Hey guys,
Hope everyone had a great Christmas.
It's has been a while since I posted an update so there's quite a lot to cover.
I finished painting the engine bay. Decided to paint it body color instead of black. The body shop provided me with the paint and some primer and clear coat. Unfortunately I ran into an issue with both the primer and clear coat which caused me to have to repaint one section 4 times. Only on the fourth try did I buy a new can of clear coat which fixed my problems with crazing.
I also redid most of my engine bay wiring and wired in a fuse box. I installed a post on the rear of the fuse box in the wiper compartment for power and ran a 4 gauge wire from the alternator to the post for all of my power connections.
I reinstalled the side skirt, lower valance panel, and center spoiler. I made some custom side grill inserts out of the same aluminum mesh that I made the grills and hood grills out of. To mount the grills I cut some pieces of abs plastic, bent them to shape, and glued them to certain locations inside the side vents to hold the grill in place. Then I glued an elevator bolt to the bottom of the vent and made another plastic mount that bolts into place to hold the grill up. This way the grill simply slides into place and can be removed if needed.
I made some rear strut plates to replace my camber bolts and zinc plated them. With the camber bolts it didn't matter how tight they were I would also get a little movement after running it for awhile. With these plates the strut rods will stay at the same angle so my camber would change.
I had to remove my exhaust because it was touching my leaf spring. Unfortunately my buddy didn't realize that until the car was on the trailer and I showed him. So I marked the exhaust and pulled it off for him to fix over the winter. With the exhaust off I installed some lava shield in the exhaust exists of the car to protect the bumper from the heat. The lava shield has actual crushed lava rock in it and it's the same stuff I used on my firewall. Ironically the name Agate in my paint color (Porsche Agate Grey) is a rock found in ancient lavas. Combine that it the interior color Flame Red and it's quite the volcano theme!
I got my dash back from my upholsterer. Just to recap I left the LH dash in place while the car was being painted and one tech was a little rough with the dash and punctured it down the side. So I booked my dash in with the upholstery shop a month in advance then waited another month and a bit after I brought it in. They weren't able to rewrap it because they already did it once and the glue was causing the plastic dash to crack when they tried to remove it so they preformed a repair on it instead. He didn't charge me for the work due to the long wait time but I also noticed black gunk all over the dash (like glue residue) and I pointed that out to him but he said he just cleaned it.... I brought it home and tried all the cleaner I had but nothing worked. I then tried some isopropyl alcohol and that did the trick. However it also started to remove the paint from the repair. I also noticed red paint all over my gauge lenses, gauge surrounds, knobs, and brand new vent ball. When the upholsterer was painting the repair he didn't bother to mask the dash and over sprayed the whole thing... So I had to repaint the surrounds, vent ball, and clean the gauge lenses and dash knobs. In the end though I was left with a dash that looked better than it did before. I also took some time and cleaned and zinc plated some brackets on the dash. I also painted the inside of the gauges with duplicolor chrome paint to get rid of the blue hue in the dash gauges and get a brighter white reflection with my with LED's.
Now I'm working on my steering column. This was one of the first parts I painted when I got my car and being that I was 15, I didn't do a great job. The color was wrong and the surface finish was really bad. I started with the bottom of the column and cleaned the steering shaft and zinc brush plated it and painted part of it black. I installed a new lower ball bearing and zinc plated the new ball bearing retainer. Now I'm just in the process of disassembling the upper part of the steering column so I can strip and paint the interior pieces.
I also bought a new steering wheel! It's real carbon fiber/leather and is a flat bottom shape. I had some spare vinyl kicking around so I made my first attempt at upholstery and made some red accents for it and glued and stitched them into place.
I'm also going to be making some carbon fiber parts this year which include door sills and an air filter lid. Which should go well with the carbon fiber steering wheel. One day I'd also like to get some carbon fiber sparco seats to complete the carbon theme.
Lastly I finally had the chance to try my new car cover and it just barely fit over all the modifications. Sure makes the car look exotic too.
Lots of exciting things happening this winter!
you can come out of this experience with a higher level of acceptability than what it might feel for you at this moment. Those who you know well in your Corvette Circle will never be critical of this restoration endeavour that you have managed.
