1992 GTZ

[dhenderz]

Hi, wanted to into myself since I am new to this forum. I have recently purchased a 1992 black GTZ with the Quad. It needs tons of work to restore. Bought it sight unseen for $1500. It has 128,xxx miles, but has a brand new Quad. Problem is the body. Typical rust in the rocker and hinge pillar areas. And by rust, I mean open the doors and see the ground. I welded in some temp patch panels that should last until Spring. I intend to do a complete resto - or possibly find a rust free body and do a swap.


Anyway, I am not new to the Beretta or GM small cars in general. I was an engineer and engineering mgr for GM small cars for over 15 years. I was involved in the engineering and design of these cars. I was the responsible engineer for the L-body (the Beretta & Corsica), N-body (Grand Am's etc) & J-body (Cavaliers etc) for many years. I've had many of these cars as company cars over the years and even owned a few. Sold my last one (a red 92 GTZ a few years back when more kids came along and needed more space and less vehicles to maintain. I've decided to get back into the car resto game and went out and bought the black GTZ after searching for some time.

Oh, by the way I also have an original 1981 Omega Sport sitting the in barn waiting to be restored. It was the second car I ever owned. I've kept it for all these years moving it from house to house and from storage location to storage location. Have to get to that project once the GTZ is complete.


On the GTZ front I have made temp patches to the rockers and hinge pillars while I look for permanent repair parts. Didn't want the car to break in half if I decided to take it out for a cruise around town! I am working with a local GM dealer to see what OE repair panels are still avail. We'll see. If nothing is avail I will have to either find a doner car from the south or west or fab all new parts.


In the process of making the temp repairs for the rockers I found that most of the exterior & interior molding screws/retainers were shot. I have an original GM parts catalog for the Beretta so I was able to look up the OE part numbers. After some searching on the web I found a great source for OE fasteners - you wouldn't believe what they charge for these parts at the dealer (try $4.25 per screw for the sill plate screw!). The best source I've found is a company called Pointe Products. They are located in MI and will ship to you. I already have one order from them and just placed another last night. I am getting all of the wheel well splash shield screws & plastic rivets. I am also getting the interior trim screws. Once I get them I can post pics and part numbers if you guys are interested.


Now the part where I need some help. I am in need of the console arm rest lid. My is totally shot and they are not avail anymore from GM. They were a real piece of sh#t when they were new and don't last long - as you already know for yourselves. I know, I tested them! Has anyone found any good sources for replacement lids other than junk yards?



Thanks.

[Money pit Beretta]

Hi and welcome. It's great to have you here. To have an L-Body engineer on the site is outstanding!
That's some nice patch work there. If you had the time to come up with a few permanent ones you could save alot of cars out there. Most of us get our parts from the junkyard and that's the only place to get console lid(unless someone here has one).

[Asylum]

So we have YOU to blame for the lousy design of the rust prone areas? LOL!!!

Welcome to the Mayhem!

[Wanako]

now this is awesome. welcome to the site dude. It's great to see one of the creators of our favorite car here with us. This is a rare treat, indeed. I myself am a proud owner of an '87 GT, one of the oldest Berettas still on the road. You'll be surprised how many of us are still dedicated to this old car.

As far as console lid, I'm betting that NO ONE will have them except the yards. I would do what some of us have done and make it out of good wood. Mine's been on there for like 15 years.

Once again, welcome to the site.

[weba]

Welcome. Curious about what parts did you engineer for these cars?

I have found soooo many design flaws from these cars, i need someone to blame

But actually the worst of them are in components/designs that are shared with other small gm cars of that time, and not Beretta specific...

[Barry]

WOW! I am very glad that you are here with us.

I am going to college for mechanical engineering and would like to be an automotive engineer.

Looking forward to hearing more from you.

[Asylum]

The body you are looking for may be in the For Sale section right now.

Check out 92BerettaProject's post.

You can thank me later,,LOL!

[woody90gtz]

Wow, it's cool to have an engineer among us.

I feel your pain with the rust. This past year I had to scrap my beloved 95 Z26 and swap all my mods to a 91 GT shell I call the "SS" - my third Beretta. There may not be many of us with enough dedication to build a Beretta, but those of us left that have the bug have come a long way in the last few years. There are a couple L-bodies in the 12s, a handful in or knocking on the door of 13s and a few solid 14-sec Berettas on the road.

Now what is the best way to go about stiffening the chassis?

[Money pit Beretta]

Yeah Woody I've thought about that too. It would be nice to have some sort of sub frame connector.

[weba]

Now what is the best way to go about stiffening the chassis?

I have some input for this, Well built roll cage is the best option, at least '12 point' like they say it in US? It has to be connected to top of all the suspension supports. Feature that i really rarely see on US built race cars, since those cages are only there to secure the driver, not to improve chassis rigidity... This is the standard way to handle it in Europe tho.

Some example pictures to explain what i mean:


Pipes supporting the front suspension


Connected to the roll cage.


How rear suspension should be supported


I've been looking into Jegs "jegster" roll cage kits, they do have one 12-point that is made for a Beretta, but since i haven't ever seen installed pictures about it, cannot really tell how good it is and how does it fit. Anyhow since it's really cheap, I have planned to order one for the beginning point of my roll cage project, since it doesn't fill up my or law's requirements here, it's going to need a lot of added pipes & changes to make it work on my application...

Everything else than a cage just makes things worse in the long run, you could fill up the body enclosures with a special foam engineered to that purpose, and / or re-weld the cars body for more rigidity, but both of those will accelerate the rusting process on a street car tremendously, methods mostly used on race only cars. One idea is also to remove the rockers first and then add square tubing inside it, but that doesn't really support the load-points of our cars.

You could also take a look how the convertibles were reinforced the factory way.. There was W-body pictures about this posted @bstuff if i remember right?

And what i Personally think, the chassis rigidity is not the biggest woe on our car when it comes to handling improvements, it's the loose wobbling rear axle, I have some solutions on the line for that too.. off course all this doesn't matter if you only go straight line.

[Money pit Beretta]

Well Weba, if I was going to go that far I'd do a whole tube frame. Fiberglass body and everything else. There would be a huge weight loss and I could put a V8 in there. Harry Glass use to make a fiberglass dash for these cars and other things.
Sounds like you could use some axle bushings, Moog makes some. The Cavy guys just put a bar from one shock to the other. That would work for the newer cars. Now if you could put a bar from one side to the other on the rear bushing bolts that could be something too. But that could make the car push in the turns though. A little give makes it more like IRS. Too stiff will make more sway.

[Money pit Beretta]

http://www.overkillengineeringmotorspor ... brace.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.j-body.org/forums/read.php?f ... 1&t=142111" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[weba]

I have something more complex on my mind, but I'm starting with customs bushings first.

[Money pit Beretta]

Update you build topic Weba.
Hey, where is dhenderz? He could shed some light on this.

[dhenderz]

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted for a few days. Regarding the earlier question, I was primarily an interior engineer for the GM small cars. I do have some knowledge of the other parts of the car because of the meetings I attended and colleagues I had within engineering.


As for the stiffening of the BIW for the L-body, it could use some help. The L-body was a weak design when it was new - before 15+ years of fatigue & rust. That is what caused the cancellation of the convertible program. For those that want more detail on that topic might find my post over on the 'other' Beretta forum interesting.

Here's the link: http://bstuff.com/index.php?showtopic=5 ... ntry846473" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;