It's been way too hot to be crawling around under the car and messing with the engine, so today I decided to take it easy and start disassembling the interior. Most of the interior panels are shot -- sun faded, gouged up and generally not repairable. They have that nice "chalky" texture to them from being baked in the Florida sun for the last 30 years.
I'm scouting around for some solid replacement pieces. Hopefully I can get them from a local salvage yard or from someone parting out a car Craigslist. Unfortunately, there aren't many salvage yards in the area and the ones that are here don't have too many third gens. I checked one site and they had exactly three. If I can't find panels locally, I'm sure I can score some on thirdgen.org, but the panels are big and awkward and shipping will probably cost a small fortune.
There's a good thread on the thirdgen.org Interior forum about restoring interior plastics, which has been invaluable. I'm hoping I can get some good replacement panels and paint them. The big issue is finding the rear cargo panels that don't have the cutout for the retractable cargo shade and also finding a rear hatch panel cover that for cars with the rear wiper blade.
After getting the seats out, the original carpeting appears to be still in great shape, so I plan to keep it. The same can't be said for the carpet on the center console and door panels, so that will need to be replaced.
The exciting part of today was finding the build sheet still safely tucked away under the passenger seat. It was in great condition and I was thrilled to find it. I feel like I found the darn birth certificate from Chevy. I now know exactly what options the car had when it left Van Nuys back in late April of 1982.
The car was sold to Roger Dean Chevrolet in West Palm Beach, FL, so it really did spend all of it's life down in sunny Florida. I already knew the car didn't have the J65 rear discs, but this proves it. The sheet also tells me the car has a rather anemic 2.93 non-posi rear axle.