wait to see it finished, and can you let me know what 383 you got,was it built or bought? and what it runs like.

 

love the hood cant wait to see the finished product your car has always been one of my favorites

 

I have a ZZ383. It has a the LPE cam shaft designed for the Superram Intake. Other than that, it has headers, underdrive pulleys, and better ignition.
The car does run strong, but I think it could definitely be stronger.
It puts down about 380 torque to the rear wheels and about 350hp. We may try going with a more aggressive cam in the following year. The engine hasn't really been broken in yet, so we'll see.


Tommy

 

sound real good, thanks