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SEM makes paints that can duplicate the original finishes of many of the interior pieces. For the cost of a can of paint you can have that dash looking original.
I found sem coatings after I finished the dash. I'll try it out at some point. I actually still have to paint all of my tan plastics black so I'll be ordering some sem products later.
I had the 700r4 rebuilt before I stuck it in the car but it had problems shifting late on test runs (the end of the street lol), and eventually stop shifting all together. I really didn't want to pull the trans to bring back to the builder so looked into it myself and this is what I found..
The governor "pins" for the weights had slipped out, i stuck the pins back in ad bent them at the ends to keep them in place. Trans is shifting perfect now.
The car hadn't actually been driven since the trans wasn't acting right so a lot of things were basically mocked up under hood with free/cheap parts. Plug wires that were too long, orange vacuum hose, wires everywhere...
Did some cleaning...installed summit 90 degree boot plug wires and cheap ebay boot protectors...got rid of the orange vacuum hoses finally, still needs a little more wire hiding/sorting and a radiator cover but I'm happy for now
The engine is running great, trans is shifting perfect, time to get the interior and steering/suspension right..
Swapped in some of the interior today but didn't get finished. Should look a lot better than the old tan crap when it's done..
Spare controls arms being blasted and moog ball joints/bushings on the way.
I think I've finally worked most of the bugs out. I hope, anyway. I'm really ready to move on to the"purrtyfication"process, but before I can get started the car is gonna need tires and some brake work. When I apply the brakes the car is pulling to the right, and there's brake fluid on the driver side wheel area. It's suppose to rain all week so maybe I can address this next weekend.
Last edited by Billgluckman; 05-15-2016 at 10:32 PM.
Minor changes in the weights & springs on the governor can have a huge effect on the shifting. It almost looks like yours was put together with some carpenters trim nails!
Minor changes in the weights & springs on the governor can have a huge effect on the shifting. It almost looks like yours was put together with some carpenters trim nails!
It was definitely nails. I thought it was odd but after googling I found that using nails to hold the weights is actually common.
Not a whole lot to update except that i fixed the braking issue. The left front caliper was sticking. Replaced it with a new caliper and it stops like it should.
Since i bought this car it's basically had no rear way bar. The bar was there, but the end links were missing. When I picked up the caliper at the parts store, i picked up some end links as well. Went ahead and swapped out the rear sway bar with my parts cars sway bar..
..swapped from an 18mm to a 21mm on the rear. The front will be swapped to a 34 from a factory 30mm. Not a big update, but the car definitely feels better with a rear sway bar attached.
Been slow going as of late, but there has been a little work going on. I've been in bad need of rubber, so i haven't been able to drive the car around a whole lot. I didn't really want to buy tires for the factory 16's, so I spent 70 bucks on adapters and bolted on a set of wheels/tires I had laying around.
Anyone recognize those? lol
I hadn't got it up to highway speed before putting the wheels on...man this car needs some sound deadener.
Sick of looking at this hood...
Stripped it to bare metal, hit it with epoxy...
It still has dings/dents. I'll work on those in the evenings after work. There's one dark spot under the louver on the right side, not sure what happened there, i'll strip it back to metal and respray.
Nice project! Can't wait to start my '89 IROC-Z Vert project.
An Iroc vert is what I really wanted. I only found one true Iroc in my hunt(in my price range) and the owner was being pretty flakey. I have feeling the title was m.i.a
Go ahead and make thread for your car, I need more to look at lol
An Iroc vert is what I really wanted. I only found one true Iroc in my hunt(in my price range) and the owner was being pretty flakey. I have feeling the title was m.i.a
Go ahead and make thread for your car, I need more to look at lol
It will be months before we begin the IROC_Z. My son, brother and I have an F150 and an '86 Corvette coupe, to do first.
Pulled front and rear control arms off of parts car and coated with por15(control arm on right side is dirty, coated weeks ago.) .New moog ball joints, and new moog bushings for front and rear control arms. Also pulled kyb gr2 rear shocks from parts car (practically new, maybe 1k miles.) Motor mounts pulled from parts car, brand new, bolted up but never had engine bolted up.
Also, poly trans crossmember bushings, moog front sway bar end links. Rear sway bar end links and trans mount already installed.
LCA's should be a little stiffer..
Last edited by Billgluckman; 07-03-2016 at 10:56 PM.
All above parts installed today. I won't say it feels like a new car, but it definitely feels like a different car. Motor mount swap sucked. If my drivers side wasn't broken I wouldn't have bothered but it was trash. Shocks were also trash. They were doing absolutely nothing.
Also traded the cars front sway bar with the parts cars sway bar when I installed the new end links. The new sway bar is the hollow 34mm, old bar was much smaller and even heavier, not sure what size it was.
Also, my steering wheel feels like it's about to fall off. I see a lot about the tilt mechanism needing repair but my car doesn't even have tilt. Mine is loose right behind the wheel. That has got to be fixed before I can really assess how well the car drives.
All three outer bolts and the center nut was loose. Tightened em up and it's good as new. Car drives pretty good now but still wanders a bit. I'll see what an adjustment in the gear box will do for that later.
Back when I had just got the car together and was about to take the car out for it's first drive, all I had left was connecting the shifter cable to the shift lever. When I went to hook it up, I noticed I had the wrong lever. There was no way that was gonna keep me from taking the car down the road, so I did a very crappy temporary job that only kind of worked. I could get into gear, but you had to really play with the shifter. I looked around for the correct lever, found a few on ebay but I think the cheapest I could find was $30 bucks. Too much for that little piece of metal.
Fast forward to Friday, I'm digging through my tool box at work and find a windshield wiper motor lever like one of these..
I knew I saved that thing for something...
Drilled out the stud, squared the ends of the hole..
Works perfect. No more wiggling the shifter to get it in gear.
Other than that, I've been chasing rattles. I've had the dash apart along with the rear trim where the hatch pull down lives. Most rattles are gone besides the doors, windows, and what i think are the rear brake pads. I'm hoping a brake job and door pins/bushings will fix those problems.
Not much to update. I kind of lost interest on the whole tpi 350 thing I was planning, so I'm kind of just watching craigslist and keeping my eyes out for something else..
Anyways, this is the latest project. Hatch alignment on these cars suck.
And unless it's on a 91-92 car, that spoiler does too imo
Just sprayed the deck lid last night, it's not actually bolted up yet, but you see where this is going. 3 peice spoiler with 3rd brake light, better deck lid alignment..
And if you couldn't see it before, rear quarter is mangled. I'm still trying to find my ***** so I can tackle this one.
I hated that spoiler at first too. But I eventually came to like it more than the one you have on there now, which is the one I switched onto my 88 as well. I think it might be because I started to see a lot of the high performance builds with the big spoiler and I just sort of started to associate it with 'better'.haha
I like the high rise spoiler. I just don't like it on the earlier cars. It looks good with the 91-92 ground effects and hood blisters, but it just doesn't work on this car for me.
I was/am. Never had a single person show up for the 88 blue one. I have had a ton of interest in the iroc especially now that I'm giving away what's left of it for free. I stopped trying to actively sell my camaro as I'm working and going to school so much and I have some work to do on my dodge. But I will probably list it again in a month or 2.
Not doing much work on the car lately. Currently house shopping, and one of the requirements is that it must have a shop/garage. Once I'm in the shop, things should pick up.
I did mess with the rear quarter panel a little..
..still needs a lot of work, I'm no body man.
So, I've been thinking of doing an ls swap in the camaro, and I heard about an auction with a whole bunch of cars. I went to the auction with a set budget and didn't really expect to come home with anything. Well, ls1 cars were selling over my budget, but I did come home with something..
..eugh, yeah I know, it's rough.
The good news is, it didn't take long to realize why the car wouldn't run. The fuel pump was actually missing. Someone had pulled the assembly and never replaced it. I ended up running to the junk yard for a replacement assembly. While I was there I think I found the junkyard find of the century, at least for third gen'rs lol. A decent dash pad..
Anyway, the firebird actually runs! I drove it down the road for the first time today. Trans shifts great. I did notice it wasn't running as it should so as soon as I got back I looked under the hood...
I knew mice and chewed some wires, but did realize one injector was completely separated. Shouldn't be too hard to fix. Started cleaning under the hood today (mostly on the right side)
Now I'm not sure if this will be a donor vehicle or if I'm going to try and save it and stay on course for an ls swap camaro. I'm leaning more towards saving the bird.
Last edited by Billgluckman; 11-02-2016 at 07:46 PM.
I vote save that bird. Any money you are willing to dump into it, I'd do it. Depending on how much you paid, you might even be able to make money off it. In my area, an lt1 in decent shape firebird sells for $4000 ish and up the nicer it gets.
Yeah I'm pretty convinced I want to save it. I've got a total of $500 in the car as it sits, but I have no plans to sell it.
I also should say this, I don't have the title to the car. Not yet anyway. Car hasn't been registered since 2010, but I've talked to the right people and I can get the title for $50. The process is different in every state, but apparently it's not that tough here, but I won't be dumping any money into the car until it's in my name. I will put a few dollars in to getting the engine running right, because i'll end up keeping the drivetrain regardless.
I'm not sure that I personally would ever buy a car without getting the title with it. Too many things could go wrong.
For starters, you don't know for sure who's name is on the title. If you want the actual title, the DMV is going to attempt to contact the last known owner. If they have some story about how it was stolen or an ex took it or something crazy, they legally own the car and can take it back. I personally know this exact same thing happening. The guy at the tow yard next to my shop restored a truck he got without the title first. A year later after he had changed the engine transmission, repainted, basically a complete restoration, the DMV finally got a hold of the previous owner, and they had some story about how their ex took it and they never saw it again and that they wanted it back. So that person got a completely brand new truck essentially for free.
Not saying that is the case here, but that has scared me away from not getting the title, unless I personally know the person and know the title will be signed over to me soon after.
I have also read online here and in other forums that people have bought a car that wasn't registered for years, and when they went to do it, they got hit with all these fees and back taxes. In Arizona, they don't go after the new owner for the previous owner not keeping it registered. You are required to file a deinsure certificate in Arizona if you want to title/ register it here. Not sure about other states. I definitely think its a good idea to hold off on putting any money into it until the title is in your name. Since you paid $500 total so far, if it ran well with little or no money, you could probably resell it for triple or more than that.
I wouldn't ever buy a car with no title and plan on driving it.
I bought it for the engine, so I didn't need the title. After I got it home I decided i might would like to keep the car if I can get the title.
I've already talked to the dmv, state police, and a justice of the peace, and I've been told the process. I've already verified the car isn't stolen, state trooper will come verify that the vin on my bill of sale is the vin on the car, trooper will hand me a piece of paper with his signature, I'll give this paper to the justice of the peace, he does a court order to get a title, then I take his paper work to the dmv.
The justice of the piece said he has never had a title he couldn't get, so I feel pretty good about it. The way i see it, worst case scenario I've got a good parts car.
You can usually get the title, sometimes it takes a few months.
Yeah he told me there's no doubt he could get me the title, it just might take a few months. So for now I'm working on getting the engine running right and cleaning it up, nothing else.
Fixed the injector wires on the formula and drove it again today. Car will freakin scoot lol. I'm assuming from the way it shifts that it has been tuned. I actually found what appeared to be 2 time slips when I was cleaning out the car but they were so old I couldn't read them.
If it turns out that I can't get the title to this car, that lt1 may end up in the 88. I love the torque this engine makes.
No big work on the car lately, should be closing on a new house within the next couple of weeks. The new place will have a small detached garage/shop/workplace which means I'll actually have concrete, walls, and a roof. I'm putting off any major work until then.
In the mean time, I did get the front end aligned on the car so it's now fully drive-able. I also made a road trip to pick up another dash pad...
No, it's not the same pad from a few posts ago. That pad actually came out of a firebird and the vinyl/plastic was starting to separate just behind the defrost vents so it's only a matter of time before it cracks. This pad is basically perfect, hell I'm almost afraid to touch it.
Also, I did get the formula title, so the lt1 won't be going in the camaro. I've fixed all the little wiring issues and have everything on the car working, picked up some c5 wagon wheels(not really a fan, but price was right) with decent rubber, and I'm still only in this car for around $800 including the price of the car. Car runs great but definitely needs some steering work.
Anyway, I basically made this post to brag about my dashpad.
No big work on the car lately, should be closing on a new house within the next couple of weeks. The new place will have a small detached garage/shop/workplace which means I'll actually have concrete, walls, and a roof. I'm putting off any major work until then.
In the mean time, I did get the front end aligned on the car so it's now fully drive-able. I also made a road trip to pick up another dash pad...
No, it's not the same pad from a few posts ago. That pad actually came out of a firebird and the vinyl/plastic was starting to separate just behind the defrost vents so it's only a matter of time before it cracks. This pad is basically perfect, hell I'm almost afraid to touch it.
Also, I did get the formula title, so the lt1 won't be going in the camaro. I've fixed all the little wiring issues and have everything on the car working, picked up some c5 wagon wheels(not really a fan, but price was right) with decent rubber, and I'm still only in this car for around $800 including the price of the car. Car runs great but definitely needs some steering work.
Anyway, I basically made this post to brag about my dashpad.
After almost 3 years of owning my 88 GTA I was finally able to find a good Fender and dashpad myself. Sometimes it just takes time. Sadly, Right after the fender install, someone hit the RR quarter panel and destroyed my Center Bird in the tail lights.
I'm still undecided as to where i'm going with this car. When this all started, this was going to be a restored/improved 3rd gen with a tpi 350, and i have the parts..
I've got the complete intake setup, plus the ecu and harness. I've always wanted a tpi car, but lately i'm leaning more towards the ls swap. We'll see what happens..waiting on the right deal.
As much as I tried, and I tried very hard, I couldn't get that quarter panel fixed. The metal was stretched, and as I've said I'm no body man. I finally said screw it and backed my parts car into the shop and started a project I had no business getting into, because like I said I'm no body man..and I'm damn sure no welder.
I pulled the quarter panel off the parts car. Very tedious job. Still wasn't sure if i had the ***** to cut up my good car, but something had to be done.
So the panel came off, and i went and bought a bottle of gas for my welder that I'd only used a couple times and had no real welding experience.
New panel on the car, this is after some sanding and a little primer over the weld seam. Previous owner of the parts car had rattle canned it. It was nice. I eventually sanded it down to
the factory base coat and today i was finally able to cover the work in primer.
There's a couple spots on the quarter panel I'll have to address before paint, but I won't get to touch the car much for the next few months so I just wanted it all protected for now. Also I decided what I'm doing as far and the engine goes. I brought home a donor a while back.
Runs great. I've already bought an ls1 intake and f body manifolds. Can't wait to get started with the swap.
Threw the car together right before I had a surgery so maybe I could drive it a little while I was off work
On the very first drive the engine started tapping after it reached operating temp. Oil pressure dropped out. Luckily, I was almost home. I let the engine cool off, restarted, once it hit operating temp oil pressure dropped again. Whatever, I knew the engine was abused. Park it.
Fast forward a couple months. Healed from surgery.
Off with its hood.
i knew the engine was on borrowed time. I saw the sludge back when I changed the valve covers.
OMG, the inside of that engine looks like someone did their oil changes with foundation coating instead of oil. Anyways, great work and I wish I had half the drive that you do.
Last edited by NoEmissions84TA; 01-18-2019 at 10:21 PM.
04-12-2016, 07:43 PM
Thanks, brother! 
