Warning, - Picture heavy...
It's been a long road for me to get to where it is today.

I've owned a firebird since 2004 and this was the third one I have owned. This will be the last thirdgen I own so I figured I would do it right before I dig into a 78 Y88.
This one has been almost 5 years to get to this point with work, life and money getting in the way.
What I would like to ask is what are the next steps?
I am thinking that getting the rest of the metal work sorted out before I move into some sort of paint work is the right step.

Looking for recommendations on what to do next.
Pros and cons for doing the paintwork in pieces (underbody, engine bay, interior) then starting reassembly to get it mobile again before going to finish paint.


More in the next few posts.
Picked up the car in late fall of 2019 for 6500cdn. Had 10 previous owners and at least one garage paint job. T-Roofs were leaking so I decided it was time to start replacing the old weather stripping. At which point I was not ready for what I was going to find...

I saw rust in the t-roof channels, thankfully it wasn't bad and only surface rust. But the more I dug into it, the worse it got.



Tearing everything apart to find all the rust and other corruption that's happened to this car over the years...

One of the many patch jobs done on the floor that was now visible after removing the transmission.

Found out that the passenger door has been swapped and isn't the original.

Dustless sandblaster was able to help with clearing all the old paintwork back down to nothing.

Overall metal work is in great shape. However after blasting, it revealed that the front upper fender braces were replaced and numerous other "backyard" patch jobs were done over the years.

Once it was blasted, returned to my shop with a fresh coat of epoxy primer.

 

Ordered a floor pan from an 88 GTA, (gunmetal grey too!) from Frank's Pontiac Parts. Great people to deal with.

Ordered a ton of new suspension parts from Spohn. I've been following them for years...

Found someone relatively close by that could do some of the metal repairs.

Some weird damage in this area.

This is what the previous owners patched in. Whoever did this, should have their tools removed.

Driver's side toe board was rotten pretty bad.

Pass side toe board was also pretty crusty at the weld seam.

Rad Cross member was pretty crusty under this.

One of the rockers (pass side) wasn't looking too good.

 

This was the condition of the patches that were done on the original floor. Whoever did this should have their tools taken away...

Rather than try to individually patch each section, it was better to just do the entire floor.

While digging into the floor we found that the inner rocker was also heavily damaged.

This was likely due to the front of the rocker being eaten away and allowing moisture and other junk to get in.

"new" floor pan prepped to go in.

Test fitting. The rear seat rail made it very difficult to fit the replacement pan in, so it had to be removed in a section to make it fit.

Tacked in.

Welded and cleaned up.

Fresh coat of epoxy primer over top.

Pass side toe board was pretty crusty.

Replaced it with new metal after cleaning up and removing any bad metal.

All finished up.

 

Driver's side rocker got patched up and replaced with a part from the donor floor pan. Worked a real treat.

Decided it would probably be easier to replace this part of the rocker since we had all new sheet metal in good shape.

Except we found about 20lbs of blasting media. Be aware that this kind of thing could happen for anyone that gets their car sand blasted...We figure when the car was being rinsed, the sand and water drained into this part.

All patched up.

THIS HOLE IS WHAT STARTED THIS WHOLE MESS! This was a hole in the T-Roof area on the back of the pass side. It was filled with about 2" of body filler to hide it instead of repairing it properly.

At least now it's all cleaned up and patched.

All cleaned up underneath where the welds were ground down.

More cleaned up welds.

More cleaned up welds.

More cleaned up welds.

Will be very hard to tell that it was replaced.

 

One of the things that I don't like about the modern car world is that something like 75% of all new vehicles are either white, black, silver, or gray. To me, such a boring color palette.

But maybe because I never saw a lot of them, that gunmetal gray GTA looks great. The color really works for it.

 

Nice project and you're doing a great job.

I would recommend asking a moderator to move this post to Members Firebirds and use it as documenting your restoration.

I have one going there right now for my '89 GTA, which is also Gunmetal.
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/memb...ns-am-gta.html

I think you are on the right track so far. Stripped down to the bare shell, repair all of the rust damage before going any further. It's the right way to do it. My car was very similar to yours. Looked good on the outside, but lot's of hidden rust underneath once you get it taken apart.

Assuming all of the metalwork on the unibody shell is done, there are a couple of ways you can proceed. If you are going to be painting the car yourself, you could keep the car on your rotisserie and complete all of the body and paint. Install the drivetrain from underneath after body and paint, then interior. That's pretty much how the factory did it. Don't know if you have access to a lift or not. It can be done without a lift, but with a lift a lot safer and less risk of damage to the body.

If you are going to send it out for body and paint, then you will likely want to get it to the point that it is a shell with a working drivetrain in it (this is the method I did). I stripped my car down to a shell, did all of the metalwork and painted the underside and engine bay in my garage with quality urethane paint (BASF). I didn't want to do the exterior body and paint, so I installed the driveline and got it running/driving so it could move around under it's own power. The bodyshop I am working with wanted it running so they could move it around their shop easier. I brought the car to the bodyshop at this stage and brought them all of the body parts loose. It's there now and the car will come back to me with an assembled body with bodywork and paint completed. Once it's back home, I'll finish up the wiring harnesses, interior, exhaust and misc stuff.

 

Great work so far! Really saved that car.

 

Totally. All GTA's look great, but the Gunmetal grey w/gold wheels and accents....that is hands down, the BEST looking GTA ever made. LOVE it, and love what you're doing to it.

 

Great work . You don't look new to this, if you are, you missed your calling.

 

Facts! 😁

 

Have to ask: Did you know pretty much that the car was going to need all this metal work? Car looked pretty amazing in that first picture. That's some serious repair on a unibody I'm thinking. Pretty incredible work!

I like gunmetal third gens too:

 

I knew there were some issues that at some point were going to need additional work in the future but I was looking to kick that can down the road and hopefully not have to worry about it.

When I picked up the car initially, the paint had fish eyes, flash bubbles, nibs etc... and just a general not great look to it so it was very evident that it was repainted at some point recently. Albeit the prep work that was done was pretty good.

The floor patches were sort of visible under the carpets on the exterior. Didn't realize the extent of it until I got further into the teardown.
I knew it had a leaking T-roof, so new weather stripping was in order (what really started the whole decision to teardown).
The door weather seals were shot and falling apart, so they needed replacing.
The auto trans had been freshly rebuilt by a local Mr. Transmission but was already leaking around the pan gasket. I called them about it and learned a little more about the car in that they tried to fix the failing pop up headlights. The headlight control module had failed solder joints where it connects to the harness. Easy fix to pull it out and reflow the joints.
The engine oil cooler lines were in very bad shape and threatening to burst at any time, so ordered new lines there.
There was a 32 code set for a bad EGR temp sensor/sender. Replaced the EGR that was frozen along with a new temp sensor that was causing the 32 code.
Smoked a bit on start up so bad valve seals so replaced the valve seals on the heads.
The car would vibrate pretty bad on decel, the U joint retainers in the drive shaft were loose, likely from when the transmission was rebuilt, so replaced those.
Exhaust was rotten along the center weld on the main pipe after the cat, so had that replaced all the way out to the tips.
The A/C was dead, leaking seal around the compressor housing, already have a replacement GM compressor on the shelf.
The UQ1 equalizer slider switch was dead, picked it apart and cleaned the contacts and was able to refresh it and get it working again, have a few of those on the shelf as replacements.
Had to replace one of the LED screens and the backlights for the digital dash, super simple stuff. I have a few replacements from another GTA I have to sort that out.
The driver's side rear 1/4 has some weird rippling that likely can be worked out by a PDR specialist.
The pass side 1/4 by the back of the door also had some metal work done to it as you can really see where the body guy cut hard into the metal with a sanding disc. All of that was revealed with the dustless blasting.
Underbody rockers and frame rails had some odd ball dents from incorrect jack points being utilized, I plan to fix that best I can with a slide hammer and some time.
Driver's side rear seat is pushed in a bit on the replacement floor, likely due to shipping/storage but should push down pretty easy with a few good hits from a dead blow hammer.

The main reason for starting any of the exterior work was the T-Top weather stripping being old and leaky and me wanting to get that fixed first. This "little" part led me to find a rusted out T-Roof bar and light surface rust in the T-Roof channels on the rear side of the roof line. I used a wire wheel in those channels to clean it up so I could treat it with paintable rust converter and then mask/spray paint everything. This is what led me to find the hole in the roofline on the pass side. This issue then snowballed into me pulling up the carpet and finding the poor patch job on the driver's side and finding more and more issues as I went through the tear down. This included everything from left over wires, to really weird choice of fasteners for several interior pieces.

After sandblasting and getting rid of the (what looks like) basement paint on the floor pan to hide the pinholes and "seal" everything, the blasting revealed a ton of pinholes everywhere along with the rotted out rocker panels.

Thanks to @TransamGTA350 - that was the answer I was looking for.
I will be working towards painting the interior, underside, inside the frame rails and engine bay. Then I can get the car mobile and then final exterior paint at a body shop nearby. There will be a ton of other prep work before I even get to that stage which includes things like headline brackets, crash bar, fuel and brake plumbing and so on.

I haven't got the skill to deal with metal work or paint and I am not ready to try (no shop air) so I will be farming it out to someone who knows what they're doing. The final colour I am likely going with is likely going to be the hypersonic metallic grey from a 2023 corvette. To me it's an update to the original gunmetal grey and I think it looks amazing.

 

For the engine bay and underbody paint, I would recommend using quality bodyshop grade materials and you will need an air compressor and paint gun. You can use collision grade paints vs. show car grade to save some money. Most brands offer multiple lines. I used RM products and used their Limco line for the engine bay/underbody, which is their lower cost line that collision shops use. The outside will be done with RM Glasurit line, which is their higher end line and more expensive. Epoxy primer for all and then base/clear for the engine bay, same color you are going to do for the outside (unless you just want to do a black engine bay, then single stage black is fine). Underside can be single stage, no need to spend the money on clearcoat.

You say you don't have shop air, so I would recommend buying a decent compressor. You're going to need it for the metalwork anyway. Lots and lots of grinding welds with an angle die grinder. I got a away with a 26 gallon Craftsman upright diaphragm type for my whole project, including the painting. It was a little small at times, but it did the job, and need to rig up a good water separator setup. You can get a decent paint gun set (full size and detail) that will do what you need for a couple hundred dollars. You can spend a lot more that that for professional level paint guns, but no need for what you are doing here. I use a Devilbiss 2-gun kit that I bought from Eastwood and it has worked out well for the amateur level stuff that I do.