take some heavy duty clear coat sealer, and just lay it on there, so its preserved but appears factory, it would definitely be a shame to undercoat it

 

I'm probably going to spray it in bedliner. There are some spots here and there, the back firewall has a welding repair on it too. If it was all pristine without the repairs I probably would have left it as is but it rains a lot here so it's probably better to coat it. I';m going to redo the seams too, some are brittle and there are a tone of seams that never got sealer from the factory. i did that on the camaro too. I do realize it's kind of a shame, I like the nice painted finish, it's just not durable.

 

Well, I finally finished repairing the cuts and hammered over sections under the car and redid all the seams...and I got some vogtland dropsprings for it. Hope they drop better than the Eibachs on my camaro. I used a set of these vogtland on 2 4th gens and was impressed















Now for some bedliner and the underside will be ready to receive all the powdercoated bits

 

yay for picturessss, its been too long since any updates, keep up the work though

 

You sir have a love of third gens I do not understand, but glad to see a car in good hands.

 

Where did you get the springs from & how low are they?

 

good job

 

Vogtland, a German brand. Got them in Germany but they are for sale on ebaymotors US too I think.

These are 4th gen but they probably can get the 3rd gen ones too.

supposedly a 30mm drop but I used the same brand on my buddies 94 Z28 and it was excellent the way it sat, not high in the rear like the eibachs on my camaro.

from this



to this

 

Thats sweet, how different are thr 4th & 3rd gen springs?

 

Rears are the same, fronts are not, 4th use a coil on the strut w a pigtailed end on one side. Overall spring diameter is not the same either.

 

Finally got the duggan heads in. These are gonna be saweeeet!!

These made stupid horsepower on high winding small engines, a guy w/ a drag boat made some 550hp on a 327 and another guy made above 735 with a 400 CID

 

Thats a wild looking set up. I'm very curious to see it running! I'd like to see the type of power it makes too. What is that stuff off of? Is it some kind of older nascar engine design or something?

 

yeah im curious as to whats its from also, i looked and i cant ind any info on duggan intakes, or cylinder heads or anything like that.

 

It's australian stuff, mainly used on fresh water race boats;

Check out the green boat

http://www.melbourneboatsales.net.au/race_team.html

 

735 horses on a 6.0L for that boat danggggg

 

Slowly getting more done. Finished cleaning up the wiper motor hack job, only needs a final light sanding to smooth it all in perfectly.



Then went to work w/ the wheels. Determining if they even fit, so I tried them on the 92 GTA.

It's smooth with the fender, a little ******* but it'll have to do





I should be able to fit 13" rear brakes in there



Plenty room on the inside





13" fronts fit too.....pfew!! Just not with larger calipers





I also scored a 9 bolt posi 3.48 axle for the TA, only it's equipped w/ SSM lift bars that I'll have to cut off. With them on there's no space for a sway bar and I'm not a drag racer, I want it to corner. The thing is in the way of a watts linkage so I was thinking about maybe building something custom like a wishbone or triangulated 4 link typ deal but w/ a torque arm and no 4 forward links, just 2 arms. Will have to model it up and see if it works. The triangulated arms or wishbone could be attached to the cut off part of the SSM bars

 

Here's the 9 bolt I got, pretty clean, alu calipers (will swap for larger discs and the necessary brackets) and will have to cut off the SSM lift bars. I may use what's left of the weldd on sections to convert to a triangulated or wishbone type axle locator instead of a panhard bar.

I'm going to redo the axle, install studs on the caps and a girdle cover like I did on my red camaro. The axle will be powdercoated. I'm also going to shim & tune the posi.





Also got some bilstein HD shocks for it. They are not as stiff as the adjustable yellow konis on my red camaro. Not as stiff by a long shot. I hope they will be able to control some very stiff springs. I'm not going to use the lowering springs, I'm going with a ground control weight jacker setup and 5" springs
Th Bilsteins do have a very very thick shaft, at least double the thickness of the konis and the stockers.

 

Got my stuff back from the anodizer, it was kind of a test to see if it would turn out nice, I think it did.

The tank is a canton coolant reservoir, the other thing is a fuel filler cap. Both are done in matte gold and I think it looks awesome. I'm going to have more stuff done this way, specifically aluminum parts in the engine bay. I also added a pic of how the filler wil sit, that was on my red camaro but not using it on that one. Figured it'd look more "hardcore" on the TA









All it takes to mount is a custom ring w threads and 3 tabs to screw it in the original position. Also have to cut a section off the tank filler neck. Not an ussue.

 

That is looking really hot.

 

im excited, anyone have any examples of the wishbone or triangulated setup, never heard of either of them before. and your gold fuel door, is that gonna stay like that or is the thirdgen door going back on? it doesnt look like it could

 

triangulated 4 link



The cap replaces the stock door.

 

Finished fixing the wiper motor area and resealing everything on the firewall and in the engine bay Removed some minor surface rust under the old paint and painted it all flat black. Finally I can start to put some stuff back in there. The underside that hasn't been painted will be done with bedliner like I did on the camaro It's the most durable solution for that.

 

This is what the gas cap is going to look like. Still have to fab the adapter ring and get some black anodized fasteners



Canton reservoir mountd

 

I take it your going with the factory paint/stripe scheme?
That is really going to look sharp.

 

Paint is going to stay as it is, it's nice enough for a driver, body is going to stay as it is w/ spoiler & power bulge hood and no GFX

 

are those just current plans for the exterior, or is osmething gonna happen down the road?

 

No, it's going to stay like that, a sleeper with not too large wheels. Engine will be a 4xx something w/ possibly a tex t101

 

Fabbed a washer tank for it, just like on the camaro. no canton or similar quality welds but it'll do. It will be anodized gold too but Ill bring a whole batch in to do at once so I end up with the same color (and hopefully a better price because it cost 100$ to do 1 reservoir and 1 fuel filler cap)







Decided to mock up the duggan heads. Something makes me think I'll have to spring for some IDA48s or IDA pattern EFI because this spider intake isn't going to clear man it's fricken tall.

 

Going to be running a front drive dizzy too, it'll be hard to spot what this engine is once installed w IDA48 webers so it fits under the hood

 

IDA 48 Webers?! Your my freakin' hero.

 

I really didn't know you could move the distributor like that, is that an LS motor or a SBC? How much did that cost?

 

WHOA, that looks amazing!!!

 

I notice this car has a hood bird. Slightly off topic, but do you have any other pix of it with the bird on the hood?

 

It's just an SBC with some old school goodies. I collect ol stuff like that and have ha that lying around for years. I also have a moroso cap for it that moves all the wires to the correct side for a very clean dizzy setup, a mech. to electrical autometer converter w rev limiter and some other stuff. All 70s and early 80s stuff that i collected over the years and people have forgotten about.

The car in the pic w the wheels ia a 92 GTA, I posted some pics of it before.

 

I've seen side views of the car posted before but never knew it had a bird on the hood. I've been strongly considering putting a bird on the hood of my GTA, and that picture pretty much confirms that it's the right thing to do.

 

Decided to spray bedliner today, had to build a "tent" so the stuff would not overspray on tools and other cars





Everything taped off, engine bay too. Taped the sides so the pinch welds would get coated too, with the seam on the vottom acting as the cut off line





Well, turned out I didn't have enough of the stuff left. Have to order some new now

 

Very nice Bird. Haven't read all three pages. Looks good so far. Will read the rest in the coming days.

 

Twin do you have close up & lnstallation pics of that air scoop setup under the GTA. Iwas thinking of doing that same exact thing on my cars.

 

If I'm not mistaken that may be a scoop for the intercooler on the ATI Procharger kit installed on that car.

 

Yes the scoop is for the Procharger 3 core intercooler sitting above it. The scoop is my own fabrication though.

 

Ahhhh i wanna remove my airdam & build a scoop instead.

 

Keep the airdam, the scoop is detrimental for ground clearance

 

Some more progress, instaled some parts like the hood latch, front panel, fender supports, wiper motor, booster & MC, clutch cylinders and an aluminium prop valve to replace the ugly cast iron one.









Still need to spray the rear frame and above the tank w/ bedliner. Finished the wheel wells

 

What did you do to clean the wheel wells before you applied the bedliner?

Thanks.

 

First I used kerosine to remove undercoating, then i used thinner and paint prep to degrease.

 

I've had decent luck with undercoating using a stiff wire wheel in my 4" angle grinder. It's a dangerous tool spinning a wire wheel that fast, but works really well. That is how I stripped the wheel houses when I did my IRS swap project. No greasy mess, just lots of dust and rubber chunks.

 

Prob w the wire wheel is, you also remove the zinc coating and I wanted to preserve that. The kerosine just removes the undercoating and nothing else.

 

Cut the ssm lift bars off the 9 bolt and welded on bolt in LCARBs, figured the bolt ons would be easier that the weld ons like i did on my camaro, no need to measure all it out to get them on correct (axle off car, more problematic) but next time I'll get some weld ons again. These don't fit 100% right, I want the bolt holes to line up perfectly. Like the weld ons the holes are oversize to give you some room to play around with but I hate it if they are not centered properly. These required hammering to get them on flush and the shock bracket is a little too long, it stands off the axle too far.

Also welded the sway bar brackets on so I don't have to use the U straps. The axle was missing the locator flat on one side so no other choice.

 

Whose LCARB brackets did you use? My founders pieces went on my 9 bolt so perfectly its like they were a GM part.

 

UMI