As the title says, i brought home an 88 camaro today. This is how it sat when i found it..

Got it to my house...




As you can see, it's pretty rough. The front ground effects/chin spoiler is busted, the paint is screwed, and theres a dent in the rear around the gas cap area. Also, the spoiler is hideous imo.



interior needs lots of love.

i plan on pulling the carpet next to check the floor pans. So far it looks like a solid base. No signs of accidents or serious rust (yet). Hopefully i can really dig into it friday.

 

What's your plan for it?

 

Repair/restoration/improve. It will get a 350 with tpi on top, 700r4. I'm not sure if I'll go back with the same paint color and scheme yet or not.

 

As long as the floor is not rotted out, I think its a great start.

 

I got up this morning and pulled the carpet. Floor pans look great. Only found a couple small rust spots. Won't take long to deal with. Very happy with this because my original project car was in bad shape.

 

Hope it won't be so hard to resurect Keep us informed!

 

Ya keep us updated and GL with the project.

 

What's the price on something like that around you?

 

I feel like i over paid for the car, but after looking for over 4 months and weeding through some complete rust buckets and cars with obvious accident damage, i felt ok with giving the owner $900. From what i could see the car had no rust and no accidents...

Floor pans:



Very happy with what was under the carpet, but the carpet it's self is unusable. i tried cleaning it up but it's too far gone.

Keep in mind the original carpet color is tan/brown. I had a decent black carpet from my parts car, so i slapped it in to see how it would look...



The parts car also has black arm rests, thought i'd see how that would look...



None of this is bolted down, but I think the black carpet looks ok with the tan interior. Anyone disagree? I'm pretty undecided about what to do with the interior, parts of me wants to keep it original, but i love black.



Arm rests are screwed...as is the dash pad..


I'm currently attempting to recover the dash pad and play with the interior while i gather parts to get the drive train in the car. I keep going back and forth with keeping the interior tan, or going all black. I have enough good parts from each car I could go either way.

 

Sooo, no beginners luck on the dash pad. Knowing what I know now, I should have sat the vinyl out in the sun for a while before I just jumped in. You can easily see the fold marks from where I had it stored for a few months.

 

Sorry for the luck on the dash. When you go to redo seats go to lethalinteriors.com She does amazing work and then you could incorporate the black and tan in the seats. Then the interior would all tie together.

 

I think the black and tan interior will look better than the stock all tan. Good luck with your project.

 

I have to agree with dirttoo, the black carpet and arm rest accent the tan interior very well. I wouldn't go all tan, but that is just my opinion. I'm also a big fan of black interior as it allows more exterior color choices. Black exterior with tan/black interior would look killer, IMO. Great base to start with, good luck with the resto!

 

Those are some nice seat covers. Any idea what the prices are?

Thanks guys, I'm liking the black carpet too, and I may go all black.



Lots of rain coming down here so I can't do much at the moment. I'm still playing with that dash pad though. Gonna try a couple different things and see if I can't make it presentable.

 

Man I just looked at pics of your car, love it. Also noticed those are your seats on the lethalinteriors site. lol

 

Something is going on Slow steps to perfect car?

 

There's been a little progress, but not much. Right now I'm having a hard time finding a trans.

There should be some updates tomorrow, maybe tonight. Going out of town to rummage through someone else's abandoned project.

 

• So i lifted the hood today to check out the engine bay for the first time since the initial inspection. Other than a whole lot of dirt, I found a rusty battery tray
• 

So I i cleaned the engine bay up a bit and hit the rust with the sandblaster. I then brushed on some epoxy primer to seal it up. First time ever using a brush with epoxy but I did not want the mess of using a gun for a spot this small. I also blasted and coated the bottom of the tray as well but the lighting wouldn't allow pictures.







Right now I'm mostly in a parts collecting stage. Last night I picked up a z28/iroc hood and grill, and I'm still trying to find a good trans. If I can't find one from a trustworthy source soon, I'll just take the one I have in for a rebuild.

 

looks like a cool project, keep us posted because id love to see how this plays out.

p.s. imo the tan and the black looks better than the just tan or the just black

 

Thanks man I like the black mixed in too.

 

no prolem, and for that dash pad i would look putting one of these on it, or even thought about throwing some glue at it, then covering it with vinyl or leather if you have money to burn, should turn out much nicer

 

I found a similar cover on rockauto. I think its a little cheaper, check it out. I'll end up trying one of those as well.

 

So I suck at taking pics and tracking progress. The weather has been terrible here. It's just wet and nasty, and that's my excuse.

Anyway, I found a freebie 700r4 and had it rebuilt. Finally got a little progress here..



Gotta love that rednek concrete, had to pull the front bumper and impact bar to get the hoist close enough. It was a bit more work than I had expected. Still need to the get the front bumper bolted back up.

The engine is just a tbi 350 from a 92-93 buick. Picked it up cheap from a friend. Heard it run before pulled, ran great. It's dirty right now, but keep in mind it's coming back out next summer when the body work and paint begins. Right now I'm just focused on getting this thing running and the bugs straitened out I'll most likely run the tbi for now. I'm hoping to get the wiring straightened out this weekend, in the mean time the fuel tank is dropped, cleaned, and a fuel pump is in the mail.

Also I had a pretty cool discovery about the car a few weeks ago. Somehow I had overlook the rear end when I did my initial inspection. It has rear discs with a 3.27 9 bolt posi. I know nothing about these rear ends, but thought it was pretty cool.

 

I'm not sure where that wing/hatch came from but its not an "88" Camaro "Short Wing".
This is what the "Short Wing" on the "88" looks like.


I like what you have on there though.

 

It's a 91-92 z28 spoiler, there's still holes in the hatch where the original 88 spoiler was bolted on, just like the one you have. i have, and plan on using, the traditional 3 piece spoiler with the third brake light.

 

If you have any interest in selling that rear spoiler for cheap and are willing to ship, let me know. Me and my buddy are both interested in it. And my first 3rd gen is an 88 and it came with this spoiler on it. I didn't like it so I replaced the whole rear hatch for the smaller one that sort of follows the edge of the back end of the car.

But $900 for the cosmetic shape that car is in, I would say is fair. Just a few hours ago I picked up an 87 Iroc for $600 with virtually no rust and it has every single power option that came in these cars, and has a working posi rear end but missing the transmission. That was a pretty good deal considering I can part it for more than that. But im going to restore it and sell my 88 that I have been restoring. I think this is a pretty solid start and I like the idea of the 350 TBI. If I had got a camaro without a motor, that's what I would probably do because I wouldn't want to go TPI, even though the Iroc I just got has a TPI. I don't think you got ripped off by any means and those floorboards look really nice. It has Iroc wheels on it as well as the 91-92 z28 spoiler.
I'd say the worst part of this is that dent, which is pretty big, but im sure you could get most of that out and then bondo the rest before painting.

 

I really wanted an iroc. I looked for months but couldn't find one affordable. Some people are out of their minds when it comes do a cars value. Sounds like you got a good deal.

As for selling the spoiler, I probably will. If I do you'll be the first to know. I remember seeing a thread with the blue car in it. Have a link? I can't remember where I saw it.

 

An Iroc in good shape that runs and has minimal problems or none, will bring at least $5,000 in my area. Right now there are several for sale for over $10,000, but they have less than 100K miles on them and are mostly original. I wasn't even intending on buying this Iroc. It was an impulse when I saw it when I was looking for parts for my 88. When I saw it in person and realized that it was mostly straight and had power everything and TPI, I decided it would be less work in the long run than my 88 converting everything over. I paid $600 for a car that is worse than a lot of cars I see in the junkyard though, but I have see what can happen when somebody tries, and I think this Iroc has a chance to get back on the road again.

Yeah I really enjoy the look of that spoiler a lot. I didn't originally, but once I started seeing a bunch on here with them, they grew on me and now I really like them. I'm sure shipping is massive on it though so even if you sold it to me for $5 it would probably be cheaper to buy one off the people locally that ask way too much for them.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/memb...eme-rough.html

If you are referring to the Blue Camaro in my signature, here is the link to the build thread I made for that. It moved along kind of fast, because I wanted it to be my daily, and be comfortable. A lot of time and effort went into it so I will be sad when it goes, but I'm planning on selling it once I get this Iroc I just bought far enough along. I still have to finish some things on it like installing the new weatherstripping and rear carpet, as well as at least putting in the wiring for power windows and door locks so whoever buys it just has to get some switches.

 

Man i offered 1200 for an iroc that had a bad engine and had been sitting for 15 years. Got turned down. Car was not perfect either.

You would be better off buying the spoiler local if possible. I have trouble finding thirdgen parts here though. I really think a lot of these cars hit the crusher. You don't see them sitting up like you used to, at least not here

And yep, that's the car. That color is a possibility on mine, but i kind of like the idea of the factory red, but silver instead of the gold gfx. The only thing I have against red is that my mustang is red and i'd like to change it up a bit.

 

It depends on the demand and the person selling it. For $1200 I expect Tue car to drive away from the place I bought it from. I don't expect it to be flawless but that guy will probably sit on that for a long time until he lets his ego take a break. I thought $600 was high for this Iroc but I could part it for more than I paid for it so that's how I justified buying it, in case it came to that.

And the blue color I chose is Ultra Blue metallic that came on the 91 and maybe the 92's. It a pretty awesome color. I am considering that on this Iroc but I'm gonna do a lot of research first. Red has always been my favorite color but my buddy has a 91 that's red so I didn't want to be too close to his. We will see though.

 

Yeah I love ultra blue metallic. If I had found an iroc, i'd planned to keep it original no matter the color.

I understand wanting to make the car a bit different though. Build your dream 3rd gen. My problem is I love them all.

 

If I get this Iroc back on the road it will be for the better no matter what I do. It's in such terrible condition that most people wouldn't touch it. All it takes is the right person to see the potential though. Like my post title says, it was kind of Destiny when I saw this and I new what I had to do. I just hope I get it running and don't have to part it.

 

Your iroc should be saveable as long as there's no serious rust. As for the drivetrain, don't you have an 88 that runs? haha

 

Yes I do. And that was the intended idea was to fully restore and make it the way I wanted. But the way I wanted involved swapping in power everything and a disc rear end AND potentially switching to TPI.

 

You mean with the 88? I was saying swap the drivetrain from the 88 to iroc, keeping the rear end that's already in the iroc.

 

Ohh. Yeah that is another option. But I would like to have both of these on the road if possible. I prefer them to be around than sitting like this iroc was. Granted I enjoy bringing them back,I still would have prefered that somebody took care of it.

 

Yeah I hate seeing cool cars sit and rot, or even worse go for scrap metal price.

 

The car is running just good enough to move it around the yard. Finally got it moved to a better a bit of a better place, out of the way..



There's still a lot of problems that will have to be fixed before it's really driveable. The biggest being both thermostat housing bolts broke off in the intake, I have no exhaust past the factory buick manifolds, and I barely have brakes. I pulled the hose to the booster earlier and there was no vacuum at all. I'm hoping there's a simple blockage in the pipe that comes off the throttle body, I won't be surprised if I find a dirt dauber nest. The engine sat up for about a year.

I'm still collecting parts. Recently came across a decent interior in the junkyard, one seat has a very small tear in the cloth(see pic) but I believe I can fix it. Right now I've got it all stashed in my parts car.




You may have already noticed, but both front seats are actually passenger seats. I also have a drivers seat (same style) with bad foam/cloth but good frame. I'll be swapping one of the good seats parts on to the driver seat frame.

Also, I bought a set of hooker shortys from a member that haven't arrived yet, still need to order the matching Y, not sure which cat back I'll be running but I have an edelbrock sdt and a flowmaster.

 

Pulled the line going to the brake booster and just like I thought, it was clogged. Found a bunch of crud and this little guy..

 

How does THAT get in there?

 

Dirt dauber larva I assume. They build nest in anything. I'm not sure if they have them in your area or not.

The brakes are working though. That's the important part lol

 

I used my parts cars dash pad the last time I tried to do the vinyl wrap thing. Didn't work out. This time I used this cars dash pad and went a different route. Can't get any worse than this can it?




I used the cutting wheel to cut out all the bad, filled with bondo glass, then body filler and spot putty to get smooth. After that I sprayed it with rattle can bed liner.



This came out much better than my first attempt. My only complaint is that there are shiny spots in the places where I had to lay the bed liner on heavier to get full coverage. I'm gonna pick up some flat black paint and go over it tomorrow.

 

I'd take that dash cap any day. Looks better than almost every single third gen dash I have ever seen in person.

 

Yeah, that pad came out looking nice.

 

Thanks guys. I'm getting close to swapping in all of the black interior. As a whole it should look much better than what it does currently.


I guess I should also update the status of the cars mechanical condition lol. I fired the car up for the first time a few weeks ago using the tbi on the 350. It cranked an ran but wasn't running right, plus all I had on the car as for exhaust was factory manifolds. Last week in installed hooker 2460's with matching y pipe and an edelbrock cat back. This weekend I ran to the junkyard and picked up a chip and esc module from a buick roadmaster 5.7 tbi car, car is running great now. All I need now is a power steering line and electric fans and I'll be able to take the car down the road for it's first drive.

Also gave it a wash today. First bath it's had since the day I got it.

 

Before and after...it looks better but I'm still not happy with the shiny spots. I'll address that later though, I'm ready to drive the damn thing. Lots of work to do this weekend, and I still don't have fans.

Oh, and I also made a screw up. I installed my headers without installing my 02 sensor. I realized this when I went to trash the factory manifolds and the sensor was still in. I though it was kind of funny that I never heard an exhaust leak so I checked the header and the bung is sealed, so now the header has to come back off to drill out o2 bung. Fun.

 

This car looks sharp now. I'm probably going to attempt something like this with the dash pad on my iroc once I get it driving.

 

lol it's very far from sharp, still rough but slowly improving.

I couldn't stand that busted pad so I had to do something. I read on this forum where a guy said he had an hour or two into his repair (using similar method) and idk how. I have several days into that thing. Maybe yours isn't as bad as mine was.

 

Its coming along man! Nice car.

 

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.

https://www.semproducts.com/marine-r...h/vinyl-coattm