Hello, this is my second time writing about my Iroc over here, the first time the thread died in 2008. Here is a link to that thread if you would like a little more history.
https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/memb...c-germany.html

To continue where that thread left off, about 4 months after the last post the original engine in that piece of junk spun the main thrust bearing. The block was toast and my camaro was left sitting at my work...for about 18 months. I was pretty much totally broke with a kid on the way and no way to pay for a rebuit engine, so the camaro continued to sit and get in a worsening state, while I looked for some kind of cheap deal or something in the couple of hundred dollar range. There are NO chevy v8's in junkyards here, and to make it a little tougher I need an 87-95 1 piece rear main seal.
Eventually I came to the point that I was going to sell it for what I could get for it, a buddy of mine who had wanted it was going to buy it since he had a 350 from a k1500 with a bad oil pump, so he bought all the parts to make that engine a runner again, but never put it together. His unit was about to deploy so he decided not to buy the Iroc and give me all his engine stuff for the cost of towing his truck to the junkyard($40), but since I drive the tow truck no charge.
I took 2 weeks off from work to put it all back together and ended up hitting the credit card for a new clutch kit, resurfaced flywheel, and all the little things you wouldn't expect, like a lot of new bolts since things tend to get lost sitting for a year and a half.
Now you wouldn't believe it but I don't have one single picture of any of that, and I really hate myself for not documenting any of it.
I did take a few pictures once it was finished, here is a pic of that boat anchor of an engine

Now sitting for that long outside in Germany can take a toll on the body of a car and mine was no exception, mostly the floors had really gotten bad so I pulled the carpet out to see how bad the damage is.

It was pretty bad I have other pics, but I can't find them right now basically it was swiss cheese on the drivers side and the passanger side had a softball sized hole, so all the bad stuff was cut out and new metal was shaped and welded in.


It was now good enough to pass the German inspection and I drove it in this condition for a year, it wouldn't pass again next year due to a crack in the windshield that they missed this time but had grown quite large. I parked it for the winter. All my plans were going to start in the spring.

First thing was to replace the windshield and clean out the rust that caused the old one to crack. I then started to order parts for my restoration plans; new complete weather stripping kit from 1Aauto, new decal and stripe kit from Pheonix, clear turn signal and side markers from ebay, new tires, and sent the wheels out to be refurbished. Then it was time to start prepping the body.



And then it was off to the shop

 

This was just going to be a MAACO style exterior only paint job and I went with Audi arctic white.
Here are some in progress shots


Got my rims and tires in during this time.



Time to do the reassembly



This was done on the 3rd of July in a mad rush to get it done for the 4th of July car show we do here every year. You'll notice I haven't put the stripes on yet.

 

looks great man, hows the interior?

 

Thanks man, I'll post some interior pics tomorrow I was copy and pasting this out of a word document since I had to many pics for one post and fumbled it and lost the ending to this, but it's too late to redo it tonight, so I'll continue tomorrow.

 

We had a dyno at the car show and I put the Iroc up on there, I probably shouldn't announce my numbers, but I will anyways. I put down 205 hp and 480 NM, it wasn't the weakest car up there, but definately the weakest V8. I have plans though to improve those numbers.


And as I said my future plans. I picked up a L98 out of a 90 Corvette, it's got 80k miles on the motor, I picked up the engine and trans for $500, and sold the intake and associated hardware for $450 so I did pretty good on that deal. It's sitting in my garage now and will slowly be built up, nothing fancy just an easy 300+ to the wheels is my goal.

So a few weeks later I got around to putting on the stripe and decal kit. I was slightly torn on wether or not to keep the original appearance and go with the silver and yellow stripes, I always felt the yello was pretty out of place so I decided to go with silver and black and like it much more. This is how the car sits as of today. It is exactly how I wanted it as far as looks go, just a clean 3rd gen that I can thrash on and take to cruise ins and to the track.

 

A few interior pics, this was at the beginning of the summer I pulled everything out to do the windshield and in the spare tire well was rotted out so I had a little more floor work to do.

I drove it totally stripped for most of the summer until after the paint work was done, on the same day that I did all the body reassembly I also did the interior at the same time.

 

Looks great! I can't recall ever before seeing a factory TPI / non-air combo, thanks for the pic of that, too.

 

Thanks man, actually it was originally an AC car, when I did the engine swap I got rid of that and the AIR system. You can kind of see in the pic where I cut off the AIR tubes and welded them shut, I kind of want to get rid of the serpetine setup since I got 2 pulleys that do nothing now, but it hasn't been something I've been actively pursuing.

 

Car looks great! I remember when you had it for sale, guess you decided to keep it haha.

How big of a pain is it to ship a car overseas?

 

Thanks! Yeah this car came pretty close to being sold a few times. Shipping wasn't too bad, it cost like $900 for port to port. I was stationed in your area at APG and had a friend drive it down to the port in Baltimore, it took like 4 weeks to get to Germany. They stole my radio and tried to steal my gauge cluster, but thankfully abandoned it, but it made for an interesting 6 hour drive from Bremerhaven to Erlangen with nothing to listen to and my temp gauge maxed out the whole time.