I bought this 89 Trans am about this time last year for just under $2,000. It was pretty beat up and the clear coat was falling off but it had almost no visible rust and only 60,000 miles on a rebuild engine and trans. It turned out to be a pretty big project - the whole car has been stripped down to the metal and plastic and fixed. I probably have around 200 hours into it, and lately a couple 19 hour days (9 hours of customer work then work on mine afterwards). I'm pretty excited to be just about finished!

Its painted with PPG waterborne and cleared with PPG glamor clearcoat

 

Oh my god! Beautiful!!!! Jealous as hell over here!!!!!

 

Heres a few pictures of how it looked up until I started working last fall.


the car got broken into, probably with a pry bar by the looks of it

Typical spoiler problems. The ends of the spoiler were wired on to keep them in place.

Busted headlight and the other side had to be zip tied to stay up







The clearcoat on the whole car was like this




So the car was a little rough when I got it but in my opinion it was a good buy for 2 grand and I haven't regretted it yet.

 

Looking good

 

WOW, that's really something you don't see too often on here! Usually it's a backyard paintjob, driveway rattlecan job, or someone's garage at best. Nice to see a third gen getting it done properly in a booth.

Looks great, especially for Black and considering what it looked it looked like before. Well done!

 

looking great, cant wait to see updates!

 

Its came a long way looks good

 

Looking great. I remember the feeling when I had mine painted a couple years ago. Can't wait to see it put back together

 

Nice!

 

Dang, man I wish I had a paint booth like that.

 

Painting cars for a living has its perks Thanks for the compliments guys, I appreciate it!

Still not fully assembled but I found a few pics of the repair process I thought Id post up in the mean time. I have some bodywork experience but I havent done any bodywork on customer cars in over two years, only painting, it so this was a challange for me. Especially with the car being black it would show every mistake. After the car was primeded I did a full sand down and reprime just to be sure it was straight.

One of the trickiest dents I've fixed

Had to cut out a bit of rust here, brand new experience for me

Extended the posts on my new 4th gen spoiler

 

wow looks like they used a lot of studs in that first photo but it came out good

 

Yeah I'm sure one of my bodyman coworkers could have gotten it straighter and used less studs, but I did the best I could and I'm happy with it

 

Hey it all came out good I have to use a lot of them sometimes good job

 

How's that work? You weld the stud and then use a slide hammer to pull the dent out?

 

Yup thats exactly how it works. There is a stud gun that welds the studs on in about a second.

 

Finally took some pics! There a couple of small things to finish up but its pretty much done, and I'm very happy with how it turned out

 

Beautiful paint work

 

Not hard to see why. It's beautiful!

 

Looks awesome. Wish I had a paint shop like that......

 

Wow car looks amazing!

 

Nice Job.
Beautiful !!!

 

Did you have to do any sanding/polishing after?

 

Painting is the "easy" part. Your body work is amazing, great job. Black shows all flaws and even though it from pictures it looks as smooth as glass. Wish I had your skill set.

 

looks awesome!

 

point blank beautiful, just beautiful!!!

 

Thanks for all the compliments guys! WTR388, I didn't do any sanding and buffing yet. I want to eventually but it probably won't be until next year. Mostly because my wife is tired of me working on this project

 

Mine WOULD be if i could get it to run....

 

That car is so beautifully black it makes the rims look grey, outstanding work!

 

Thanks! I looked at dozens of sprayout chips to try to get the darkest black I could find, I ended up picking the darkest variant of GM's standard black. Its noticeably darker than my grand am which has the same paint code.