Since I was 17, a blue IROC with t-tops has been my Eleanor. I was saving up to buy one for my first car when an aunt gave her old buick instead. When someone totaled it from behind the next year, I found a perfect 86 305 ttop iroc only to buy a friend of the family's clean v6 firebird instead. The IROC disappeared before I could go back and change my mind.

Regretting that, I went looking to buy again but ended up with an amazing ebay deal on a 94 1LE car instead. From there I picked up a super clean 98 camaro, then went on a run of 3rd gens I never got to really use... 91 blue camaro that wasnt ttop or iroc, 88 iroc that wasnt blue, 84 ttop car that wasnt blue or iroc.

I posted a WTB thread back in 07 on here and watched for the right one on autotrader/ebay/etc for years. The cars were usually beat to hell or someone wanted a ton of money for a low mileage car I was just going to tear into anyway.

A total barn find came up 2 years ago on ebay with no bidders - a clean texas car now local, with mods, for cheap. It just needed a new hood, so I told the guy on a thursday night I wanted to check the VIN and pick up my buddies stock hood of his blue 90 iroc, and by friday morning he sold it to someone else for less than I offered.

Last year I came across a 3 day ebay auction with a few crappy pictures of what seemed to be a clean 89 iroc. It was ending before I could drive to see it (Buffalo->south of Pittsburgh), so I was going to let it go. As it was ending, I stood in a buddies garage going over his Nova project when a second friend text me about the iroc. He dared me to just man up and bid over the other bidder. So I bid his price + $50 from my phone, then watched for 8 minutes, waiting for him to overtake me and be done with it. He never bid again, and I got my IROC.

When we went to pick it up, the guy offered me money to just turn around and go back home. We looked it over and saw how clean it was, declined his offer and loaded it up.

The day we picked it up:




I never drove it before putting it on the trailer...didnt care, only wanted it clean. The engine/trans will be swapped anyway


Unloaded the trailer at the track, first time I ever drove it. here next to my buddies 8 second '90 iroc


It ran a 16.2 and 15.5 that first day, with problems I later traced to bad fuel injectors, a missing front air dam and mis-wired fans. I got it down to 14.5 by the end of the season. Ripping off the tint and those hideous white face gauges definitely made it go faster.



Here next to my '98. I need to paint the front bumper (previous owner had a tire blow out hit him). I'm currently doing a head gasket repair and adding the Borla exhaust from my '94 camaro. Later this year I'll fix my T56 to swap in and maybe next year I'll find a 6.0L for it. I built my own hydraulic tubing bender last fall, so I'll probably bend up some subframe connectors and maybe a 4pt rollbar for it just to tighten it up.

 

my first mod to it

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/fabr...ml#post5292919

 

Nice car, and story man!

 

 

It took me 4 1/2 years to find mine, so I know the feeling. Have fun and treat it good!