t-top grand prixs options

[Death666wish_]

good evening gentlemen,

lately i've had the thought of selling my very reliable and economic daily 2005 mitsubishi so that i can buy an old beater (very bad idea that i'll regret i know) and use the rest of the money to fix up my 91 firebird which has been rusting away for 3 years now.

what encouraged me to go ahead with this is seeing an 86 grand prix for sale, didn't know anything about these cars and haven't seen any before, so here in Bahrain it's probably even rarer than my bird, but then i saw that some came with t-tops

anyways what i wanna know is two things, did the t-tops come with bench seats and column shifters, or are they all with floor shifters which i thought they probably came with, but just thought i'd ask cuz you guys know better.

second thing is, if later on down the road i went with my awesome crazy thought of dropping a nice big juicy 455 into her, what should i be expecting having a t-top? i saw on another thread some saying the body can't handle it while others said it would, but i didn't see any personal experiences on that thread so i thought maybe i'd get a little more detailed opinions. so what are the pros and cons and what would be needed to be done to the car to handle all that torque? and why should i pick a 455 and not a 400??

thanks in advance!!

 

[Peter]

these cars all full framed and will take anything you want to throw at it better than any unibody. i dont personally have t-tops but unless you are using slicks and drag racing, i doubt there will be a ton of difference. i have heard there is extra bracing in these t-tops cars. so in general the 455 should at the very least be tolerable with a stock suspension set-up (minus front springs, they certainly would need to be swapped for a big block)

 

[Death666wish_]

awesome, then i'll probably see if i can find any t-tops, doubt i'd find any around here, just a few Monte Carlos and i'm more of a Poncho head, will check Saudi Arabia if i could get my hands on one from there.

This is the one i saw for sale here with a 350 engine and a 700r4 according to the add, the guy has the grill but i'm not sure about the rest of the chrome parts (yes i want chrome!!), he's asking for just over $2100 which i feel is a bit steep for it..



so what about the column shifters, did any of the t-tops come with??

 

[Peter]

i have looked at a couple t top cars and one thing i did see was the a pillars had a tendency to rot out so be sure if you look at a t-top car check them out. other than that i say start with a clean car, no fix em up rust buckets because it'll just bite you in the *ss. there seem to be a good number of gbodies sitting around as grandma cars still

 

[Death666wish_]

ok i'll go off the topic a bit here but i just have to ask, my bird is kind of a rust bucket, should i just call it quits and sell the car? in what way will it bite me just to make sure?

 

[Peter]

most car guys i know will actually fix their rust, thats what im talking about so i was saying buy a car that won't need a bunch of rust repair. be my guest driving around a rust bucket, i don't give a sh*t