Well After yearning for a firebird for years I finally picked one up last week she's a one owner car, bought new at McNamara Pontiac in Port Jeff New York, she was daily driven for awhile so she racked up 150000 miles but still runs like a champ very loaded car as well all power options. PW,PL,PS,PA,PM,, WS6, rear discs, DE1 Louvers , UT1 RADIO, LB9, factory ttop sunshades and 2.72 gears, shes had a pretty hard life paint pretty beat and shes got her fair share of rust along with a few holes but shes mine.
P.S the headlights work flawlessly



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Welcome to the club young man! Hope you have as much fun as I have here. Looks like I have the honor of your first response.

 

Nice! Congratulations on your purchase.

 

Your radio is a UT4. Touch ETR radio.
You also have UQ7 aka Sail panel enclosures with subs

 

Nice car, looks to be in pretty solid shape for the mileage. What are your plans for it?

 

My Brother in Law had an '86 in the same color (Midnight Blue?) back in the day. His just had the LG4, though.

 

Nice! Congrats!

 

well i plan to make it a clone of my dads old 1985 trans am, his was white with the black aero spoiler and the red accent stripes and since this car needs a paint job i figured might as well go with white, I'm not going crazy with the paint job since its gonna be my daily and I'm currently researching macco paint jobs just hope it comes out decent will most likely do most of the prep work my self

 

Looking forward to seeing your progress. I always found it cool seeing these still daily driven. I daily mine and its been pretty fun so far.

 

Well it’s been awhile but I’ve gotten a decent amount of work done I replaced the water pump, thermostat and gasket, upper and lower rad hoses and adjusted the timing to factory spec, the rot is pretty significant on the car nothing structural just wheel wells are really crusty in some areas, also reglued the center console together and gave it a good cleaning, honestly feeling discouraged about the rust but I’m just taking it one step at a time and chipping away at everything. Am still deciding if I’m going with a macco job for paint since the paint is pretty bad I have all the birds and stripes for the car so it’s just up to figuring out what I want to do

 

Iroc,
At first I thought your clamps were a line of easter bunnies. LOL. I am right there with you on the rot, GM could have done a much better job of water management from the wiper mechanism bay, and many other places for that matter. At least the repairs will not be too visible.

 

Lol gm really sh*t the bed on water management, I’m gonna post more pictures of the rust but I’m currently repainting the rear louvers

 

Got some work done today on the paint I’m sanding down the bad clear coat areas and gonna respray a base coat and clear in certain areas don’t really need it to like perfect just so it looks nice from 15 feet away, it’s gonna be a daily for a while so not going crazy with spending big bucks on a paint job


I sprayed this quarter with some clear after sanding down the old stuff and it came out pretty good

 

Looking nice Man, I hope to start shooting mine in a week or so, fingers crossed. I ordered Restoration shop "Boulevard Black" before I realized that they sold a "Jet Black" too. I hope that the boulevard is as black as the jet!

 

Bit of a update so I started with the painting process and can’t say im very pleased but I guess it’s better than it was I still have to do a few sections plus clear coat but for my first time literally painting ever I guess it’s pretty good, the area behind the ttops after spraying was really rough assuming that I had sprayed it too dry so I ran a scotch brit scuffing pad over it blew it off with my air compressor than hit it was a heavy coat, probably gonna redo it and the hip on the quarter panel didn’t come out well either it’s all a learning process I guess but it looks miles better than it did

 

Any advice on this would greatly be appreciated I’m kinda winging this

 

Iroc588,
It does look better than when you started. I just found this masking stuff recently and ordered it for when I paint. It comes in small rolls of plastic sheet with one edge masking tape and you just unroll it, but after you tape on a section, the plastic unfolds like visqueen, it unfolds to 3 different lengths, 2 feet, 4 feet and 6 feet, so you can cover a lot of area very efficiently.
Here's a link for it, only 12 bucks.



Painting takes practice, there are some good how to videos on youtube

 

been awhile since i updated the thread tons of work has been done to ole blue, i had the transmission rebuilt in august, brakes are completely redone rotors,caliper, pad etc, new taillights that are mint, addressed some of the rust, also changed the tps,iac,o2 sensor and new maf sensor, and changed the gear oil and re sealed the rear end. its made a pretty decent daily car, ive been using it for school and work past few weeks, still need to get some stuff done , she needs an alignment, new rear axle bearing and to fix the idle since its idling super high. been driving around with a for sale sign on it, winters coming and a thirdgen aint exactly built for new york snow lol, will get some updated pictures up soon

 

How did the paint turn out?

 

I thought you were going to paint it White like your 85?

 

i was going to make a clone of my dads old car but since he just bought a 86 exactly like his old 85 I plan on just doing a original restoration down the road on this car, also I have grown to really love the dark sapphire metallic paint. I was going to have body work done and it painted back in august but ran into a few things, it sure is hard juggling my cars, schooling and work, at this point I’m gonna start chipping away at the car little by little, eventually she’s gonna get new wheel wells, rockers, quarters, and a pillar patches,







some pictures of the cars the past few months, paint on my car is decent but is very sun beat and from the doors back is really bad “rattle can” so soon I will start doing everything but probably after winter since I need to daily my trans am