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Hello all, I've been hanging around reading the forum off and on for some time, when I needed answers mainly, and thought I ought to finally join up and introduce myself. I'm a car collector from central IL, always had lots of muscle and sporty cars over the years and still have quite a few of them. Camaros, Firebirds, Corvettes, and a fair number of strange AMC cars have taken root here. In recent years the latest pursuit I seem to have is the 3rd gen cars, as during my travels I see them sitting around and feel like most of them deserve to live again. So I buy and fix them. But they never seem to leave!
My retirement business is repairing and buying/selling old pinball machines, hence my moniker. Old cars and pinballs seem to go together, you'd be amazed at how many pinball fanatics I run into have a fancy special interest car in the garage too. Good hobbies to have.
My signature line lists the 3rd gens I currently have and a 4th gen too. I'll try attaching pictures later on. All three of the 3rd gens were DOA, but 2 of them are now back on the road.
Brian Saunders Lerna IL. (nowhere near Chicago!)
Welcome from another old guy, (almost 70,) down in Texas, with a third Gen TA Vert, a 4th Gen TA Vert, a 71 Cheyenne Shortbed, and an 09 Saturn Sky Roadster.
If you haven't already, you should look up the moderator of 3rd Gen Expo on FB, Charlie Phillipou. He's from your neck of the woods, and has quite a stable of 3rd Gens. Hes on here too, but i dont recall his user name.
I'm somewhat of an old guy myself or quickly approaching that age.
did you just buy one of those JY convertibles? (without a title)
i was looking at that one and another but both sold b4 i could get to them
Hello,
Yeah, I got it from a small town near St. Louis, my Facebook Marketplace car spies alerted me to it since I don't have a Facebook account. It sat for about 12 years and while the wasps were moving in and the tires and top were rotting away, a few things naturally disappeared off of it over that time, like the catalytic converter and the sound system. The 3.1 is seized up and some of the top end pieces are laying in the trunk, don't have any idea what's actually wrong with it yet, and we're currently unraveling the paperwork trail. My hope is to get good paperwork and then get it running and driving again so either me or someone else can enjoy it. Too much of a special interest car to scrap out. For now, I'm going to remove the engine and see what's up with that. A friend of mine's 16 year old kid is wanting to learn about cars so this engine may become our guinea pig for a while. We sure can't do it any harm!
I have the capability to fix it all, it's surprisingly solid underneath and the interior is certainly serviceable, but it's going to take quite a few parts and a couple years of gradual attention to bring it back. A local salvage yard has a drug-seized '91 V6 Firebird coupe with the drivetrain still intact in it and a few other important pieces I'll need. Knowing that that complete 91 was in the boneyard back home made buying this one feasible because I knew I could get anything I needed at a good price.
Hello,
Yeah, I got it from a small town near St. Louis, my Facebook Marketplace car spies alerted me to it since I don't have a Facebook account. It sat for about 12 years and while the wasps were moving in and the tires and top were rotting away, a few things naturally disappeared off of it over that time, like the catalytic converter and the sound system. The 3.1 is seized up and some of the top end pieces are laying in the trunk, don't have any idea what's actually wrong with it yet, and we're currently unraveling the paperwork trail. My hope is to get good paperwork and then get it running and driving again so either me or someone else can enjoy it. Too much of a special interest car to scrap out. For now, I'm going to remove the engine and see what's up with that. A friend of mine's 16 year old kid is wanting to learn about cars so this engine may become our guinea pig for a while. We sure can't do it any harm!
I have the capability to fix it all, it's surprisingly solid underneath and the interior is certainly serviceable, but it's going to take quite a few parts and a couple years of gradual attention to bring it back. A local salvage yard has a drug-seized '91 V6 Firebird coupe with the drivetrain still intact in it and a few other important pieces I'll need. Knowing that that complete 91 was in the boneyard back home made buying this one feasible because I knew I could get anything I needed at a good price.
Good to know, if at anytime you may want to unload it, (i'm only about 1.5 hrs west of you) let me know if you would, and keep us updated!
OK, will do.
The latest update is the engine is out and the kid tore it down so he could beat his hands all up and start learning the names of all the little pieces. He's already cursed the engineers who hung too many things directly in the way of other main pieces which can't be taken off until you remove all the other garbage. (laugh) Once we got the heads off we saw that cylinder 6 was full of scaly junk, so I think we know why the engine was stuck. I'll hone it out and see what's going on in there on our next lesson. If the block turns out to be trashed, it's not that big of a deal as there's others out there, so we'll talk it over and decide what to do. The simplest way to get this car back on the road again is to extract the drivetrain out of the junkyard 91 that's only sat for 2 years and put it in instead of having to retrofit all the systems onto a V8 or some other variation of engine I have a spare running 3.4 that I read can go back in if it becomes necessary, but I'm trying to make this a coachable lesson/project for this kid and not overwhelm him yet. If it was up to him, we'd be trying to put a 2022 Hellcat motor in this thing.
Not gonna happen.
Turns out after a teardown, #6 cylinder in the original engine is pitted so bad from sitting open to the elements that it is now junk, the rest of the motor looks very clean and good which is a danged shame, but this type of engine is not worth installing a sleeve in the 6 hole to bring it back. (not yet anyway) Me and the boy are debating over what to slide back in place in the engine bay now. I'm still leaning towards the oh-so-cheap and complete 3.1 that's 6 miles away from me still in a 91 Firebird where I can bring it home and try to start it and maybe hear it run before I lift it out and reinstall, but my young protege wants something a lot bigger and powerful for us to play with.
Easy for him to say. But I have access to all the parts, the ability to cover expenses, and for right now, the know-how.
Today was pressure washer day, the engine bay needed a big time cleaning before anything goes back in there.
Here's the latest on the JY '92 project car: This extremely rusty white 91 has given it's all to let another survive, and I do mean ALL, it was a local junkyard car that was headed for the crusher soon, so I made to deal to take anything off it that I wanted and return the leavings for the princely sum of $200. After the external and interior partout, the engine was temporarily fired up (and on fire once!) and we didn't hear anything concerning for the 10 seconds we heard it running off the spray can, so the decision has been made to remove the engine and trans and transplant those into the convertible since it's a direct and fairly easy bolt-in. The engine has proved itself for now, and I'd rather take my chances with the white car's transmission that's sat still for 5 years with good red fluid in it instead of the one in the yellow car that's been sitting idle for 12 years and has brown fluid.
The wheels and tires you see on whitey are staying with me too, they're not all that bad, and then she goes back to the boneyard. There's almost nothing left on the shell now that is any good to anybody and I even took some stuff off that I'll have to do some repair work on to save, like the dash pad and the driver seat, but hey, you can't beat the price. I'd buy parts cars this way all day long.
I did that many years ago when I was in H.S. A drunk tore the front end of my Duster. The used (VERY used) car dealer next to where I was working had a Duster with good sheetmetal, but a slipping transmission. He towed it to our house, we took off all the parts we wanted plus a few spares, and he hauled away the carcas, all for a very minimal cost. Much less than I would have paid buying the parts from a yard, and I got to do the work at home. Couldn't beat that.
This guy here has been looking for a front bumper fascia for his 91 Firebird for awhile. His 91 Firebird is a W68 Sport Appearance Package car as is your parts car. Meaning they take the same front bumper fascia. He's obtained some of the parts he needs to repair the front end damage on his Firebird and is mainly needing the front bumper fascia but he might also need a few miscellaneous parts he doesn't realize yet.
Maybe you two can make a deal on some parts if you don't need them to repair your two 92 Firebirds.
The 91's front fascia looks decent in the wrecking yard picture above, but it's not. It's been through one crash already, and whoever "fixed" that damage was about as backwoods of a body shop as they come. They created a frame horn out of angle iron to mount the front crash bar to and didn't bother to straighten the radiator support a whole lot, they tack welded it back in, and the bent up A/C condenser might as well have been removed as to stay there and exhibit it's damage. There is no earthly way the A/C worked in this car after the wreck.
The white fascia has one major tear that has been riveted and back-reinforced with metal strips and it still has a gap of about 1/8 of an inch in the tear. It's an ugly hack. It also has two good sized rips in it way down low, other minor tears here and there too, and the passenger side front ground effect I already removed and used on yellow car #1 from a long time back. But I might try to do some repairs on this torn up thing just for the sport of it since I have almost next to nothing to lose, and get practiced up for doing a bumper repair on a 5" marker lamp tear occurring on my 97 Bird that needs fixed.
There's a somewhat local to me place that advertises repair of this type of bumper fascia for cheap, like $100, on Craigslist, so I might take this 91 bumper to them for an estimate or an opinion. Some of the before and after pictures they post are really surprising, the cars look like later model dealership used car stuff they've fixed, but you never know about that kind of advertising. I'm guessing they make their real money by taking the bumper on and off and that's not included in the $100 price on the ad, so they may not want to deal with me. But I'd let them fix it for $100!
The fascia on both the yellow cars have their little aches and pains, nothing extreme, but not nearly as bad as this white piece does. Wish I could help a man in need, but not with this one.
Finally...after a few of life's curveballs I had to handle, the engine out of the white '91 parts car is now sitting on the mounts in JY Vert #2. About a thousand more things to tighten, replace, and hook up and maybe it will move under it's own power for the first time since 2010. This is the very first 90's car I ever changed an engine in, I had to install it over the top of the driver's side fender because the cherry picker arm wasn't long enough to clear the pointy nose of the car, and it's quite the learning experience for an old-timer like me. Sure isn't anything like doing a 60's or 70's muscle car, those seem ridiculously easy.
If this car does nothing else at first, I'll be happy if some idiot lights glow and it pumps fuel out on the intial turn of the key, because any rotten gas that's left in the tank has got to come out into a bucket before any more good fuel ever goes back in for an actual startup try. I am of course assuming the fuel pump might work, who knows? At that point we'll be finding out all the other mysteries that there's never any way of knowing about when you buy a stone dead car that has sat for years. I like to call that process "discovery".
Well if for some reason the fuel pump needs to be replaced. It probably will if the cars been sitting since 2010. Don't hack up the trunk pan to replace it. Do it right and drop the exhaust system and rear axle.
Definitelly will do it the proper way, as I'm not into hacking things up on cars. A fuel pump will be a lot easier job if it has to happen right now because I have the availability of a lift in a heated garage, and there's no exhaust on the car at all presently, so I guess that's all a plus. That hacking stuff up on special interest types of cars has a way of biting you in the a** later on as many people find out. When I'm looking to buy a car, even one that's been sitting forever like this one was and was definitely no jewel, and something looks hacked up to me, I get really wary and start looking all the harder at it to make sure I'm not getting somebody's mess of cut up crap. It even irritates me when the radio has been changed because 90% of the time, they cut the wires.
Starting to look like a car again, it always helps to have a motor back in it's proper place. Everything done underneath now except the exhaust, and that includes new trans seals and a new mount for it. And just for peace of mind, I replaced all the intake gaskets before I set the motor back in because I saw red dabs of silicone across the back of the intake when I pulled this engine out of the white car. I'm getting her all fixed up nice for you TTop350! (laugh)
She's out of the friend's nicely furnished heated garage, (good to have friends!), winched up on the trailer, and going back home now for the final top-side hook-ups and some more "discovery". My buddy needed his garage back to change his Powerglide over to a clutch and 5 speed in his nice 66 Impala wagon for next year's HR Power Tour, so now that cruise night season has ended, I was under the gun to get my car out of there. Only missed it by 2 days!
No update yet on JY 2, haven't gotten back over to the storage garage with the boy again to continue work, but thought I'd share some pictures of a similar journey I did on the very first 3rd gen I ever bought and managed to revive. No, it's not worth a whole lot and most people would turn up their nose at it because of the color, but I didn't pay a whole lot for it either. Hauled it home from a town near Cincinnati where it was languishing in of all things: the back lot of a trailer court. This one got me going on reworking the '82-92 stuff, and sure enough, two more have followed! They breed like rabbits.
I'm not crazy about the color either, but other than the 2nd owner taking the engine out to transplant something bigger, which never happened and his project stalled, this '84 2.5 car is stone dead stock everywhere, and that's the way I like to buy them! Engine is back in, (and -now- I know it has a rod knock above 3000 rpm, I guess he forgot to mention that...) but it will run and drive.
Welcome aboard! Pinballs seem to be making a comeback! My brother in law is big into them down by Bloomington, IN and my neighbor owns an arcade up here in Ft Wayne. I think he has 144 pins in the place! Glad to see that you are bringing some of the old girls back to life!
Thanks guys. I located a spoiler long ago for this brown car, the existing one the car had was either sold off or stolen while the car was camped in the trailer park. At least they didn't tear up anything getting it off.
These pictures I posted are a few years old, but since then a correct spoiler was located and repainted the proper color and put back on. Boy, those spoilers sure help the looks of these types of cars, and I'm saying -all- the gens look so much better with one! If they don't have one, it's like they're neutered.
This car has very little rust, you can see the one spot over the driver rear quarter, and there's a little starting on the edges of the wheel lips. The underneath is all rock solid. The driver side front fender and front fascia has been replaced and/or repainted before, but I couldn't find any other damage inside those pieces or anywhere else. Once I got the engine and a battery back into it, everything electrical worked, the headlights popped right up with no hesitation and shut right back down, and the other controls took right off too. The original AM radio works, but it was real scratchy sounding from old age, so I put in an AM/FM one I had out of an 84 Corvette.
The original owner was a Hamilton Ohio woman and she always garaged the car up until about 2015 I'm told when the motor started knocking and she sold it off to owner #2, who never re-titled it in the two years he had it, so I was handed a title showing it was bought new by her. The speedometer shows 88,000 on it now, and I have no reason to believe it isn't accurate. I'll rebuild the 4 cyl sometime and get the car right. My initial goal was to get it back together and moving under it's own power, and I accomplished that. I can gently drive it into town and go to the local cruise nights if I want to, so for now it's a win.
If anybody reading has parted a 4 cyl car out and has the A/C compressor mounting brackets, those are the only two engine compartment pieces I couldn't find inside the car. I made a hokey looking bracket set-up out of scrap metal to mount the compressor back on and get a drive belt to run around it again, but it doesn't look very good. Message me if you know of anything.
Chevy made about a million S-10s with 2.5 and A/C. Being rear wheel drive like the F-body, I wonder if brackets from one of them might work, and be easier to find.
Hi Dave, I thought the same thing when I was putting the car back together and looking for the brackets and A/C hoses hot and heavy and searching the internet night adfter night. I had the GM part numbers from my service manual for the '84 Firebird pieces but I never got to the point where I went to the local GM parts counter and asked the guys to compare the S-10 compressor brackets and such, but I had an inkling they might be the same. So I kept an eye out for neglected S-10's and Blazers sitting around and have been somewhat surprised to find hardly any. If I did spot one sitting, it always seemed to be a 4.3 V6 or the drivetrain was long gone.. The early trucks got turned into drag trucks or they fell apart so completely the owners junked them and now they're gone to the crusher. Plus, the early 80's S-10's didn't use the 2.5 Iron Duke, they had an Isuzu 4 cyl engine for their offering, so that lessens the availability too.
I think the vehicles that had the RWD 2.5 in them were pretty much deemed useless when they quit running for the most part and motors and bodies got thrown away easily. Nowadays this set-up is old enough there aren't many left in the junkyards to even look over. But you KNOW those brackets are out there someplace laying on a guy's shelf in a garage or buried in a junkyard bin with a hundred other various brackets. It would be real nice to find the correct A/C hose assembly that comes off of the compressor too, It's routed in a unique way on the 2.5 F body cars, and the 2.8 V6 set-up, which is everywhere and would be dirt cheap, isn't correct. It's an expensive Plan B, but I could have the hose assembly made from scratch, and it may come to that sometime.
It's all a matter of being patient and keeping the search going.
Hasn't been much to report for a while, haven't had my own hands on either Firebird for about a month, but recently received the second packet of material from the GM Archives site for the car I like to call Convertible #2. This is the rougher car we're currently following the engine change on. Car #1 did get some front end pieces replaced by a local repair shop and a front end alignment a month ago. Now the steering wheel is back on staright, and the car drives super nice! It's all tight again. Money well spent, especially since I hate doing suspension work, so I farmed it out this time.
In the History Originality section of this forum, I've went through the factory invoice for Car #1 already, so you can compare thiings over there if you want to. This dealer invoice I got for #2 was showing the car was ordered by John Hine Pontiac in San Diego CA, was priced out in late September of 1991, built in Van Nuys, shipped out on Jan 16, '92 , (from ASC??) and delivered on January 31st of 1992. It was showing some mysterious RPO codes just like the other car's invoice did, only some slightly different variations of them. But basically, the two cars are almost identical in equipment other than some power mirrors on #2. Both are automatics, V6's, and have an option package which includes power locks and windows, side moldings, and air conditioning.. They named this package 1SC on #2 car, because it included the power mirrors in it, and it is option code 1SB on the other, with manual mirrors. And curiously--both invoices have another RPO on them that is similar in that it states "Fleet" in it .This particular one reads VN9 --FLT-V9/100% REP. (the other has VX9 I think). Could this be yet another car of mine that was destined for a rental agency? It's looking like yellow convertibles in 1992 might have all been heading to the rent-a -car companies! But I have no proof yet.
MSRP of this base Firebird convertible was $19375.00 and was invoiced at $16817.50 . Actual invoice MSRP/cost with options and $490 worth of shipping charges added on this order came to $21947 / 19014.17 . We're up in Trans Am GTA terriitory now. Whew! It's no wonder they didn't sell many convertibles back then.
Some of the cost included the California Emissions devices which #1 didn't have, this came to $100/$82 additional. Then this car had to pass smog test on arrival, so there was probably a little more money added on to the window sticker. You CA guys would know.
Now: a real puzzler---the RPO code R6U this one has; "Credit in Lieu of Fuel", which allowed a discount of $16.15 . What does this mean? They put practically no gas in the car at the factory?? How did they get it out of thier build facility and onto train cars and transporters then? It's obvious it had to go to Michigan to get converted by ASC and if it didn't have enough gas in it to cover the electric fuel pump pickup, it would never have made it up a ramp without dying. Hard to understand this one.
If it was for ASC to have a near empty tank while doing the conversions, I could maybe see that. But you still had to have enough gas in them to move them! Surely they had a way of pumping out a 1/4 tank of gas at ASC and then putting it back in later on when they were finished.
If the car was built in Van Nuys, (like my 91 TA Vert,) it was driven to Long Beach to the ASC facility there. It's only about 40 miles, and from there was distributed to Dealers.
My car I believe has the same fuel credit. I'll look later today. I have every record on the car from the day it was built almost.
Last edited by Roorancher; 12-20-2023 at 07:13 AM.
Reason: Correction
Could have been a fuel credit for the shipping end of it or how it was shipped.
they all had fuel to go through the testing before leaving the factory. ASC didn't remove fuel when they cut the roofs off.
Some of the gm rpo codes are confusing the way they are bundled with options and destinations.
Commiefornia probably just has a different tune in the memcal.
If the car was built in Van Nuys, (like my 91 TA Vert,) it was driven to Long Beach to the ASC facility there. It's only about 40 miles, and from there was distributed to Dealers.
My car I believe has the same fuel credit. I'll look later today. I have every record on the car from the day it was built almost.
I checked the information in my book....and my car does not have the "credit in lieu of fuel RPO.
I was not aware that ASC had a California location, I'd only heard about the Michigan one, so if that's the case it's a whole new wrinkle in the script for this one. If somebody drove the newly converted cars over to ASC from Van Nuys, they sure would have needed some more gas in them!
Hey, we may never really know unless somebody who worked there can specifically say how they did things.
And that brings up the question of how could GM charge $490 for a delivery if the car was in the LA area and headed to San Diego? That's quite a bit of money to bring it a short distance.
That being said--- I already know the answer: the fee got added on to every new car invoice, like it or not. The new Corvettes are built right across the street from the Bowling Green Corvette musuem, and if you opt for a museum delivery of your new car, they still charge you a $1000 delivery fee to drive it half a mile and leave it there.
It ain't right...but that's what it is.
I was not aware that ASC had a California location, I'd only heard about the Michigan one, so if that's the case it's a whole new wrinkle in the script for this one. If somebody drove the newly converted cars over to ASC from Van Nuys, they sure would have needed some more gas in them!
Hey, we may never really know unless somebody who worked there can specifically say how they did things.
And that brings up the question of how could GM charge $490 for a delivery if the car was in the LA area and headed to San Diego? That's quite a bit of money to bring it a short distance.
That being said--- I already know the answer: the fee got added on to every new car invoice, like it or not. The new Corvettes are built right across the street from the Bowling Green Corvette musuem, and if you opt for a museum delivery of your new car, they still charge you a $1000 delivery fee to drive it half a mile and leave it there.
It ain't right...but that's what it is.
The delivery charge on my TA was also $490. The car went from ASC in Long Beach to the selling dealer in Riverside. 60 miles.
You're to be publicly commended for being such a generous guy, paying that much money for a 60 mile ride! That works out to about $8 per shipping mile. And maybe a tip for the truck driver.
I'm sure you helped some GM executive and his family take a delightful all expenses paid vacation to the Bahamas that year.
I'm actually the third owner of the car. It has 127K on it, and I have every maintenance record since day 1. I bought it a little over 2 years ago.
I'm about to be 70. I had a 76 TA i bought new. Couldnt afford one of those. Having my mid life crisis a little late. Then a friend of ours remarried, and her new husband used to own a Pontiac GMC dealership. He still dabbles in cars at 79. He found a 94 TA convertible storage building find with 22K he said I needed to buy, so I did.
Last edited by Roorancher; 12-21-2023 at 08:20 AM.
Reason: Omission
Better late than never! If you're 70 now, you can really turn on the crisis action anytime you need to to calm that back down. Keep on buyin'! (I do)
Next time you see your friend's husband who had the dealership, ask him about that strange RPO code about Credit in Lieu of Fuel and see if he's familiar with it.
I'm still deep into the winter pinball season repairing those for everyone, so right now the car projects have to wait on me to get caught up. I did get a chance a couple weeks ago on a very nice day to hook up more things on Vert 2, like all the wiring on the engine, and I bought an assortment of vacuum hose sizes to take care of both yellow cars #1 and #2 and that will be next. The running and driving JY car #1 is my Hot Rod Power Tour car of choice this year, so I got to make sure it's as good as I can get it before leaving. No leaks!
This '97 car pictured is the HRPT back-up plan. I bought this car about 10 years ago with the entire passenger side all creased in from a guardrail sideswipe and put it back right and then gave it to my daughter to drive to college. After some years in the parking lots there, it needed some more bodywork and paint, but we've got it back to presentable again. It's just a good reliable driver for us now, shows 140K on the clock, and me and the wife take it to some local cruises and putt around in it with the air on looking over everybody else's nicer stuff.
09-04-2023, 02:37 PM
