OK - I may have posted details about this car when I picked it up many years ago (2005 maybe?), but I can't find a thread with that info so I'll tell the story in this thread.
I had wanted to add an iroc r/t to my collection and once I saw a green iroc r/t with leather interior back in 2003, I set my eyes on that combo. After a couple years of looking, I found one not more than 45 minutes from me! However, based on the ad and pictures, it looked to be in really rough shape. I was skeptical, but since it was so close I figured I had nothing to lose to go and look at it. A few days later I made the trek out there, and as I pulled up, I thought, well, it's sunk in the dirt and missing body parts, but at least what's there doesn't look all rotted out.
The interior was filled with engine and body parts (radiator/intercooler, front fascia pieces including headlights and other parts, etc.), but other than a tare in the drivers seat, it was all there and in not too bad of shape. I looked over the body panels and it was dinged up, but other than a tiny dime sized spot of rot on the bottom lip of the drivers door, there was no rust to be found anywhere on the car.
Then I lifted the hood....woah...what a mess!!! It was packed with leaves and acorns and you could barely see that there was a TIII engine lurking underneath. Gray squirrels had claimed the engine compartment as their home! The owner and I cleared it out and sure enough, it was pretty much all there. The wiring harness was chewed up and the radiator hoses were cut (radiator/intercooler was in the back seat), but it looked salvageable. We inflated the tires and then jacked the car up and I looked underneath and couldn't believe how clean it was for having been sitting in the dirt for the last couple of years. The owner also showed me paperwork and it turns out he picked up the car from the original owner who had dumped the car due to a no start issue. The car had a ton of receipts in the glove box from work done to it in 1997 and many of them listed "no start" on them. This guy had only picked it up because he was planning on taking parts from it for another iroc r/t that he had. However, he never got around to the project and this car sat in his yard for 2 or 3 years before he decided to sell off all of his iroc r/t stuff.
Well, while some called me crazy, I saw the potential so I decided to make an offer. The price we settled on was a little higher than I wanted to pay, but I made the deal with him and came back a week later and dragged the car home. Then it sat for a few years while I worked on other projects.
In 2008 I spent a couple weekends cleaning it up and trying to get it reassembled enough to try and fire up the engine. The wiring harness was so chewed up and even though I had gone through to try to fix every break, I couldn't get the car to fire. Here's the furthest back thread I could find on the car and it talks about the wiring issues: http://www.turbo-mopar.com/forums/sh...I+sbec+diagram
After unsuccessfully trying to get it to fire, I put the car on the back burner again until about a year later when I had time to swap in a new wiring harness that I had bought. I tested and tried everything and the best I could get out of it was an occasional pop. Here's a thread on that effort: http://www.turbo-mopar.com/forums/sh...-Problem-HELP!
That was the last straw and the car was pushed into the back corner of the garage for the last 5 years.
This winter I finally decided to just pull the engine and see if there was something freakishly wrong that was causing the no start. I pulled the head and everything looked OK (headgasket was definitely on its way out though). Then I pulled the transmission and bingo!!! I noticed it right away. The pressure plate was too large and was protruding into the reference slots on the flywheel so the crank sensor couldn't get a good signal! I pulled the pressure plate and the clutch was brand spankin new! So the poor car had sat since 1997 due to someone putting the wrong clutch into it...what a shame, but good for me I guess as I now have a 1 owner 73K mile car that I'm sure will fire once I put the correct pressure plate in it!
Anyway, since the car is apart, I decided to go through it and give it the restoration that I always planned for it and that's really the purpose of this thread. I'll post info and pics over the next few days of the progress that I have made so far. I was pumped when I found the pressure plate issue few weeks back as it gave me confidence that this car wasn't possessed...LOL! And now I've been plugging away at it with renewed vigor and confidence!
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Originally Posted by Turbo224
ModTop 70 Charger excepted.
