checking in..

I can't believe another year has gone by. I had planned on keeping this up to date, but since this was my first car build, and it turned into a full body off with a lot of mods, it ate up all my time. Here is where we are now.. Backing up a bit.. After we started the car in Iowa, Josh moved his shop to South Dakota. I hauled the car out to his new shop Custom Image Corvettes and then made five or six trips out there. Each trip I spent about 10 or 12 days working on the car and sleeping when I could. We got the flares installed. The car is a 76 but I really like the look of chrome bumper cars, and love the unique 73 so we made it that. We installed a fiberglass 73 front. Then we took some other rear ends and combined them to make a 73 back for my 76. We fired up the LS1! The LS1 was installed in the car when I got it. It had been in Vette magazine many years ago and was probably the first LS transplant into a C3 vette. I got about 20 issues of "Vette" with the car that have the car in it, which is very cool. After they installed the LS1, the project was dropped and the car sat there for many years. We got it fired up and it runs well. Josh and the CIC crew did an amazing job blocking the car and josh sprayed it Inferno Orange. He hauled the car back to me about six months ago and I have been working on wiring everything up and putting the interior back in. I wired some LEDs to come on with the brake light so the corvette script lights up as a third brake light and dimmer LEDs that act as running lights. It is still a work in progress but we took the car on the 20th Hot Rod Power Tour and had a blast. This whole project kind of got away from me, as these things often do. A big thanks to Josh and the crew at Custom Image Corvettes for everything he did to make this happen!

Sorry, I have not updated this blog. I hope to at some point. If you are interested, for now you can get up to date details at DIGITAL CORVETTES Cheers :-)

Friday

   It has been a pretty busy week.  Yesterday I pulled the engine/tranny out. 

I have never done that but it went well.  The tranny will be swapped for a Richmond six speed.  Last night I stopped over after work and thought I would be home by 10:00 so I could catch up on sleep.  Well that did not happen.  The good part is that we were able to get the frame totally stripped and ready for powdercoating today.

Tuesday..

   Got the body mount bolts out today!    I was kind of worried that they might fight me, but they came out as well as I could hope.  Tomorrow I unhook some more stuff and should be ready to take the body off.   Oh, I need to make a dolly for it.

Monday..

   I stopped over tonight and was able to get the leaf spring off.  It was pretty nasty under there.  By far the worst part of the car.    This will get replaced with a VB&P monoleaf.

some progress

   I got to work on the 76 a bit yesterday.  I got some more of the interior gutted.

I got some more of the front stripped out.  I took the front crossmember off with my little impact driver.  I can't believe it took those 35 year old bolts out with no problem.  I doubt it would have taken a 10 year old Iowa bolt off.

I got some lines disconnected ready for the body pull.  I took a break and was looking through the VB&P catalog.    I was looking at the brakes section thinking that I should really replace them too.  The I saw a huge picture of a black 69 corvette.  The catalog was on top of a blanket on the trunk of a corvette.  I kind of laughed, pulled back the blanket and snapped this photo.

 Yea, I was standing there admiring a car in a photo when the actual car was sitting under the blanket. :-)

Then I got to thinking... some lucky guy in Florida is about to get shipped to him a new set of fender flares from Custom Image Corvettes.  They were made from molds which were cast from Kaoss's flares and will be exact replicas.  I will be getting a set in the future and wondered how it would look so I took that fender and just hung it on my car.  It looked kind of silly with the stock wheels, so I went and took one off of Kaoss and put it on.  It was totally sick.   We have the spring unhooked and the stock suspension is still in there so it is sitting lower then it will in its final stance, and also the wheel's camber is way off, but it was still an awesome sight.

That set of wheels will be going on my 76 in a few weeks.  It is kind of funny because when I first started going over to Custom Image, one of the things I did on my noobie list was to polish those wheels.  I probably sept six hours polishing them.  Then as it turns out Rob bought a new set and sold me those.    

Waiting for the big push

     Josh and I have been talking about how much work is ahead of us and how little time there is.  I have never done this kind of thing before, but hope that we can pull it off.  We decided that since we were going to pull the engine and tranny to replace the auto with a six speed, and the steering was going to be unhooked to install the rack and pinion we might as well pull the body off.  Since the body is off, I might as well get it powder coated and replace the brake lines. 
   I have often heard that it is hard to draw the line on these projects.  Those "might as well" things can really add up fast.
   I took some parts off of the car last night so I can paint them at home during free times.   I unhooked the steering box, got the steering column out, and took off the aftermarket disco front end.
    I got home from the shop about midnight and got back up at 4:15 to head out for work.  *yawn*   I will head back to the shop as soon as I get off work.