well, that turned out to be a handy picture

 

Donation sent - God bless you guys!!!

 

Thank you!!!

 

You are welcome.

Hopefully enough folks can kick something in to help the cause. Please keep us updated on the progress, maybe some pics and such. Oh, and I want to see a picture of the boy smiling next to his all fixed up Vette when it's done

 

don't worry, pictures will be forthcoming!

 

wow, more good news tonight!

a good friend of mine emailed me and said he got the "OK" from his boss at work so that we can bring the replacement frame down to the factory and use their sandblasting room at no charge.
Now we can get the replacement frame cleaned up properly once we get it here (probably next week) and than after we sandblast it, prime it, and paint it it will look great!

things are definitely starting to come together now.

 

Good Job Barry!!!!!!!! ... and once again ..****MANY THANKS ***** to everyone who has contributed either with a monetary donation or an email of assistance. We sure do appreciate this. Just goes to show us, that once again, the Corvette Community pulls together when in need. Barry is spearheading this project and it looks like in about 2-4 weeks we will have the frame and have it sandblasted and primed. We will keep this entire project documented from start to finish and are quite hopeful that either Corvette Fever, Corvette Enthusiast or another publication pickup this wonderful human interest story.

Regards...

Andy Rumford
President....Corvette Club of Northern Delaware

 

update 6/30/07:

today was the day we finally were able to get started on this project! With our schedules it took a while for us to be able to start but we made decent progress today for only working a few hours. Worked from about 10am to about 1pm or so.
We had myself, Brian from our club (our "tech leader" on this project), the young man who owns the car (Mike), his dad and his 2 younger brothers.

Today goal was to start getting the body prepared to get it lifed off the frame so we got the car up on jack stands, got the wheels off, removed the seats and battery. Than the hood was removed than the radiator was disconnected and removed along with the fanblade and fanclutch.
Next, all the body mount bolts were removed. Last, the steering column was unbolted from the coupler and pulled back to disconnect it. Lastly, we disconnectd a number of ground straps and the battery ground cable from the frame and the entire front end was unbolted from the main frame and jacked up to support it from dropping until we are ready to lift.
That's where we called it a day for today. We all felt it was a good first day's progress.

Brian and I are going first thing Tuesday morning to pick up a body dolly that someone local has and is loaning to us and than will work on the car some more and Mike and family may join us also if possible.

I think one more day working on it dosconnected wires and vacuum hoses and the body will be ready to lift.

sorry, no pics today beciase the batteries in the camera were dead but i'll take some on Tuesdsy

 

sounds great so far.

 

 

oh, I forget to mention..... I figured that when we went to remove the body mount bolts that we would end up breaking off at least one of them since you all know that when working on a project something is going to break on you..... well, we ended up breaking off two of the body mount bolts. Both of the bolts that are accessed through the grills right behind front wheels (#1 body mount bolts??). Both sides broke off as we tried to break them free. Luckily after they broke we were able to get the rest of the broken bolt out by pushing it up from the bottom. all the rest of the bodymount bolts came out actually fairly easily and with no problems although the bolts that are accessed thru the little panels you remove in the rear wheel wells took a while since there isn't much room to move the socket wrench on each turn. It gives you enough play to JUST be able to get one notch turned at a time - must have taken a good 10 minutes for each of those bolts to get them out because of that but no big deal.

oh yeah, the radiator was just as fun to remove as it always is on a C3.....

 

update 7/5/07

Tuesday morning a fellow club member and I went to pick up a body dolly that someone has locally and is lending us for the project and after getting the body dolly there I stayed and Mike and his brothers showed up and we spent another 2 hours or so working on the car and got the rear bumper unbolted, most of the engine bay vacuum hoses and wires marked and disconnected, drained the master cylinder and disconnected the brake lines from it.
I figure about another 2 hours work and she is ready to lift up and place the body on the dolly so we have the chassis available to strip down.

Today (Thursday) we have another fellow club member driving to North Central PA picking up the replacement frame and bringing it back. Depending on the condition of the frame when it gets here we will determine whether to simply wirebrush it clean and oil it as you suggested or if it's pretty cruddy than we will get it sandblasted and paint it since we now have the ability to get it sandblasted for free.

On addition to this progress so far, I ran into Lance Miller at a local show a couple weeks ago and mentioned the project to him. He had already heard about it but we discussed it in more detail. I asked if he would be able to perhaps help us gain the support of a good parts vendor or vendors since we will need a significant discount or maybe even a donation of parts. We were hoping to at least one or two contact names from him we could speak to.
He asked me to email him the project details which I did and man he went BEYOND the call for us. Lance emailed both Mike Yager at Mid-America and Andy Bolig, the editor at Corvette Enthusiast magazine and explained who we were and what we were doing. Andy immediately emailed me back saying the magazine thought it was a great project and they wanted to help out and asked for my number to call me for more details. I spoke to Andy on the phone on Monday and we told me the magazine is behind us 100% and definitely wants to run the story about it. in addition he knows that we are still waiting to hear back from Mike Yager and if Mid-America chooses not to participate than the magazine will also use their contacts to help us get participation from other parts vendorsfor parts donations, etc.
As soon as we get the body off the frame and can get a complete list of required parts we wants us to send it to him so he can forward it to some parts vendors to help us out.

So, as of Tuesday that's where we are on this project. We should have the body on the dolly within a week or so. I spoke yesterday to a few of the others that are helping on this and we will be back at the car on Sunday morning and our goal for the day is definitely to finish up unhooking everything and set up the Block & Tackle rig and actually get the body off the frame onto the dolly by late Sunday afternoon (fingers crossed!!).
After that I figure we should have the motor out of the frame and rest of the frame stripped off of suspension and all other parts within a week or two.
At that point we will start to need the new parts.
The car has almost 100,000 miles so certain items we haven't even looked at figuring we will just simply replace, no questions asked, and these are all safety related items such as bushings and ball joints on the suspension, new brake and fuel lines, new master cylinder (the old one had the worst looking OLD, NASTIEST fluid in it and the inside looked as dirty and rusty as the outside), power steering pump (bad leak), along with known parts we already identified need to replace such as new body mount bolts (broke 2 as we removed them) and body mount cushions, and of course anything else we than see that requires replacing when we get the body off the frame. The car sits a lot lower than the '81 another club member who is working on this project has so we figure we may need to replace the front coil spings also and the rear leaf spring has the insulators coming out from between the leaves so I guess we will need to get new insulators and re-do that or get a replacement rear spring.

I just got the first pictures posted up on our club website so here you go:
http://www.vetteclub.org/1980%20Proj...jectpics1.html

Please keep in mind that when you look at the progress pictures that the project Corvette is not overly "pretty" in it's current condition and from most visual looks will not be "pretty' when we are finished with it. We are not getting involved with body and paint work nor interior work on the car. We are simply doing a frame replacement and our goal is to make the car roadworthy and safe for Mike to be able to drive it and enjoy it until he can take on the cosmetic restoration work himself.

 

Barry - I don't know if the 78 rear spring is different but I have a brand new 7 or 9 leaf rear spring in my 78 project car. I opted for a fiberglass spring instead. You can have the steel spring if it works for you. It has been in the car for over a year but never been on the road!

Let me know.

John

 

Barry,

Thanks for the great updates. It's just awesome to see how much folks are pulling together to help this cause.

Keep the great pics coming Tom

 

John
that would be GREAT!
I'll check to be sure but i'd imagine they are most likely the same rear spring.

Tom, I agree, the amount that everyone has pulled together on this from people on here, other forums, CE magazine, etc is amazing. It really shows what the Corvette community is able to do when it wants to and what is should be doing to help others.

 

I just got a call and the replacement frame was just dropped off. I'm told that it looks good, nice and solid, no rust issues, no cracks, etc, it's a good solid frame. Will look at it on Sunday and determine if a good wirebrushing and hose down will clean it up or if it needs sandblasting. The club member who went and got it left it on the trailer where the car is so IF we need to get it sandblasted transporting it shouldn't be a problem.

 

Barry, this is what the corvette brotherhood should be all about. As I said earlier you and your club should be commended for helping this young man......and it sounds like your now getting the much needed support you deserve.

 

 

yep, now we just need the support of one of the major parts vendors and we will be good to go.......