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January 2024 COTM **Voting Thread** - First Timers!
Auto Detailing and AppearanceShare tips and tricks on how to make your Third Gen shine! Get opinions on products or how something tasteful looks on your Chevrolet Camaro or Pontiac Firebird.
Re: January 2024 COTM **Voting Thread** - First Timers!
My 91 TA WS6 Vert is a 127K mile car, all original paint and interior except for a little touch up. It is by no means a show car or a garage queen. I average about 100 miles a week weather permitting here in central Texas. The original owner purchased it new in Riverside, CA, and moved to Texas in 2015 and brought the car. The second owner purchased it in 2017, and I bought it in 2021 from the second owner. I have a large 3 Ring binder with every maintenance record from the day it left the showroom, all the delivery paperwork, and the original sticker. It has had a couple of performance modifications and "enhancements," but otherwise it's just a well maintained, mostly original car. I'm more of a stickler about the interior and exterior than I am about the engine bay, although it will get a good cleaning this winter. I'm also getting ready to replace the carpet and redo the door cards, using the original vinyl. The HVAC system is still on R12, very cold with no leaks.
Pictures are:
Exterior
Interior
Engine
Window Sticker
Maintenance and History Binder
First Warranty Service
Owners Manual
Re: January 2024 COTM **Voting Thread** - First Timers!
I am the original owner of this 1991 Camaro RS. I bought the car July of 1991 a few months after I graduated from college. I was originally looking at a Mustang LX 5.0 but my grandfather, who was a GM retiree, convinced me to spend the weekend with him and we would find me a car. The rest is history. It was my daily driver until I was married. I would drive it often but had a fusible link issue so the car sat for about 10 years. After my daughter went off to college I started working on it in earnest to get it to what you see here. I still drive it about once a week when it’s nice out. The rest of the time it is in the garage. It’s not the fastest but sure is fun to drive.
Re: January 2024 COTM **Voting Thread** - First Timers!
This is my 1989 IROC-Z 1LE R7U.
All the '89 cars were identical, other than interior and exterior colour.
The car was originally ordered by Bill Drossos for Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver) to race in the GM Motorsports / Players Challenge Series. Anderson elected not to race again before the start of the '89 season so Bill raced the car himself in '89 and '90. Les Cool purchased the car in 2000 and in 2012, with 230,000 km on the car commissioned Bill to do a complete nut and bolt restoration to how it was when it was last raced, including a complete rebuild of the original drivetrain. There is now over 245,000 km on the odometer. The car currently has BC Collector Plates. I plan on many track days with this factory ordered race car.
Action on the track at Area 27. MOMO steering wheel and seat. Roll cage requires some trimming of the dash and interior plastic as well as removal of the door pulls. Custom cloth interior. Rear seats are permanently folded down. All stock under the hood. Underside shot taken this year. This exhaust was supplied to race teams by GM. The open side pipes can be capped for street use. Engine during rebuild. I remember watching these cars race some 35 years ago. It was something to see.
Re: January 2024 COTM **Voting Thread** - First Timers!
Thanks for letting me participate in COTM!
I’ve owned a few 1982-1984 Trans Ams since 2000, but they were always kind of rough projects. I always loved the looks of these first few years and dreamed of owning a really nice one someday. In 2006, I purchased a 1984 Trans Am roller that I am still doing a full custom build on. That project ended up being a much larger, more time consuming project than I ever anticipated. I was getting a little frustrated with always working on this thirdgen and not having one to drive so around 2017 I started looking for a matching 1984 Trans Am that was running. I thought it would be cool to eventually have two 1984 Trans Ams: one being all stock and another fully customized.
I really wanted a black and gold 1984 Trans Am with t-tops and as original as possible. In fall 2019, I finally found one for $7K in Indiana on Facebook Marketplace. The car had 63K miles on it and was almost completely stock. It had some wear parts replaced, aftermarket radio, reproduction seat covers and one decent repaint. The seller worked at a dealership and said he bought the car after it came in on a trade. He said the kid’s dad gave him the Trans Am but he didn’t like it and traded it in on a newer Honda. Since I bought the car in the late fall, I ran out of time to work on or drive it before winter and just put it in the garage. My plan was to go through the car in the spring to make sure it was mechanically good to go and then use this as a summer cruiser.
Spring 2020 we went through the car, installed new tune up items and replaced worn out parts like water pump, shocks/struts, etc... Now the car was drivable but there was nowhere to go due to the pandemic. Since the car had some scratches / dings I asked my friend who paints on the side if he would fix the blemishes. After looking over the whole car he recommended a full repaint. I figured why not since there were no cruises or shows anyway.
All of the work on this car was done in my friend’s garage and took almost that entire year. The car was sanded down, all dings fixed, rust properly removed / patched and then repainted factory 19 - Black. Since the aftermarket lower stripes and decals are not offered in the correct gold color for this year, we ended up painting all of these in factory 55 – Gold Metallic. Luckily I have an original 1984 dealer binder that contained color samples so we were able to have the gold chip scanned to get the correct gold paint. I am an architect and drafted all of the decals in AutoCAD. We then had a company make reverse decals out of my drawings and used these to paint the car. Now the wheels, ground effects, lower stripes, bird logos and TRANS AM lettering all are a perfect color match as it would have come originally.
I got the car back from painting late fall so I didn’t have a lot of time to work on the car before winter again. I was only able to install the new carpet, dash and middle console. Alex Babineau reupholstered my steering wheel, shift handle and e-brake handle in leather since this car came with the NP5 Leather Appointment Group option. I also replaced the seats with factory original ones. I actually purchased a 1983 Trans Am back that I previously owned just to get the correct saddle tan seats for this new car. The seats were swapped between the two cars and then I resold the 1983 Trans Am on ebay.
The rest of the interior was installed in the spring of 2021. I had to fix the door panels because they had the typical damaged top holes. I also restored the factory UQ7 subwoofers even though I haven't been able to get the entire system working yet - still working on that. Now the car was finally all back together and ready to take out. That summer I went to a few local car shows and decided I would like to attend a large out-of-town show each year. So far I have been to the 2021 Pontiac Nationals in Norwalk, OH (placed second in class), 2022 GM Carlisle (placed second in class) and 2023 Goodguys Columbus, OH (no award but was an amazing show).
It’s kind of funny that I just wanted a driver Trans Am to go grab ice cream with my kids and due to the pandemic this turned into a show car. Everything I have done to the car was done to try and make / keep it as original as possible and I think it turned out pretty good. I owe a lot of thanks to my friends who helped work on this car. Also a big thank you to TGO and its members for all of the informative threads and helpful responses to my posts. Thank you very much!!
You can click HERE to see my build thread on this car. That thread contains more information on the restoration and many more pictures.
Car as purchased:
Re: January 2024 COTM **Voting Thread** - First Timers!
Definitely a hard decision! I am super impressed with all these cars! If I had enough money, and enough storage, (and my wife would not ask what I would do with another car) I would want all of them. Seriously though, awesome cars and awesome owners too. You can tell that all of you take great pride in the cars and the hobby.
01-01-2024, 02:56 PM
