Originally Posted by battmann

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:





Working on the paint:













Interior:





Exterior: