[jet1991]

I promised you in an earlier post that I would post pictures of my car and what me and my father has done to it. Here it is.

This is me looking like a total dork the day I bought the car. That picture was taken the 20th march last year. My hair wass cut just a few days before this so I don`t have my pompadour in that pictureartyon::

I drove the car 2000 miles last season without any problems. The only things we did was changing the plugs, changed the oil and filter, changed the rotor and distributor cap, replaced the front air dam and some other smaller things like that. But I was not unable to use the car for a single day because of repairs or anything like that. But we knew there was a lot of things on the car that needed to be fixed. Among them was:

The bodymounts were completely wrecked and had to be replaced.
The paint job could have been done better (removing the bumpers would have helped)
The engine needs to be repainted.
The whole frame and the wheel wells were full of tectyl
The interior has been partially replaced by bubba
Some engine gaskets have been made out of "bubba-on-a-tube"
The car still had the single exhaust system with a cat:down:
The suspension and steering will have to be rebuilt soon
The Norwegian "snowplow" license plates has to go
And 4 full pages in Openoffice with stuff that is sub par.

Here are some more pictures of the car from last season:

This winter we were only supposed to change the body mounts and then we would see what else we had time to fix.We lifted the body of the car and had to change our plans because of the brown death that was all over the frame. The rust hadn`t been there long enough to do any damage, but if we had just ignored it, it would have eaten up the frame. The manual says the car was built to be able to rust without falling apart. It sounds silly and I thought they only meant the parts that weren`t painted from the factory but the frame is 3mm thick! That`s a lot of steel. And it`s 3mm everywhere on the frame. No wonder why the car is so heavy. But the frame is still very soft on these cars. The inside of the frame is almost completely free of rust. Don`t know why but it`s a relief alright. check out the pictures later in this post.

Other things we found that were hidden on the car:
The cushion for the front was a total wreck
small crack in the radiator
The car had been in a small collision earlier and the bumper was apparently fixed by "bubba`ll-fix-it inc."
The mounts for the front sway bar were bent in a very weird way. The sway bar looks undamaged
The bushings on the trailing arms has to be changed soon. Probably next year
The seller had attempted to adjust the doors. And only made things worse
The radiator frame had rusted to pieces from the inside and mounted witout shims (= ruined)
There was a hole in the fuel vapor box. I can`t explain how that has happened
Rust on the fuel and brake lines
The tank had rusted from the inside and had two small holes
The frame had been rustproofed on the outside but not on the inside
"Bubba`ll-fix-it inc." had rustproofed my wheel wells and other PLASTIC parts:crazy:
The motormounts fell apart in my hands
The transmission mount had been flattened and fell apart in my hands
The brake fluid was a color it was not supposed to be...:lookinup:
The front end had sunk 3cm or so from what it was when it left the factory

This will all be fixed this season. Except for the trailing arm bushings. Those will be fixed next winter. Here are some pictures of the work we have done. The grey stuff on the frame is just dust from the sandblasting. The color of the frame is half-matte black:

Before and after we washed the engine:

Pictures of the new tank and the new brake and fuel lines. All the lines are stainless steel. On the third picture you can get a glimpse of the inside of the frame after we rustproofed it.

The old tank with a picture of one of the holes. The hole was a lot smaller and round but we expanded it to check how much rust there was on the inside of the frame. There was a lot:

Some picture of the inside of the frame before we rustproofed it:

I have a lot more pictures on the other side of the North sea. Forgot them at home:guilty:. Among them pictures of the front of the frame after sandblasting and painting and some pictures of the frame from before we sandblasted it. These are the only before pictures of the frame i have:

And this bodymount shows you why we did this. They were easy to remove except for the #1 and #5 mounts. But we got them out without too much of a hassle:

And here are some pictures of what we found in my transmission oil. Don`t think that is supposed to be there:

Finally I have a question for you. Is the tank supposed to be like this:

To me it looks like there is a hole missing. The reason why the fuel tank had rusted to pieces was because there had been water trapped between the plastic lining and the tank. The plastic lining also had several big cracks in it. The new tank doesn`t have the plastic lining and we think it is for the better.

 

[jet1991]

Update.

The car has been back on the road for a month or so (think it was the 10th of april) and I drove just over 1000 miles or in the three weeks I was home. Which means my car might be the most driven Corvette in Norway. The car works and we had very few problems after we put her back on the ground. The gearbox works perfectly, no weird noises and gears when it`s supposed to. We`re still going to rebuild or replace it sometime. The new poly mounts (body, engine and transmission) makes the car shake when the engine is running. I like it but I won`t recommend them if you want to have a comfortable cruiser. Here are some more photos:

The rust on top of the frame was reason we decided to sandblast and paint the whole frame. You can not see the top of it without removing the body so we didn`t know about it until we did. The original (looks like it is) paint on the frame fell off and there were spots of rust under it.

My father managed to remove those that dent with a blowtorch and that scary looking homemade instrument. This dent was big so you can still feel it, but he also repaired some other smaller dents and those are completely gone without any trace.

There were many damages like this one on the car. We suspects they came when the car was shipped to Norway. Bubba secured the car with jackstraps and overtightened them. Luckily, my father used to be a welder.

Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of how the crossmember looked before I sandblasted and primered\painted it, but the original paint was all gone. No paint at all. And there was only rust on one end. The other end looked like unpolished stainless steel. It probably would have been completely covered in rust pretty quickly though. I don`t know why the paint seems to have started falling of recently.

The car was completely covered and still the interior got full of sandblasting dust. We think it entered the car from below somewhere.

The grey parts on the frame in these pictures is bare steel. It was painted from the factory but we could only find spots of paint here and there. Some of the chalkmarks from the assembly were still readable so we think it has not been repainted and noone has sandblasted the frame before. Why then has the paint just disappered?

This tank looked like it was in pretty good shape, but no we had to replace it.

The only parts of the frame that wasn`t sandblasted and painted was the front crossmember, the parts of the frame hidden under the front suspension, the front suspension and the trailingarm pocket. These will be sandblasted and painted sometime in the future.

This is the last evidence of the collision left on the car. Does anyone know if it`s possible to find out when this label was printed? I don`t know when the car was crashed and I don`t know anything about the car from before I bought it.

This is the bolt-in performance exhaust i bought from corvette central. It wasn`t 100% bolt-in but it was easy to install. And it was cheap. That bracket was made by my father and lets the exhaust be mounted in the original mounting holes instead of having to drill holes in the crossmember.

Sitting on it`s own wheels for the first time since october (taken ~ 10th of april)

 

[D_B]

Wow man you've done some fantastic work.

Thanks so much for sharing, and it's such a beautiful car.

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

 

[blckslvr79]

Nice work! :thumbsup:

I respect the fellow hot rodder that does the work themself vs paying someone else.

:cheers:

 

[1stvtt1981]

Very impressive job on the Vette.

What really caught my eye was the glass block wall,

window design and the garage door frame.

Never seen another one like it..

 

[jet1991]

Nice work! :thumbsup:

I respect the fellow hot rodder that does the work themself vs paying someone else.

:cheers:

I have to do it myself. I`m just a student and I spent almost all the money I`ve earned these two years I`ve been working on the car. Of course my father helps me a lot, but he doesn`t pay anything. Lifting the body and sandblasting\painting the frame didn`t cost much at all. But it was time consuming. I`m currently saving all the money I can because I have to go back to school for two more years. And I have much more planned for those two winters.

 

[jet1991]

Very impressive job on the Vette.

What really caught my eye was the glass block wall,

window design and the garage door frame.

Never seen another one like it..

My father made those window frames himself, but I don`t know how. The glass wall was supposed to be another entrance to the garage, but now the slope has been filled and he parks his caravan on top of it.

 

[81Redvett]

Great job on the frame-off! I love how it's turned out! I have owned a 74, 79, 80 and a 81 that I have now which I am in the process of restoring so looking and reading your post is very interesting. Keep up the great work!

 

[MIKE80]

Nice job! artyon: