Space City 1982 GP Build

[Texas82GP]

I'm glad the Eagle has landed and we didn't hear "Houston, we have a problem"...😀

Totally agree Steve. Good to have you back in here. I would have reached out to you regarding the T5 transmission mount issue I'm having but I know you didn't use a G Force crossmember for your swap.

I wish my floors were that crusty. But that WTC ticket is something that I'd hold on to if I found it.

Yeah, I'm thinking of framing it in a shallow shadow box and hanging it in my office. I want something that will protect it from UV so it won't deteriorate. I can't believe how well it survived under the back seat all these years. I think the back seat had been out of the car since it wasn't in the hook on the passenger side so it's pretty cool this little keepsake was still there.

I found grandmas grocery list under my seat. That’s definitely way cooler!

I was hoping to find the build sheet under the back seat but no dice. I'll take this find though. We also found the usual change and a few cigarette butts (yuck!).

That WTC ticket is awesome.

Agreed!

That ticket is so cool. I'd definitely frame it. All that was under my Regal's backseat was old cigarette packs and empty heroin stamp bags. No needles, thank God. Yeah, I think the PO may have been a drug addict.

Your plan for the floors is exactly what I would do. Wire brush, paint them, and seam seal the pinholes.

Thanks for the support on my plan Joe. I know this approach isn't exactly a concours restoration but it will protect the floors from further deterioration and this project is more of a repair than a restoration.

Jared,
Your floors are definitely better than most that I've seen....including mine. Your WTC observation deck ticket is a cool find. I've been up there once back in the '80's. What a fantastic view..
It's too bad it's ancient history.

Thanks Jack. I knew not to expect them to be spotless. The car has sat with the passenger window down (in my storage) for three years and still has that musty old car smell so I knew the floors had been pretty wet for a good amount of time. There is some pitting and a few pinholes but I don't think anything worse so I'm grateful for that. I'll treat them just like the firewall and it will be fine for a pampered cruiser.

 

[oldsofb]

Hutch, it's good to have you in here. An update is coming right after this one. What's going on with your car? I don't think I've seen anything new lately.

Glad to be here. I love a good build. I also love the direction of your build.

To answer you, I have been getting my finances together after the Christmas crazy. I just hate working in the cold too. I'm waiting for this deep freeze to pass.

I do end up working in fits and starts though. 🙄

Hutch

 

[pontiacgp]

Totally agree Steve. Good to have you back in here. I would have reached out to you regarding the T5 transmission mount issue I'm having but I know you didn't use a G Force crossmember for your swap.

I used the stock crossmember and modified it for the T5 and duel exhaust.

 

[Clutch]

My brother and I went over to the storage today to peel back the carpet and cut the new hole for the shifter in the floor. We had the goal of getting the transmission sitting on its mount and sitting on the crossmember. When we tried to get the mount on it after putting the engine and transmission in the car, we realized the hole for the shifter would have to be cut in order to be able to get the mount in and get the crossmember in.

We started by pulling the driver's side bucket seat that I temporarily installed yesterday to move the car. Then while I ran to the auto parts store to buy a Torx bit set to remove the center seat belts, Sean pulled the sill plates and the kick panels. After the seatbelts were out, I pulled the lower portion of the back seat. Look what Sean found underneath it....

View attachment 80033

Pretty cool huh? I bought my car from Iowa and it still has the original 1982 Iowa inspection sticker on the windshield under the rear view mirror so it seems the car lived in Iowa its whole life until I bought it. So it looks to me like the car was driven to New York City (around 1,000 miles) at some point in its life. I'm guessing it was parked in one of the WTC parking garages which I think is pretty cool. I'm going to frame it and hang it in either my room or my office at work.

We got the carpet out and the floorboards are a little crusty. I expected this based on the musty smell that the car had. I also expected it since there was rust damage on the firewall near the wiper motor and since the drain at the bottom of the HVAC case was hopelessly plugged with dirt. Here's a look at the floor pans....

View attachment 80034

The driver's front is pretty clean...

View attachment 80035

The driver's rear has a little crust but not too bad...

View attachment 80036

The passenger rear is a little worse but isn't too bad either....

View attachment 80037

The passenger front is the worst but is still 'solid'. There are a few pinholes already. I know the guys on TV would put floorpans in the car but not me....

View attachment 80038

My strategy for the floorboards will seem familiar for you guys that have been following along. I'm going to vacuum them, scrape and wire brush, vacuum and then treat them with Rustoleaum Rusty Metal Primer followed by two coats of Satin Black enamel. The pinholes will be addressed with seam sealer.

Moving forward, we worked on cleaning up the butcher job for the Saginaw shifter that the previous owner did. Keep in mind, I cleaned this up some in 2014 when I changed the shifter to a Hurst Competition Plus....

View attachment 80039

Here is a look at the floorboard after we trimmed up the previous owner's opening and cut the new hole for the T5 shifter...

View attachment 80040

The picture above will give good perspective on where the F Body T5 shifter falls relative to the stock G Body Saginaw shifter. Sean and I are going to fab up a patch this week to cover the forward hole.

After all of this Sean and I got under the car hoping to get the T5 sitting on its mount. I jacked the transmission up until its 'spine' was hard against the tunnel but there still wasn't enough room to get the mount in and get the crossmember in place.

I'm using a G Force 700R4/T5 crossmember. I have an Energy Suspension mount that I bought from G Force and a stock 91 Camaro T5 mount. the stock mount was close to going in with the transmission hard on the tunnel. Somehow, I have the parts combination wrong. If any of you have done a T5 swap with a G Force crossmember, let me know what mount you used.

I ordered another mount from Energy Suspension tonight, from Rock Auto, which is noted as a shorter mount for "custom applications" so we'll see. It is supposed to be here Thursday night. Between then and now Sean and I will fab the tunnel patch and I'll be working on cleaning, scraping, wire brushing my floor pans. Yay!!

That's it for now gents. As always, thanks for tuning in.

Whenever I see those buildings I remember the smoke plume and the smell that was a bad day.
Anyway I'm trying to catch up on you here I've never seen a storage unit so big wow the GP is looking sexy in there oh and it's cool how what we find in our cars can tell a story my 78 was bought new in Florida and went straight to Disneyland for a Valentine's day dance I found the build sheet and the Disney dance ticket under the back seat good luck with your mount

 

[Texas82GP]

I used the stock crossmember and modified it for the T5 and duel exhaust.

I thought I had read that you modified a 200-4R crossmember.

 

[pontiacgp]

I thought I had read that you modified a 200-4R crossmember.

That is what I did, if i was to do it again I would have used a different bellhousing so the transmission would not be sitting at an angle and I would have used an aftermarket crossmember. I had to remove the transmission 3 times in one nite and another time 3 times in one week and the worst part of the job was my crossmember.

UMI has a nice crossmember on their Green Machine but I'm not sure if it's available to the public

 

[Texas82GP]

Progress has been slow this week. Work and family commitments have taken away some of the time. Still, I've been able to work on sourcing some hard to find parts for the build (more on that later) and make some small improvements to the new storage. The shorter transmission mount came in yesterday. I started out with Energy Suspension 31108G which was too tall. I then bought a stock replacement mount for a 91 Camaro with a 305 and a T5. It was about the same. Both of them are about 2" tall. I then ordered an Energy Suspension 31142G, which is described as "Short; For use w/Custom Applications". It is said to measure 1.62" tall, which is a difference of about 3/8". It looks like it is going to work. The transmission is sitting on the mount and sitting on the crossmember. Everything is bolted up and tight.....

I would have liked to have had about another 1/8" of clearance. The top of the transmission is very tight to the transmission tunnel, right ahead of the shifter but it is not touching. I estimate I have about an 1/8" of clearance. It's very difficult to see, much less get a picture of...

As you can see in the picture just above, the opening Sean and I cut in the tunnel for the shifter is too tight on the passenger side. I actually trimmed that side of the opening back to get everything bolted up but the shifter 'tower' is still against the tunnel on this side so that will require some trimming up this weekend.

Here is a look at the shifter 'tower' poking up through the floorboard...

Our opening may be a hair too big on the driver's side at this point. It seems that when I jacked the transmission up to the tunnel to mark the bottom side for the new opening, the jack must have pulled the transmission a little to the driver's side so we cut too much on that side and not enough on the passenger side. Still, I think it will be fine. I bought a lower boot for a 4th gen Camaro with a T5 and hopefully it is big enough to cover the opening. I'm likely to put a console in the car but that decision hasn't been made yet.

I'm not sure what I'm going to work on this weekend. I need to get in there and work towards getting the floorboards cleaned up and treated but I'm not that excited about doing that. I may work on seeing if the headers will fit. We'll see. I hope to have a good update before the weekend is over.

Thanks for tuning in as always.

 

[1evilregal]

this info will def help, as I've got a t-5wc in the holding pattern for the Regal, but that's not the reason that I'm tuned in! 😀
I can only hope that I'll have the patience to have all my stuff that clean when I get back to work on it!

 

[Texas82GP]

this info will def help, as I've got a t-5wc in the holding pattern for the Regal, but that's not the reason that I'm tuned in! 😀
I can only hope that I'll have the patience to have all my stuff that clean when I get back to work on it!

Thanks Darin. I hope my documenting the T5 swap will help you and maybe some others. The tunnel clearance is tight so I won't be sure I've got this right until I look at the driveline angle. I will post up though. G Force makes a fully adjustable mount. That would be the next thing I try if I decide I don't like the 'short' energy suspension mount. If I understand the description correctly, the G Force mount can be as short as an inch. It's $95 though so it's a little steep on the price. I'll likely stay where I'm at. Here's a link to the G Force mount....

https://crossmembers.com/product/adjustable-transmission-mount-gm-rwd-applications/

 

[Texas82GP]

It was a good day on the Grand Prix. My brother Sean came over to the storage with me to help me out. It's great having the help. Having him really moves the project along. We started out with putting plastic over the entire car to keep it clean while we prepared the floorboards for priming and painting. After that I started pulling the seatbelts, the back seat back, the package shelf, and the quarter panel interior plastic trim. In the meantime Sean worked on trimming up the passenger side of the hole for the shifter and started scraping, wire brushing and vacuuming the floors. He also went over all of the paint on the floors that was in good shape with a red Scotch Brite. Once I was done pulling parts and putting them away I joined him with prepping the floors. When I got in the car and started poking around I noticed that one type of seam sealer that was used in the cockpit had gone bad. It was hardly stuck and was falling off in big chunks. I started digging all of that stuff out. I also went at some of the rust in the floorboards a little more aggressively than Sean had. Once I was satisfied we vacuumed it out again and I wiped the floors down with lacquer thinner on a microfiber cloth. Sean taped up the wiring chases on the driver's and passenger sides. It already looked a lot better...

Then we moved on to priming. I got the driver's side of the car primed and then we ran out of time. We had a family commitment. As I mentioned earlier, I primed the floors with the same Rustoleaum Rusty Metal Primer. I've really grown to like that stuff. It is so forgiving. We're planning to go back tomorrow to finish up the priming and Sean may start seam sealing the Driver's side if we can find some material. There are probably a dozen or more pinholes in the floors. The car couldn't have sat outside for much longer without needing floors. I know the TV guys would have put floors in the car but they are still solid. I'm perfectly fine with fixing the flaws with seam sealer. I never intended to take the car down this far anyway. I don't think it will smell like an old car anymore. Here are some pics of the driver's side primed....

I really piled the material on. The floor is protected. We had a hell of a good day. There is no way I would have gotten this far on my own. Thanks Sean.