Personal Opinons
 

Okay so I have a 97 Chevy Camaro RS has some minor problems and a little body work that needs to be redone, it has 203,000 miles on it, blows a Lot of smoke still trying to find out why, my abs light is on and my brake light came on and won' come off after I pulled the E Brake. My neighbor has a 4th gen Camaro that is also auto and a v6 I am not sure if it's a rs but has around 100,000 miles on it and was offered his motor to put into mine. His Camaro has rusted floor panels I'm not sure the severity of them, but I was thinking if I should just ask him for his camaro and fix the panels, my dad said they are pretty bad and will be better off taking the motor and all the parts off it I need and put them in my camaro. But I want other people' opinions, should I use his camaro for parts or should I just use his camaro and fix the panels?? All opinions are greatly appreciated.

If your car has a good body take the motor!

Yeah it is a pretty good body there are quite a bit of straches and some rust on my rear quarter panels, but I can fix it all in time. I will use the other camaro as a parts car. I will take pictures of the other camaro and mine Sunday when I'm off work and will post them for you guys to better determine so far I'm leaning towards motor swap and trans swap right now.

what year is his camaro? what engine? is it running? 3.8's are around and cheap.

I don't know exactly it's around my year it might be a little newer, it's a 3.8 but has 100k on it. And yes it is running

This is a tuff, I would have to review each car and think hard about what you want. Year of the possible donor car is important.

Mileage is not always a good indicator of the condition of a car. I have had cars with 200k on the clock I would drive across the country and I have seen car with 100k that where just worn out.

I was a mechanic by trade and a amateur body man. IMO Swapping motors is a 2 weekend job. You should be pulling the motor out of the bottom. Expect exhaust bolts to break, and you should reseal the intake and do plugs and wires while the motor is out.

Either way you go both project require a certain skill sets and tools. Do you have a engine lift, torque wrench plus a few smaller items. On the other side do you have a mig welder and someone that can mig sheet metal.

Look at each very closely. What work is needed beside the major repair, How rust free is your car? how bad do you want to keep the stick, how good is the clutch? You also want to focus on what you will have when it is done. What is that worth?

Opinion: I sold a 1996 3800/5-speed with 236.000 miles on it for $800. The motor was flawless. It ran perfect and was getting 29-31 MPG on the highway. The rest of the car was shot. I was looking at rebuilding the front and rears suspension and axel, the trans was starting to get hard to put in first, I knew the radiator was original, the interior was hurting while I kept after the rust every year there was more and more to fix in hard to get to places. Windshield cracked in winter.

The above is my project 96 thread in my sig. For me to keep that car it would have taken more time and money to fix everything then the original project took.

For me As long as the frame rails are solid doing floor boards is not a big deal with the biggest pain being getting the carpet out.

i would want to replace head, intake and oil pan gaskets. also would consider changing soft plugs depending on condition.