My son and I picked up a,1982 Trans Am , it has a blown motor, plus rust seemingly mostly under the front floors , we all watched the notorious tv series so had to buy it. We have a 91 parts camaro for donor metal if that's the best route, no experience, do please tell us how to accomplish this mission, the car has 4 wheel disc brakes is a crosfire motor car so hoping its a,ws6.

 

No responses yet, so let me restate this question. We have pulled almost all of the parts we wanted or sold from the 90 camaro parts car . Id kind of like to get it out of my back yard but the floor pans aren't rusty. Should I try to cut some metal put of it for the 1982 transam or is it easier and cheaper to buy some after mrkt metal .

 

Aside from the trunk floor, and passenger compartment floors, fenders, hoods, 1/4 panels, rocker panels and patch panels for the lower halves of the doors, most sheet metal isn't reproduced for thirdgens. Fabricating panels with lots of intricate bends is a PITA. Go over your project with a fine toothed comb before you throw out the parts car. Pull the interior and the carpet, poke around the loose seam sealer. If the floors are rusty, you'll probably find more rust than you expect.

 

I would also carefully check the shock towers from under the car. That is also an area that can have rust issues and isn't easily noticed. It can take some welding skill to patch or fix.

 

Pics will help on figuring your car


1982 T/A crossfire cars ALL had WS7 or WS6 suspension. If your car has rear disk its a WS6 car


Dave

P.S i also LOVE that "notorious show"

 

Okay thanks , will have some good pics up Monday eve when I get back thank you for the help so far. My son and I have three of these third gens , now I just need to know how to work on them .

 

If the floorpans are rotted, it is either from leaky T-tops (if it is so equipped), or from general rust/rot from road salt. If from T-Tops, it could be localized to the floorpans. If the rust is from underneath, due to road salt, most likely there is a lot of other hidden rust.

In addition to the floorpans, check the following areas:
-Bottom of radiator core support
-Battery tray
-Inner/outer rocker panels behind the front wheels (where the bottom fender bolt is)
-Front shock towers (poke the undercoating all around with a sharp awl)
-Front toeboard/firewall/cowl seam on the passenger side, under the heater box
-Rear inner fender wells (vertical part with trunk on other side. poke the undercoating all around with a sharp awl)
-Spare tire well
-Behind rear bumper energy absorber (where it bolts to the body)

These are the typical spots that these cars that were exposed to road salt will rust. Most of it will be pretty hidden behind undercoating, seam sealer or the outer body panels (fenders, ground effects, etc.). A car that looks really good on the outside can have rot in all of these hidden areas and not be that obvious.

I went through repairing all of these areas on my GTA. Sourcing good metal from other cars (sounds like you have a good donor), floorpans are about the only sheet metal than is being reproduced, and the rest I had to fabricate. My project started as repairing the rocker corners and snowballed into everything else I listed as I kept finding more rust and taking the car apart further. Had a known how much was there when I started, I would not have done it and just found a rust free shell and transferred all of my good parts over.

I didn't keep track, but I would estimate I have 150 hours into metal work on my car.