Picked up an all-original (except the battery) one owner L69 5-speed Trans Am over the weekend. 7,000 miles, original paint, tires, etc. It has some door dings and needs to be serviced but everything is there. It's oddly equipped with very few options other than rear disc, t-tops, a/c and the aero package. PS--it comes with about 200 pounds of cosmoline under the hood and underneath! Lots of scrubbing ahead.

 

That's an amazing find. I love the early third gens, and that ones practically brand new. Are you planning on doing anything to it?

Also, if you don't mind, how much did you pay for it?

 

Nice!

 

very nice win indeed.

 

Wow - nice find.

 

I plan on leaving it stock and getting it back to as close to new as possible. I have another set of wheels to mount up on some repro eagles so I can leave the originals untouched for display. The paint will detail up nicely and the paintless dent guy is coming tomorrow to fix the dings. I'll pull the headliner out today and tune it up over the weekend with all GM parts. I plan on being done within a week or two.

 

Beautiful CAR!!! Keep that one nice it is a real gem.

 

Nothing like a low-mileage original Nice find...

 

Very nice find!

 

Excellent. T top and L69 with that mileage is fanastic. Just due to age it will likely need some TLC such as fluids, belts and hoses, and a good cleaning underhood and inside.

Post some hi res pics as soon as you get her cleaned up.

 

Please tell me that the PDR guy does quality work! There are a lot of hacks out there that rush the job to get to the next customer. Be sure the guy owns his own business and his reputation is on the line. Stay away from Dent Wizard unless you personally know the tech. They hack up a lot of jobs because the company backs the work, not the employee. This low mile car deserves to be fixed correctly.

To remove the cosmoline, wrap the front suspension in plastic and spray the entire under carriage with Gunk Gel grease remover. The plastic will protect the control arms from losing the black finish they came from the factory with. I used a pressure washer after using the Gunk to really clean it up. I then used Simple Green on a rag to finish the larger smooth areas to remove any residue. My undercarriage was sprayed with Rusty Jones undercoating and this is the now image.

 

Scott---that car looks great underneath! I'll use your method on this one. It literally has cosmoline everywhere. On the upside, it looks like it will clean up pretty well based on a couple of spots I tried after work. We're lucky with our pdr guy. He's done dozens of cars for us over the past few years. He's really particular about drilling holes in doorjambs. He just refuses to do it. He takes interior panels out or whatever else he needs to do to keep from drilling anything. He's done a couple of Camaros for us and they turned out perfectly. If you guys would like, we can do a blow-by-blow resurrection of this one on this thread. We're going to keep it as original as possible, minus the cosmoline and the dents!

 

awesome! congrats!

 

Here's what my under carriage used to look like. I tried cleaning the passenger side with mineral spirits, but it was very slow going. The Gunk product was sprayed on and got into every nook and cranny.

 

Nice! You just don't see those early Trans Ams like that anymore.

 

Thanks for the kind words guys! I coudn't stand it so I tried a couple of places under the hood late last night, using Scott's Gunk method. The cosmoline is so thick it literally looks like the car is made of plaster. You can see the difference with just one swipe on a towel. Thanks for the tip Scott!!!

 

Here are some shots of the underhood area as it sits. The panel gaps are packed full. On the upside, it seems to have preserved everything really well. The brown on the coolant tank is actually undercoating overspray. It's pretty white underneath it.

 

Here are some shots of the original blackwall Eagles, one front and one rear. I remeber when they were new, the fronts always wore pretty quickly on the shoulders due to the camber and the way most of them were driven. These are still pretty deep, which indicates it was fairly pampered its whole life as far as how it was driven. These could come mounted one of two ways, like these or with the raised black letters facing outward. I had a new '84 L69 Camaro in '84 that had the raised letters out as did a friend of mine on his L69 Trans Am.

 

nice!

 

Is it Cosmoline or a tar based undercoating? I am interested because I have that tar based stuff on mine. It looks kind of like what you have. I hope that gunk stuff works on what I have because I would like to get it off.

 

It's the cosmoline based stuff. I've used prepsol on the oil/tar based coating and had pretty good luck. Either way, it's a mess!

 

That's a beautiful car. I would certainly keep it stock. It will get a lot of attention at car shows and 3rd gen get togethes. I decided that the cockpit/gauge/interior layout of the early Firebird T/A's is my favorite of all the 3rd gens. Later T/A and GTA's have too many cheap looking plastic buttons and trim, just doesn't appeal to me. Don't care much for the Camaro interior after the1989 model for the same reason.

When you get her all detailed up, post some more pix of the car, I would enjoy seeing some more detailed shots of the interior.

 

Yeah - I am not looking forward to it. I will give prep sol a try.
Thanks for the tip.

 

I never realized that the high back buckets like that came in a Firebird...

Learn something new every day I guess.

 

It has the absolute standard vinyl interior. It's basically the same seat as a J2000/Cavalier. Nobody ever ordered them because they look so cheap. It's the first trans Am I have ever seen with standard vinyl. At the very least they usually had the tweed insert (standard cloth).

 

I would shoot a dent man if he got near my car with a drill! The guy that does my work is with dent wizard but he glues suction cups to dents if he cant get behind them...I have been around alot of the PDR guys and he is the best Ive seen but he is slow which doesnt bother me, I just want the job done right!

 

I'm sure you already knew this, but if you intend to drive the car at all (which I hope you do a little bit!!), take those pristine Eagle GTs and store them somewhere...ideally on a second set of OEM wheels.

I would NOT ride on those tires. My Gatorbacks on my IROC were 6 years newer than yours when I got the car, and they howled worse than mud tires and were hard as rocks. On the ride home after picking it up, I was as giddy as a kid and ran her right up to 100 getting on the highway...then thought "oh crap, I got 22 year old tires under me"

 

Just an update---spent the entire day working on the T/A. Pressure washed underneath, underhood, jambs, etc. Scott's Gunk tip works great! All of the dings are gone, including a pretty nasty one on the hood. Took the original Eagles/wheels and cleaned them, coated them with lanolin hand cream and bagged them up. Threw a set of R9 Ronals/Goodyears on it (which actually look pretty good!) for rollers until the new repro Eagles/wheels arrive. Took out the headliner/visors for the upholstery guy to fix. Put on new Dayco belts. Drained the rotten fuel out of it and changed the oil/filter. Drained/changed all fluids. Boxed up all of the take-off original parts that were replaced.

Then I started a list of other things it needs including spark plugs (from the rotten gas) sway bar end link bushings (completely dried out/cracking) struts/shocks and outer window sweeps/triangles (brittle/cracking).

Washed it real good and put away it until next weekend.

Most of the original paint dabs/inspection marks/stickers were protected by the undercoating so that's a plus. On the downside, sitting dormant most of its life has been pretty hard on some things, particularly rubber items.

Me and a buddy of mine had a blast working on it though and everyone that passed through the shop stopped to look at it. It seemed like everyone had a cool third-gen related story as well.

What should make us all feel good though is the fact that every one of them said they had forgotten how neat those cars were back in the day, which says that they're aging pretty gracefully.

 

Lets see some before and after shots of the under carriage.

 

i'll have it back on the lift next weekend and get some photos underneath. We were clipping along pretty good yesterday and used up our time. It still needs some more cleaning to get the residue off and get the nooks and crannies. The gunk worked well though.

 

Just about finished with the engine compartment. I still need to install an NOS coolant tank and NOS alternator and the underhood is finished. She still has the original decals on a lot of the components and the paint marks from assembly line are still visible. I guess there is one upside to all of that undercoating after all.

 

I love this car...nice find, and nice work Good luck finding an NOS alternator...I don't think any exist anymore, and even if they did they wouldn't work anyway At one point I had 3 third gens with sub-30k miles...not a single one had an OEM alternator!

 

Thanks for the compliments! I actually lucked out and bought a few alternators and some other NOS stuff when the local Pontiac store closed up in 2009. Hopefully one of them works. hahaha!!

 

Don't bet a road trip on it

 

Gunk gel? Where do I get this? After looking at your pics I realize this coating is what is all over underhood of my the convertible. Should I keep it off somethings? Control arms?

 

I got mine at Lowes. I avoided decals and markings but pretty much put it all over everything else. Scott Moyer was right, that stuff works killer. Here's a couple before shots.