I recently got back into a F-body after being into offroading the last 10 years. I purchased a '91 Firebird with T-tops and am planning on just cleaning up the car a little and doing some road racing/street driving with it. Nothing serious, but want it to be respectable the once or twice a year I take it to the track. I have a garage going through it now to check everything over and they called to let me know that it needs a rear floor pan (no biggie) and both inner rocker panels replaced. The rocker replacement I'm a little more concerned, but I have an idea....

In the spring time, I am going to have a friend of mine build some custom subframe connectors for the car. Since I need to replace the rockers anyway, would I be better off cutting them off flat just below the bottom of the door and having the subframe connectors go all the way to the outside of the car? Think 1 3/4" round tube (or possibly rectangle tube) connected to the door sill and A and B pillar areas and then tied back into the control arms mounts. With the ground effects the 91/92 'birds have, I could make some tabs to remount them so you visually wouldn't see anything different. I'm thinking this would stiffen the whole car up pretty solidly and not lose any clearance (big issue in New England).

I'm still researching and am far off on needing to decide one way or another. Just wanted to put it out there and see if there are any usefully creative ways to replace the rockers.

On a side note, if you know of any places that sell replacement rocker panels for 3rd gens, please let me know.

Thanks,

Ken

 

As long as the door still seals and the gfx mount still, who cares what structure is down there

Only way to get replacement rockers is a frame cut from a non rusty car