Ahhh ok thank you. Yeah I really try to baby this car. They're beautiful cars, and they're nice to drive. I was at the gas station once and a guy came up to me and asked what year it was, and he told me he had an 04 back home he worked on. I thought that was cool. And the mechanic at Belle tire that works on my car when I bring it in has an 04 SS so that's cool too.

I still have my original owners manual so I can double check that one.

 

Never tried it, but cant you just pop the magnet off the stock pan when you swap them? They do sell pan magnet on Amazon for cheap, but Ive got to think you should be able to reuse the stock one.

 

Ahh i didnt know it was removeable, yeah i'll just do that instead. Thanks!

 

That gasket is worth the money! You will be happy with ease of install AND the long use without leaks!

I have always re-used the factory trans pan. I see your dorman one has a drain plug. See if there is a magnet in the tip of the plug.

 

Ok so I took my driver side ground fx off. it was a pain in the *** and i broke most of the clips but I learned how its done. I will make a video on how to do it at the end of april, but basically the main thing is, the ground fx is held in by white clips on the side of the car and theres pretty much no choice but to break those, once those are off and the screws on each end of the wheel well are out, the fx just slides off. It looks really good under there! except for the front... the front is rusted out to hell and will need to have new steel welded in, but honestly i thought the entire underside of the rocker would look like the front so i guess i got somewhat lucky. I had all the clips I needed to re do this and i threw them away because they didnt look like they fit my car. What a facepalm moment.

On my vacation im going to just have to band aid this for now. I'll cut out the bad steel and sand the rest, then paint it with por-15.

EDIT: I didnt throw out the clips, I found them!

 

I have only taken a ground fx off ONCE. I am NOT an expert. But there is a forked tool to help release those white clips. To get any replacements, look to this site: https://www.clipsandfasteners.com

The rust is bad, but as you mentioned, can still be addressed. Something important to note, the bottom of the fender! That commonly rots out and creates problems. Yours still looks OK. If you can, I would treat that lower section (the back side and what the ground fx hides) with POR15. Also, take notice the two bolts that hold the bottom of the fender to the body, they are still there and that flange looks OK, possibly just surface rust.

 

Yeah, I actually found both the little white clips and the bottom clips in my closet. I thought i had thrown them away, because that would be a typical thing for me to do, but luckily i didnt. I also have one of those little forked tools, I have no idea why it didnt occur to me to use it lol. I will try it on the passenger side when i work on my car in a couple weeks. What i did was i just took a flathead and placed the tip on the white things and then hit the butt of it with a rubber mallet. Yeah i will be cutting all that rust out and putting POR-15 on it for sure, as much of it as i can in as many places as i can. I will also take that fender off completely and look under there as well and correct any issues i see with that too.

I already knew it was bad before i took the fx off because i kicked the fx near the front wheel well and just a TON of flaky rusty metal came off haha. What a headache. It could be worse i guess though. I just hope the other side isnt too bad, and under the fenders as well.

 

There's lots of work to get this repaired. But don't get discouraged it can be fixed. Be careful when your under the car, always wear safety equipment ( glasses, gloves, ear plugs , ECT.) A small piece of rust can send you to the emergency room. I finished similar repairs a year ago, it took time and some sheet metal. I had a decent welder which helped but even a cheaper one can get the job done.

 

Oh yeah I have a ton of safety measures in place, I'm really nervous about getting under the car as it is. If it falls there's no second chances so I made sure to get everything I can think of to help mitigate disaster.

As for welding. I have no experience whatsoever with it. It seems like it's one of those things that's not too hard to do, but is very difficult to do correctly if that makes sense. Like a beginner isn't going to be making perfect dime shaped welds or anything. But this will be under the rocker panel so it doesn't matter if it's seen or not so it doesn't need to look good thankfully. I saw a $100 mig welder on Amazon, would something like that work?

 

There's not much heavy metal being welded to repair the body. So a regular 120 volt welder would work. There's is two layers of metal you're going to deal with, the inner structure and the outer piece which will be visible until you put the skirts back on the car.