I've had a chance to start working on the yellow IROC the past few days. I've fixed a bunch of little stuff on the car, started cleaning and detailing, adjusted the TV cable, (I need to take it on a test drive), and touched up 50+ paint chips/scratches.


Here are a couple pics from my new garage.





Started detailing the engine compartment.








Those pinstripes were a real biotch to take off. If you look at the passenger fender on the first pic, that 10" piece took me like 45 minutes to remove, using the usual heat and chemical methods, so I ordered a pinstripe eraser.

It works, but it makes a huge mess. And I still have to peel the pinstripe off from around the mirrors as there wasn't enough clearance for the eraser.

These pics don't even begin to show how messy it is. I personally looked like the hairy beast from Borneo. Do it outside if you can.

i have only seen one other yellow IROC that clean and it belonged to a friend for a short spell till he sold it.

all i would do to that car is detail the fender wells. get in there with some simple green and a small scrub brush.

Thanks. The fender wells and undercarriage will probably have to wait until spring for further detailing. Let me tell you, this car was F-I-L-T-H-Y underneath. Still is. This is how it looks after an initial cleaning. You can at least see patches of plastic or metal. I'll go at it all out when it warms up again.

Wow so nice to see a yellow Iroc that looks so good! It makes me want to cry. lol
My first Camaro look just like that! Was a 86. Sold it 15 yrs ago. My favorite color on the Iroc. Mine had the gray interior, i was the second owner. Dude you are one lucky guy!

judging by the eng bay the underside is just reg dirt vs clean daily driven dirt vs oil/dirt mix dirty.

Yeah, it's just very thick, caked on, northern Minnesota dirt. I'm pretty sure I've cleaned off at least 10 lbs of it already. You should have seen the crud I cleaned off after I removed the grill. What's left is just a little too messy to do indoors.

Thanks man. It was either buying this one based on pictures and paying to ship it down here, or two other local yellow IROCs, which were pretty rough.

I would say you made the right choice! I am still looking for my old Iroc. Been a lot of years ago. Found one picture recently of the rear of the car. Thought I would add it.

Awesome garage and a fine collection LOL.

Charles,

Lookin good!! Glad you found the "right" yellow IROC. You have a nice new shop yourself. A word of advice from personal experience on your new coated floor...if you don't want tire tread "stains" on your floor where your cars sit for a while, go to Wal Mart or Lowes and get a few pieces of that interlocking foam floor padding for kids thats about 3 feet square and cut them in half and park your cars on them. Its very frustrating for a shiny new floor to have brown pattern blotches on it the rest of its life!

Jason

Good tip Jason. Could be too late though.

Well the REALLY right one would have been an '85 L69/T5 or '87 LB9/T5. But this one will do.

FINALLY some pics of this beast!

Looks great Charlie! Nice to see another well kept 85 IROC-Z. Is yours a Norwood car or a Van Nuys car?

Looking great! New garage looks great too! I see yours is set up double-deep like mine?

Looks like it is coming along nicely. Just a tip with the pinstripe eraser. Sometimes they actually leave a "rub" in the paint. So go slow and only apply the lightest pressure possible when using. Then use some 3M rubbing compond afterword over the section of the paint you used the eraser.

Keep us updated!

It's a Van Nuys car. All three are.

Thanks Jason. Still working out of cardboard boxes until I get my work area organized.

Question...how bad was your TPI assembly before cleaning? What do you find works well? My IROC is perfect, but its only because I used brake cleaner while I had everything apart for the intake gasket.

I don't plan to do that to either TA...any suggestions on something that might spray on well, or is something I can scrub with? The top of the plenum with the "crackle" finish is the worst part of both...the runners aren't as bad...

Thanks Brian. Yeah, the area which was "erased" needs to be cleaned and buffed. It does leave some damage on the finish. In fact on a couple of spots on the the edge of the mirror, it burned right through the paint. I've already touched that up....

I used to use Simple Green on the engine compartment until I heard that it attacks aluminum components and leaves stains. I now use Meguires All Pupose Cleaner. It's a professional product and you can't buy it in stores. You have to order it from Autogeek.com or elsewhere. For really dirty jobs like the engine compartment, I'll mix up a batch 50% with water and spray the whole area down. I'll let it dwell a while and then get out my brushes and start scrubbing! Then I'll hose all that crap off. After that, I'll spray everything with something like Aerospace 303 and wipe down. There are still alot of nooks and crannies I've got to get into still.

Is the Simple Green issue the reason I see spots on the rims of my Silverado? I use simple Green to clean the tires and raised whites on my truck and the rims started showing a cloudy haze start last year.

Could be. Simple Green is stronger than most people think. They have an aluminum safe version that they sell to the aircraft industry, but I've never used that one. The Megs APC seems just as strong, (in fact, you probably want to dilute it), without the Al etching issues.

So, I bought the extra large Dr. Color Chip kit for this car - seeing as it had nearly a million chips. I figured that it would save me many hours of sanding, buffing, finishing. Once you get the hang of it, the system works pretty well. The problem? Well, the paint code I gave them, created a bottle of 1985 yellow paint - as I would imagine it would appear in 1985, not 2011. I wasn't really happy with my final results, since the touch up paint was far from a perfect match. The touch ups were noticeably darker.

But...before the car left the dealer I bought it from, the previous owner stopped in there, with a half quart of yellow paint that the body shop mixed up to include with the car. Apparently, the previous owner's nephew had put a "scrape" on the car when he took it to prom, and the his dad had it fixed. I shook up the can, popped the lid, went around the whole car and re-touched up everything. Perfect paint match.

Re: Aluminum and Simple Green http://www.simplegreen.com/solutions...query=aluminum

Aluminum is always a pain to clean up. It tends to get dingy and stay that way. Eagle One makes a cleaner for uncoated, rough cast aluminum wheels. It's a rather harsh acid. You spray it on, wait about 30 seconds and hose it off. It does wonders on SOME aluminum parts, like runners. The plenum is a different story, it usually loses some shine and looks more white after being treated. For whatever reason the Eagle One etching cleaner doesn't seem to do a thing to GM alternator cases. I'd guess the difference could be different alloys. It's a bit risky and aggressive for a really nice car, but in some cases you have nothing to lose.

On my Mustang project, most of the aluminum parts were very dingy and stained. I found that coating the parts in Naval Jelly (again a caustic solution) for about 10 minutes gave the bare aluminum an even finish. Keep in mind, the container says specifically not to use it on aluminum. Use your best judgement, if you want to try it, do it someplace where you won't mind if the results aren't what you had in mind. Castrol Superclean is another chemical that can attack aluminum. It can work well in some scenarios, but it's important to keep in mind it will dissolve aluminum if left long enough. In about an hour Superclean can eat through a soda can.

Another option for matching paint is having the paint shop mix the paint to match the car. I don't mean by paint chip or color code, most shops have a widget they set on the painted surface of the car and it generates a code to mix paint to match that color. It's still not foolproof, but it might get closer to a UV exposed current color then the color 20 years ago.

I might give the Naval Jelly a try. I've tried everything I can think if on the alternator and some brackets on my '83, with very limited success.

NJ may darken the finish, but it makes the aluminum even (ie. no stains). It may require buffing with 000 steel wool to bring back the shine. Aluminum paint never seems to look right either, but sometimes it's a necessary evil.




Nothing short of paint was going to clean up the aluminum snout of that starter.




Both the aluminum PS bracket, and alternator case were cleaned up with Naval Jelly.

Looks good. I've tried everything in my garage, including steel wool and Scotchbrite pads. I figured paint was my last resort, but I'll give naval jelly a try. How long did you leave it on for?

Minutes... 5-10 if I remember correctly.

You bought that car out of Morris MN? If so, you move faster than I. I was gonna bring cash and look at it the Monday after it was sold.

Yup, that's the one. I think I called on it minutes after the ad was posted. That was on a Wednesday. By Thursday evening, the dealer had already sent me a bunch more pics, got me the previous owner's contact info, (who I still talk to), and got the Carfax on it. That evening I had committed to buy it and did a credit card deposit, first thing Friday morning.

I dont know what I like better, the car or the garage!

Also I suggest you get a correct side post battery and get rid of those goofy adapters, unless youve done the conversion already.

And since you have 2 cars in your fleet with no clearcoat paint like my 85, any special waxing tips or can I use items such as claybar on mine even though it doesnt have clearcoat? Ive only used meguiars cleaning wax on my car, because I dont know what else to use to make my paint pop.

Oh, that battery is on my hit list, don't worry.

I read an interesting article a while ago on restoring single stage paint. Basically what it was saying was, before you bring out all the abrasive products, it's a good idea to get the paint healthy again. You do that by feeding it essential oils - like from older products, like Meguire's number 7. I'll look for the article later and post it here.

My '83 is white, but when I first got it, it sort of looked like light beige. Everyone was telling me to repaint it, but I'm really into restoring original stuff. I killed afew claybars on that thing and it took me a long time, but man oh man, that paint is WHITE now. Clean, feed, clay, polish and wax.

I tried some #7 on the yellow car last night. I only wanted to do some test spots, but the bottle I was using was a little old and the nozzle was clogged. When I tried to squeeze some product on my pad, the side of the bottle cracked and puked a buttload of #7 on my hood. So I ended up doing half the car with it. I've heard some folks put it on heavy and let it sit overnight in order to try a bring back a SS paint finish. I wiped it off after about an hour though. Paint does look yellower.

Here you go. Get yourself a pop, this is a long one: http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/...ge-paints.html

Lots of links in the story too, like how to work white paint.

Wow Charlie thanks a ton! Thats gonna be an excellent article to read!!

Well there you go then. I saw it Wednesday and emailed a Camaro guy or 2 to ask opinions. Then I left town to get a snowmobile that weekend. I contacted the dealer right away on Mon. I wanted to go the following Mon to look at it/get it. I figured in Morris I'd be ok if I didn't move at the speed of light. I was wrong. I'm glad the car found a good home at least, it sure looks nice.

T5 swap... T5 swap... T5 swap...

I've always wanted to do that to my Crossfire........

Nice to see another yellow '85 with a good home.

The pinstripes from hell are gone....







And here are the '85's roomates.








Okay, back to the garage. Gotta finish claying and try to figure out it's crazy temp gauge........

Looks much better without the goofy pinstripe. It must be the pics you take but all of your cars look flawless.



Keep up with the updates and pictures. (At least I) really appreciate them.

Looks good Charlie, much better!

Looks good Charlie!! Really sharp looking car.

Thanks. I'm the original owner of the black one and it only has 11K miles. It's pretty mint. The white one has 99,xxx miles and looks pretty mint from about 5 or 10 feet. It has a lot of small door dings right on the door creases though.

The yellow one has 3 or 4 pretty prominant door dings on the driver's door which for some reason aren't visible in the pictures.

Thanks guys. I was thinking about getting the front spoiler repainted, since it was so beat up. But I touched up about 100 stone chips and scrapes on it last night, with the previous owners perfect match can of paint. I'll wet sand and polish it and see how it looks.

BTW Brian, we were talking previously about a trans leak that the previous owner mentioned to me. I don't know what's leaking now. Looks like two oil leaks, maybe one of them is from the rear seal and the previous owner thought it was a trans leak. I'll jack it up and get a closer look at that later.....

Have you tried one of those dent buster places? On my IROC I got a a nasty ding right in the door crease and they go it out no problem. I also got a nasty crease in my Silverado and it was a deep crease and they got it out no problem.

Both look like new again.

I always take the door panel off for them before I go in and that seems to improve the quality of the job.

I've gone to afew PDR guys for the white car, and they have problems getting around the inner door support. If I find someone good enough, I'll have him do both the yellow and white car.

Interesting, 85 does have the old 2-piece rear main seal which have been know to leak even on low mileage cars. Hopefully, you will get lucky and maybe it will just be a trans pan gasket. The trans fluid could be really brown in color especially if it is the original fluid and there is a good chance it may actually be the original fluid. Have you checked the color or level on the trans dipstick at all?

I'll definitely check out the color of the trans fluid tonight. Looks like one leak is coming from the front of the trans and one from the back of the engine. Who knows, could even be one leak which has matriculated fluid all over the place.

If one leak is defintely oil a couple of other places to check will be the back of the valve covers. 85 also has the old school valve cover gaskets that like to leak. Another good spot that is often mistaken for a rear main seal leak is the oil pressure sending unit. It is screwed in the very back of the block down next to the distributor on the drivers side. Get your hand down in there and see if you can feel some oil. Got to touch the part that actually screws in. May need someone with small hands to help with this.

Sounds like you don't have any good PDR guys in your area. Bring the cars to me in Orlando and I'll fix you up!!!!