nice

 

Today I went and attacked the nose support and bonding strip. Over all pretty easy to do with some simple tools, a heat gun, a couple of putty knives and a Dremel.



I used the Drememl to gring down the rivets and pull out the steel support.



The rivets holding the support on were steel, I was always under the impression that they were aluminum. Anyone else see this as well?

Here is the bonding strip after the support was removed.



I started removing the bonding strip by heading in the middle on the hood opening side of the strip. Maybe I should have started at one side and worked my way across. It worked out well this way however, almost no tears in the bonding strip. Not sure if I am going to reuse the bonding strip or replace it with another Fiberglas part of have a stainless stell one made. I am leaning towards having a SS support and bonding strip made, and then joining them with some stainles steel pop rivets. No more rust or corrosion ever here.

Starting to remove the bonding strip.



Working my way across.



All out now, this is the mess I have to clean up now.



I wish more of the adhesive would have come off with the strip but oh well. With the nose support out the nose of the car is very flexible. I am rather worried about developing more cracks.

Here is the side of the bonding strip that was glued to the body. Should be pretty easy to clean up.



I had hopes of getting the car on the road this year some time but I am having my doubts.

I had spent months going around to various body shops and custom shops in the San Francisco bay area and either they didn't even want to talk to me about the work I wanted to get done, or they wanted to charge me for 500+ hours of work, while this might be realistic, I can't afford to drop $50K just on the body work alone. So looks like I am going to be doing just about everything myself except priming, blocking and final paint.

More to come...

 

Good to see that you're back!

 

You gonna run that summit special $80 h/b on your Merrlin? It arrives via the Orient express, you know...

 

Just an idea to give...instead of rivets, i used 3m panel bond to put that nose strip back on. The panel bond worked great, and i don't have to worry about the rivets showing back up. Worked for me and a few other vettes.

 

I agree. ....My brand new front clip (from J and D Corvette) has the header bar bonded in with no rivets. Very clean abd seems very strong.

Temvette72

 

Thanks for the great idea! 3M Panelbond. Sounds like a plan!

 

Well its been a while since I posted. I have done quite a bit on the body. I have also started learning how to work with Fiberglas. Its pretty tricky but I think I am getting the hang of it.

I removed the front and rear splash shields on the rear wheel wells in preparation to tub the rear.



Its pretty amazing how easily everything comes apart with a heat gun.

Here are the panels, I have to clean them up and patch one where I had to cut off a part to get the body off the old chassis last summer.



I was very fortunate that a friend of mine had a Vette that had been in an accident and was basically totalled. We spent a Saturday afternoon chopping the remains of the body to get to the bird cage. The bird cage was absolutely perfect no rust anywhere. I got the rear trunk area to play with. I used this to plan out my cuts for tubbing my rear wheel wells.



As you can see its in pretty bad shape.

Here it is after I cut the rear battery and jack compartments



And after I actually cut the wheel wells and laid it all out. This was very helpful so that I could get a handle on using my new Sawzall. Its amazing how easy Fiberglas is to cut, almost too easy at times.



Here is my body with the lay out lines on the rear compartments.



And after I cut the rear compartments off.





I ran out of time last weekend to finish the wheel wells, but I will be doing that this weekend.

My huge thanks to 78Vette-SA for the great pics he had of the cuts he did when tubbing the wheel wells on his Shark.

 

It looks great. Glad to see you making more progress.

It looks like you are doing a lot more than I did and I'll bet it comes out better. If this is your first time around it sure doesn't look like it.

Can't wait to see more!

 

Joe,

Thanks for the kind words I need all the encouragement I can get at this point.

The real secret I think it taking your time and being patient each step of the way and yes that can be very tough at times. I want to drive the damned thing already!

It can be tough motivating myself some times considering all the work I have ahead of me, anyone else get that feeling too?

Today was a little cooler, so I went to work on the Vette early this morning to "beat the heat". More chopping Fiberglas, and even though I was all covered up I have the Fiberglas itchies. GAAAAAAAAAH!!

I spent about 2 hours over all just laying out my cut lines and then going and taping the lines. Over all I think things turned out pretty well. Note also the little arrows I put in to show which side of the line I needed to cut along. This is helpful on complex cuts like this.





Even though I had cut one vette, doing my Vette was a little different, I only really had access from underneath due to the size of the Sawzall. I also used my Dremel for some of the trickier cuts or to start cuts for the Sawzall.

By the way this is the first time I have done anything like this on any type of car. I always avoided body work if I could in the past.

This was after the first wheel well was cut out.



This area around the #4 body mounts gave me a lot of trouble planning out how I was going to cut around the mount and still keep as much strength as possible. This was after the 2nd cut.






And here is a side view. Note the bungee cord keeping the trunk floor from sagging too much







And here is a pic of the famous "Astro Vent" I have never seen pics of this anywhere so for anyone wondering what its all about there it is.



There are little flaps of rubber that allow air to flow out and not allow water to come back in. Kinda interesting.

Tomorrow if its not too hot again, I am going to make the molds for the new wheel wells and start Fiberglassing, We will see how well that goes.

 

This is an amazing project. I'm going to follow it so please keep posting and Good Luck

 

Great project....wish I had the cash for one of those rollers. What did you do to get the steel rivets out of the front clip?

 

You are doing a much more detailed and better job then I did. I just sort of went at it with little planning. When I get something in my head I just go. I don't have a lot of patience for some things. This part of the job was one of them. I'm happy with the outcome, but in hindsight there are things that oculd have been improved.

One thing I would have done over was how I finished off the back panel behind the birdcage.

This:



In my case I ground it as flat as possible and then filled the whole panel with fiberglass mat. Curious what your approach will be here.

Mine, not elequent but certainly did the job. I did a lot of sanding and smoothing after these pictures were taken but I did not "finish" the look. The chassis is right up against it so it is covered anyway, but I know it's there.





Keep em coming. A little here and alittle there and you'll be driving it in no time.

 

BB72 here is how I got the nose rivets out...

My vette had the typical nose pimple problem. So, taking a dremel to grind down the rivets and remove the steel reinforcing bar and a heat gun to unglue the bonding strip after the steel reinforcing bar was removed.



This is what it looked like underneath.







This is what they looked like once I got them out.







I have to go back and remove the bonding glue before I put in the new parts I ordered from Paragon Reproductions.

 

I thought the header bar was riveted right to top fibreglass, it looks like it's riveted to the that extra strip thats glued to the underside, is that right? If so that answers my question. I don't think I have that strip, I better take a closer look. Thanks again.

 

Any updates?

 

It's been another year - any updates? I sure wish the photos were still available!

Anyway, in reading this old thread there was talk about "bumps" on the nose of the corvette. Mine is so afflicted and I was wondering how to rectify the situation. From what I saw in the thread, I assume the bumps are caused by rivets attaching the nose clip bonding strip - is that correct?

From what I gathered, the way to get rid of the bumps is to remove the rivets and use an adhesive (3M panel bond?) to re-attach the bonding strip rather than rivets. Is this the secret?