I'm in Arizona for the weekend visiting family and I went to a junkyard and found this! The thing looked like it was in awesome shape too. In New England we'd KILL for cars like this!

Nice! im going to arizona on the23rd of march. Im going yard hopping as much as possible, southern cars are the way to go. Always amazes me the things you can find, i was in south carolina for a week and hit the jackpot in turbeville,sc. Parts galore forcheap!

I was going to ask what is special about this "find", but then I'm from SoCal so I'm a spoiled in what is often available.

Lon

Apparently California has many 3rd gens in wrecking yards. The one near me has at least 12.

Pretty good find! Looks better than the car I'm working on-

This is true. I have a favorite I visit monthly.

Do you remember the name of that yard?My parents live in south carolina and Im planning a trip there very soon.Would like to know of some good u pull it yards to hit while im down there

That looks a lot like a yard I used to frequent in Phoenix. It always had at least ten thirdgens, most in somewhat decent shape(and rarely rust).

I live in AZ and cars like that are a dime a dozen. I actually cannot remeber the last time I saw a car with rust on it. I but I do remember when I use to live in Chicago and how I would have also thought that to be a great find.

In Texas they only look like that for the first 8 hours that they're in the yard. If you find one it usually has several guys all over it stripping and gutting it till it's just another useless shell. You gotta hit the yards early around here if you want to get parts.

I took my New England Trans Am and shipped it to California. It still has the stock original rust!! The repair shops laugh at me allot.

I suspect that many thirdgens in all parts of the country go into junkyards looking like that, but give them a week or so...

Here in CA, we are pretty lucky, though. Here are some pix of an '84 TA I found at my local junkyard recently. This one was unusually nice, even for CA.

The odometer read 17,000 miles. Given the car's condition, it couldn't have been 217,000, so most-likely it was 117,000. The body was excellent, just needing a good polishing to shine it up; and the interior just needed a mild cleaning to make it look brand new again. It even still had good, stock, GM floor mats(barely seen in one of the pix).

The functional hood's air cleaner lid is bent because someone had used it to prop-up the functional bulge hood(which was on the car when I found it. ) So at that time, all it appeared to need was a set of wheels/tires, and it looked like it could've been driven out of there.

wow i cant believe what ppl are junking out there

insane..

briwar your rust is VERY minor just surface

this is so amusing and sad wow.

no wonder these cars are getting hard to find, everyone junking them and thinks its funny apparently

heres my 82 and its the only early bird left here and its not that bad it can be fixed and its not getting tossed to scrap just because it has some rust












i cant believe the nice things that ppl waste just because there is a flaw, once it is gone its gone not replaceable, one less exists, but obviously no one cares, due to this i now have the last 82 83 84 bird in at least central IL, if not further out, ppl are always wanting to buy it, but its never going to be for sale

What kills me is how people will trash through a car getting to the part they need, like ripping the door panels apart to get the window motor or busting the console to get the shifter Etc... I remember when I was putting new gutts in my tilt shift column while re-torquing the tilt screws and just about every donor car I looked at had a busted out housing.

totally, i think it's guys who sell the used parts to repair shops that tear though the cars with out a care. they are just trying to get the part to the customer as fast as possible. those interior parts can be hard to find and expensive when they are found.

Not always true... I'm sad to say, but my dad is one of those guys that trashes parts to get to what he needs. He broke lines, cut cables, smashed plastic, whatever, just to get the piece he needs. "It's in the junk yard, so I can trash it all I want"