'86 GT - Four Eye Resurrection

[Syco Stang]

So I've been working on this thing ever so slowly since about October of '08, since I bought it from my deceased friend's mother. I'm transforming the car the way Kris and I had discussed before his untimely passing, albeit with some personal touches. When Kris started building the car, he slapped on an Aero front end because he happened to have an 87+ cowl hood laying around and that was a quick solution to clearing the 351W. I have since removed the carb setup and am installing a Holley Commander MPFI system, with a custom box upper intake designed to clear a stock hood.

The car received a DIY roll-on paintjob back in October, both as an experiment to see how it would turn out (after reading all about it online) and also to get the car into one uniform colour:



I then brought it to my workplace, where I rebuilt the carb, cleaned it up a bit, made sure the drivetrain and suspension/brakes were up to par and then brought it home to my tiny one car garage. I painted it Tremclad Fire Red, if you do some searching on Google you will find a thread on some Mopar website dedicated to DIY Roll-on paintjobs.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aUL5...e=channel_page

I am now working on converting the car back to a four eye, I have to get a hood for it (I found one, just been working a lot and procrastinating a bit), have to repair my original front nose and paint that red as well, same goes for my original back bumper cover, have to install a stock '86+ wing, then I have to gut my 4 cylinder parts car because my car already has an 87+ dash so I'm going to put a complete interior in it for the first time in 5 years, all the trim pieces I'm missing, redo my headliner, get all new T Top weatherstripping, install my fuel pump, my programmable EFI system, and finish and install my custom intake. I'm hoping to have her back on the road by the end of this month, she will be seeing the dragstrip a lot this year so the 20 foot paintjob will have to do til the winter. I still need to find a load of parts, like a stock 79-86 front bumper with turn signals, stock fog light brackets and a pair of Marchals, and other bits and pieces. I'll be adding to this thread from time to time with progress updates, but here is how the car sits as of today:

[86GT2go]

Lot of work, but I say thank you to you for reversing the aero swap (the car will thank you too, for now it won't suffer from an identity crisis). Keep it going and share the pics.

[escogt]

Looks like you'll have your hands full for some time. Good luck & thanks for converting that nose back to what it should be .

[Syco Stang]

Thanks for the encouragement folks! It wont be too long til she's together, I figure two more weeks and I'll have her on the chassis dyno.... provided I can get my upper done and my lower ported in that timeframe!

Don't mind the sloppy body work, like I said body and paint isn't a huge concern for me right now. I am capable of much better work with better tools, but I am working out of my single car garage so this will have to do. As for the Aero swap, I'll be keeping the quarter windows, sideview mirrors, and all the trim. I really wanted to put the old quarter glass back in with some SVO sail panels, but it wouldn't look right with the 87+ interior quarter panels.


Take a look at the crack beside the passenger side headlights, I'll be fixing that using staples and 'glass to keep the cracked pieces from moving later so as not to disturb the fiberglass I'm using to patch the nose. There are a couple of small holes in the lower valence, which will also be getting patched. As well, I'll be using the fiberglass resin to reinforce the stripped holes in the nose where the mounting studs go.

Since I'm using Tremclad to paint the nose, I don't need to primer it though I kinda wish that I had bought at least a can of filler primer to help spot the imperfections a bit better.

[86GT2go]

Looking more like a 4eye every day. You going to put the 4eye taillights back into it or run the 87-93LXs?

[Syco Stang]

Still working on it now....... I'll run the 87-93s til I find a clean set of SVO/Cobra tail lights. It will also keep the 87+ quarter glass and trim, that will probably be permanent. With that exception, it's eventually going to look as stock as possible on the outside. I only have weekends and some evenings to work on the car, so I must get as much done today because this week is a write off.... that means back to work on it Saturday morning!
SS

[Syco Stang]

Got a few things done by Sunday evening. Cleaned out the whole interior, but since it was cold and raining I couldn't pilfer anything out of the parts car, then I prepped and quickly masked off the engine bay and gave it a light repaint around the edges, fiberglassed the front nose and straightened it out a bit and I got a little more done tonight as I got lucky and out of work by 6.
This is the crack in the right front corner:

From the outside:

Random holes:

Some of the tools to patch these areas up:

It's always a good idea to pre-cut a bunch of shaped pieces from the fiberglass mat before mixing the resin.


This is after sanding the 'glass down, and reinforcing/shaping the area with short strand fiberglass. It turned out pretty decent with minor work left to straighten it out.

And tonight I did more putty work, it won't be perfect but at least it'll look good and be an '86 GT again.





I'm not going to put much paint on the headlights areas and beltline mouldings because those will all be going dark charcoal gray.
That's the third coat of Tremclad, with heavy sanding in between. The Tremclad is still a little see through in some spots, but the red covering is starting to take over. What's surprising is that the paint in the can is very similar in hue to the stuff I rolled on from a can! I figure I'm going to give the nose 2-4 more coats, install a hood and the rear spoiler and bumper, then I'll wet sand it and repaint the whole car with three more coats of paint (theres 4 coats of rolled on paint now), wetsand it and polish it. I probably won't work on the car til the weekend again, but I am pretty sure I'll have the nose finished and lined up with the fenders.
SS

[Project85GT]

looks like a good project

[JTurbo]

Looks good. That's what hot rodding's all about!

[BluOvalAddict]

Nice work!

[86GT2go]

Looking good. As for the taillights, you can make your own SVO/93 Cobra units by taking the 83-86 units and putting the six 1/16th" pinstripes in them yourself.

[escogt]

I'm surely digging this thread. Keep up the great work!!

[azcheetos]

So I've been working on this thing ever so slowly since about October of '08, since I bought it from my deceased friend's mother. I'm transforming the car the way Kris and I had discussed before his untimely passing, albeit with some personal touches. When Kris started building the car, he slapped on an Aero front end because he happened to have an 87+ cowl hood laying around and that was a quick solution to clearing the 351W. I have since removed the carb setup and am installing a Holley Commander MPFI system, with a custom box upper intake designed to clear a stock hood.

The car received a DIY roll-on paintjob back in October, both as an experiment to see how it would turn out (after reading all about it online) and also to get the car into one uniform colour:



I then brought it to my workplace, where I rebuilt the carb, cleaned it up a bit, made sure the drivetrain and suspension/brakes were up to par and then brought it home to my tiny one car garage. I painted it Tremclad Fire Red, if you do some searching on Google you will find a thread on some Mopar website dedicated to DIY Roll-on paintjobs.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aUL5...e=channel_page

I am now working on converting the car back to a four eye, I have to get a hood for it (I found one, just been working a lot and procrastinating a bit), have to repair my original front nose and paint that red as well, same goes for my original back bumper cover, have to install a stock '86+ wing, then I have to gut my 4 cylinder parts car because my car already has an 87+ dash so I'm going to put a complete interior in it for the first time in 5 years, all the trim pieces I'm missing, redo my headliner, get all new T Top weatherstripping, install my fuel pump, my programmable EFI system, and finish and install my custom intake. I'm hoping to have her back on the road by the end of this month, she will be seeing the dragstrip a lot this year so the 20 foot paintjob will have to do til the winter. I still need to find a load of parts, like a stock 79-86 front bumper with turn signals, stock fog light brackets and a pair of Marchals, and other bits and pieces. I'll be adding to this thread from time to time with progress updates, but here is how the car sits as of today:

Thats very cool taking over a project like this and overcoming the circumstances. Good luck to you. By the way, is that a black 85/86 coated in snow on the left of the first pic?

[Syco Stang]

Thanks folks! I've got some more updated pics coming, and I'll be working on it again this weekend so I should have more pics posted soon. azcheetos, that is a satin black spray bombed '85 GT you see.... that's my old DIY single turbo 5.0 5 speed car. I'll post up pics of that later, I'm exhausted for now so I'm off to bed.
SS

[Syco Stang]

I got a little bit of work done on the weekend, wound up being pretty busy but a little work is better than no work.
I wish I had taken before pics, as inside the door jambs and hatch area were either primered white or still blue, respectively. I just gave them a quick blast with a can of Tremclad Fire Red, and it turned out pretty damn good!




I mostly worked on stripping the parts car:



The only part I could transfer was the hatch, as I need to start doing minor work on it. It has a little bit of surface rust, and has never been bondoed like my original hatch was so it's a better base for me to work on.


I couldn't install any of the interior bits yet, as the heater box holes were all welded shut at some point by my friend. He was planning to run this car as a drag only car, and figured he didn't need any heat or the weight that came with it.



I'm feeling a bit under the weather, so I'm going to try and get some work on it today if I can since I'm at home and I hate sitting idle. I get my custom box upper intake back on Thursday, I'll be porting my lower a bit to clean up the crappy chinese casting and then hopefully by this weekend I can send the upper and lower to be powder coated Crinkle Black, and my valve covers will be powder coated red with the raised sections polished and then powder coated with satin clear. I will eventually remove my accessories and brackets and have them redone in either crinkle black or natural with satin clear on top. Hope you enjoy the pics, she's coming along!
SS

[Syco Stang]

Almost forgot to add; new parts recently arrived. Finally got my Walbro GSL392 high flow in line 255LPH fuel pump and Aeromotive adjustable fuel pressure regulator. Now I can start getting my braided lines finished for the EFI conversion, since I know which fittings to use. Yay for me.

[bridgener]

good to see another member from montreal!

looks like you're making some good progress!

[Syco Stang]

Pretty much done the front nose, not going to spend any more time to make it perfect but it is good enough. Just going to wet sand it and give it two more coats. Turns out, the last can I used was Regal Red instead of Fire Red and it was darker than what I used before. No biggie, just went over it with 320 grit and resprayed a couple of coats of Fire Red and it's looking good. I also ordered 4 cans of SEM #39153 satin dark grey paint to do my headlight buckets and belt line mouldings. The trim around the windows, mirrors, quarter glass and T tops will all be redone in satin black.



I also tidied up some wiring in the interior, and started removing a few connections and wiring I won't be needing/using. That's an 87+ 4 cylinder interior harness in there, so I'm sure I'll be removing a bunch of stuff. I'll be routing my own speaker wires and fuel pump wiring, so that will all be removed from the harness. I just hate a mess of wires, even if they're hidden by the dash!!!


Before I install the 'new' '87-'89 grey dash, I will be painting the top half (including the gauge housing) with black plastic paint and then using a satin finish clear over top. I don't like the dark greyish look they get after 20+ seasons of sun. Also, I will be doing the A pillar covers and all the roof/headliner trim in satin black so as to match my new custom headliner. I experimented with the paint and clearcoat on my old dash (which had already been sprayed black, poorly) and will post up pics once it's dried. So far, it seems that the Rust-Oleum black paint for plastic seems to adhere better to the dash than just the clearcoat does, and therefore the satin clear bonds great on top of the black base coat. It should make the grey, eventually replaced by tan, colour of the interior stand out more.
SS

[86GT2go]

Good progress you are making there! It looks better with every pic.

[gdniel]

Looks to be coming along nicely. Keep it up.

[Syco Stang]

I got my SEM # 39153 today, sprayed an old belt line moulding to get an idea and it looks to be the right colour. I'd like to compare it side by side with a clean '85-86 but since I'm not doing the original red for now I'm sure it'll do nicely.




I also let the old dash dry up after spraying it with black plastic paint and also some satin clear. It was hard to see with the flash, but I hope this helps anyway. On the left side of the middle of the dash, I prepped it by scuffing with a 3M pad and laying down a coat of black paint and 5 minutes later I coated it with the Tremclad Satin Clear, in the middle I just wiped it clean and sprayed just satin clear and on the right I simply wiped and sprayed with only the black paint. It seems that the regular paint/clear won't stick very well to plastic but adheres quite nicely to the plastic basecoat paint.



At first, I was worried about the scuffs from the 3M pad showing through the paint but it was fine. The part I scuffed, painted then cleared turned out the best. It's the nicest finish without looking cheesy. The part with the satin only got fisheyes, probably due to contaminants but it wound up looking like the 99-04 dark grey interior finish. The right side with just the plastic black paint turned out too shiny and looks very cheesy in person. So I'm sure I'll be painting the top half of the dash with the black and satin clear with some nice cleaning and scuffing beforehand.
SS

[Syco Stang]

Well, I picked up some parts today and managed to get a pretty good deal. It almost offsets the ridiculous amount of money I have dumped into making this custom intake, and it's not even ported yet. I scored a pair of American Racing Torq Thrust wheels, 17x9.5 with a really nice dish for peanuts. The wheels are literally near brand new, they were mounted, driven on, and then taken apart.



I also picked up my custom box upper. It will be tapped this weekend for some vacuum lines, I will have to fab something up for the IAC to work and see what I can do about a TPS on the '99 Cobra throttle body. I'm hoping my carb throttle cable will work on this thing! The upper and lower will be getting powdercoated once I have it all sorted out.

[gdniel]

Lookin good, love the wheels, trim paint looks fine, and what made you go with the custom upper?

[Syco Stang]

Hood clearance. I wanted to fit the 351 under the stock hood, and the shorter runner length let the motor keep a similar powerband to the Super Vic that came off of it. Unfortunately, I had to use an 87-93 hood for measurements but I don't see why the '86 hoods clearance would be different from the later hood. I have yet to pick it up, it's going to be really close or I might need an '83 hood scoop. We'll see how it performs in a few weeks.
SS

[gdniel]

Is that an Edelbrock lower intake?