Hi all, I just joined to get your advice and depending on the responses you might hear a lot more from me.

I was just offered a 1975 vette for $4k. It's in ehhhh shape. Belongs to my mechanic's brother.

- seems to be in great mechanical shape
- interior is cracked up in various places but has all parts
- paint job has been redone multiple times and parts of the body look like dried dirt with the top layer of the paint and maybe bondo? cracking up
- It's an automatic

So I know very little about these cars but I'm very tempted to give it a go and see what i can do. So i have a few questions.

1. how difficult is it to convert it to a manual and how cheap could i make that conversion?

2. What the heck is up with the HP numbers on these 350ci engines? 165hp? I don't know much about V8 gas engines but something doesn't sound right there. SMOG is no issue on a '75 here in CA but i'm mostly interested in making it efficient. Good MPG and Good HP, i'd like to find the balance between the two without breaking the bank.

3. I'm assuming fixing whatever is choking the engine and changing to a 5 speed manual would drastically improve the stock MPG? any ideas by how much...roughly?

4. what's up with the fiberglass? are spiderweb cracks pretty common and are they simple to fix? based on how bad these are (even on the doors) i'm guessing they keep coming back or getting worst?

I'm pretty mechanically inclined and have been rebuilding my H1 Hummer for years so i'm no stranger to mechanical work but a 6.5TD H1 is a completely different beast than a 350 Corvette and i wanted to get your expert opinions before jumping in over my head.

Thanks for any advice!

 

Probably should read through this thread before you jump into any purchase:

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c3-g...-corvette.html

Good luck-Pete

 

Wow those were pretty bad examples. i think that thread actually backfires, the vette looks a lot better now compared to those rust buckets

I think i passed most of those except the I want a manual and this is an auto. but then again if i had a manual i don't know how long it'd be before i wanted to upgrade to a 5speed to get better mpg. Also i'd love a chrome bumper 69 but there's a pretty HUGE $$$ difference between that an a '75. At least i still get the flat rear window which i prefer.

I did take a look under the car and the frame is pretty much rust free (course it's a southern CA car so that's not too surprising). didn't check the birdcage though. I'll drive by next week and see if i can see anything bad. Car started right up with a pump on the accelorator and engine idled smooth, didn't get to drive it around cause (being in a mechanic shop, it was behind a customer's car that was having it's airbags worked on and they couldn't move it but he said i could drop by anytime later to take it for a spin.

 

Your comments on the body would scare me away. If you can pay a little more you can get a nicer ride that doesn't have the bad fiberglass. Fiberglass can be very difficult to work on - sounds like a big problem.

 

I just bought a 76 for 3000.00. I would consider it a good car for the money. Good motor, tires, suspension, body, etc...
I will still have to make some small repairs using my own hands and it will need a paint job.

If I am lucky, very lucky I will have into it what it is worth!!

1976 and 1975 were not exactly the glamour years for the Corvette and I doubt that 350 will get much better without a cam and heads. Take your 4000.00 and put it on black!!

Lastly, I don't care if I make a penny. I love these cars and that's why I do it.

 

The '75 is a good compromise year for me
- it's the last year that doesn't need smog in CA (which is important to me)
- It still has the flat rear window
- and its a pretty inexpensive way to start having fun messing with a vette.

Things I don't like:
- wish it was a stick
- wish it had chrome bumpers front and back


Around here its almost impossible to find vettes in decent shape for under $6-7k much less a manual one older than '72. I'm hoping that with $5k into this one doing most of the work myself I can have a fun road car to drive to work and maybe even take to the local autocross solo weekends?

 

Then go for it, if you turn your own wrenches you are half way there, I will say that suspension if original is probably stuffed so be prepared to replace all bushes, shocks, ball joints and tie rod ends, look also at the trailing arms and in particular any wear to the yolks of rear axles, raise the car, lift the rear wheels as hard as you can and have a friend look to see if there is any lateral (inward outward) movement of the half shafts. Dont panic if there is, its not a horrible job to drop the diff and fix it. As for oil leaks, well, valve covers, front and rear mains, trans, especially steering pump and ram, all fixable and all normal. Dont want to scare you but lets face it, these cars are old and tired, be prepared to work on it, its all part of the hobby. I love it, my car never lets me down, it always finds new ways to break down. hee hee.

As for stick, well its Californian, no sticks from there, turbo 350 was a good trans though, and chrome bumpers, well wait until the first moron at your 7-11 backs in to you because he cant see the front of your car and you will be happy about the soft, flexible neoprene bumper.

buy it and enjoy, Dennis.

Dennis.

 

Do your homework.


This is good if you can find a copy.

 

Ok... Biggest problem is the fiberglass, and that you even mentioned bondo!!
you want to find a good body car...
Second you want to get it lifted and check the frame for rust, as well as the rear suspension and bushings...

Also the interior is cracked? what's cracked?
and chevy only put two 350's in 75 L48 and L82... If it has an L82, Buy it! but 165hp is wrong... L48 put out about 190 stock, by now it might be lower.
And a conversion will probable be more expensive then you think...
I got my 76 for 7 and some change, it's a 4 speed and no major problems at all..
I would pass by what you have said so far; unless you are looking for a lot of work?

 

A friend of mine just bought a 75 for 5k. It needs the little things fixed too. Look you are always going to hear of the one that someone stole for next to nothing. But most corvette owners know what they have. 4k for a CA corvette that runs but needs the little things, sounds like a fair deal to me. Paint will be a consideration. But, if it had perfect paint it wouldnt be for sale for 4k. A chrome bumper car is a much more desirable car. You will pay for it.

 

Have you looked in the for sale section on this forum, there are a few excellent later model C3's that unless you really want to get into a lot of work and expense would be ideal vettes to buy and in the end likely cost you a lot less and you'll be in an immediate driver (wow that was a huge run on for all the Eng majors out there). JMHO. Some of these old vettes can be huge money pits once you really get into them and find out just what you have.

 

i would make some phone calls to a corvette junk yard and see if you can find a donor car for the parts that you need for a stick conversion.then call for how much a crate motor with the hp that you will need .paint and body repair is not cheap.add it all up and tell us what you want to do.

 

4000 bucks sounds like alot of work to do. good price for a parts car.

 

I'm no expert, and only slightly further down the covette road than you. So take this for what it's worth.

I bought a 74 from a guy down the road from me. Pretty much a target of opportunity. Sounds like it's in similar condition and price as yours. It sat in my garage for a few years after purchase, and I finally have found the motivation to get working on it.

It's a 62K mile car, and he owned it most of its life. It already had a repaint to change the color from white to green when he bought it in the late 70s. And both of the bumpers covers were rotted so bad that when part of the rear fell off, I took them both off.

First, I think you will learn a LOT just by getting it, getting some books and reading, hanging out on the forum, and poking around your car. I've found that it's almost therapeutic to work on it. I don't feel pressured to get a job done, and just work on what I want. When I hit a wall, I stop and think about it and attack it later. I will say, there seems to be no end to what you find that needs attention!

I also am not keeping track of what I'm spending as I work on it. I'm not sure I even want to know! I am fairly certain that by the end, once I have it professionally painted and the interior redone (beyond my abilities), I will be badly upside down in what it's worth versus my investment. I didn't really think about this when I started, and like you I prefer the bumper cars and manual transmission and wish I would have sought out a deal on one that was driveable and closer to done (as I'm not trying to do a full restoration on mine, but make it a driver). Think it would have been cheaper in the long run, and I could be driving it instead of working on it right off. But then, I would miss learning a lot too. Catch 22.

To your specific questions:

1. Not sure - I'm not talented nor adventurous enough to try it. When this car is done, and I'm ready for vette #2, I will get what I want.

2. I'd suggest if you get the car, you drive it like it is for a while and see if it really performs as poorly as you think based on a HP rating. Again, enjoy it, learn about it, and then decide what you want to do to soup it up.

3. Again, I'm not help here. If you want MPG, I'd say you're looking at the wrong car. I'd rather have a 454 in my car, and have it pass everything but a gas station.

4. You may not have a fiberglass problem. The paint on mine seems like it may have been similar to yours in spots. I have taken a razor blade to the back deck of the car, and it was just the paint. Once I got past the green paint, there was no problem. I think you can tell how abused the car is by looking in other areas, and get a good idea if there's really a fiberglass problem.

Good luck! Have fun! And make sure to get pics posted when you get your vette!

 

Thanks for all the advice guys. And yup i pretty much agree with all of you. It's almost always cheaper in the long run to buy a car in good condition than to buy a fixer-upper and start sinking money into it. I went through the same thing with my last project. I wanted a HMMWV, but since you can't get loans for those things and i didn't have that kind of cash sitting around, I ended up getting a loan for an H1 and spent the next four years cycling between driving and working on it. Last month i made the last payment and pretty much finished it up (just waiting on getting the seats back from the upholstery guy). I can tell you, would have been WAY cheaper if i had that 30K sitting in the bank and bought what i wanted to end up with, BUT it's nice to say i did it my way as well. Catch 22 is right.

Here's a before and after pic. Took 4 years of on/off work, saving pennies, hunting for deals. All the work was done by me (cause i'm too cheap to pay anyone else to do it.


So before i'm even completely done with this one i'm itching for my next project but i'm not looking for another 5 year commitment. The car is driveable as is and I'm hoping to just clean, tinker, and start working on little parts of it as needed, fix any leaks, rebuild the suspension, etc. after working any mechanical gremlins i'd start sanding down through the multiple paint jobs this thing has had, fix and prime the body then just drive it that way for a few months to make sure no cracks start surfacing before paint.

I love non-practical vehicles, purpose built. I was thinking it'd be fun to turn it into something like this, but without the front chrome bumper. The rear bumper looks easy enough to change using a '82 fiberglass one (i know it's not the same but i haven't seen one that looks like a '72).

I was thinking if I eventually plan on trading up to a 5 speed, change the color and modify the interior anyway, then this might be a good canidate for the project. I'd hate to start cutting into a restorable classic. I've painted cars before and done racing stripes. Not professional jobs but they looked beautiful 10 feet away I'm not sure what to do with the interior but i was thinking of slowly minimizing it and turning it black w/aluminum panels. (BTW I'm a second generation aerospace machinist)

Guess i just needed to hear some feedback incase there was something i hadn't thought about before taking the plunge. My main concerns were with the tranny which i guess i'd wait on untill everything else was done and the weird HP rating that popped up when i searched for '75 specs. Sure it's not my preference but it's a lot easier for me to buy a cheap car then slowly sink money into it than saving up and buying something already done (funny, everytime i want to save for a new toy somehow bills increase and the money dissapears ) plus it's easier to sell the wife on a $4000 toy than a $10K toy....bwaaa haa haaa

 

something you may consider with "all those repaints".... maybe the cracking you are seeing is 7 different layers of paint. get it down to bare glass and it may not be that bad..? you should see the 79 i picked up for 4k...

 

And just because i love corvettes, and i didnt say this earlier,

YES!!!! you should!!! greatest! car! ever!

 

Sounds like you don't mind getting your hands dirty and doing your own work. If it wasn't rusted int he birdcage, I'd consider it. There are many threads about swaps from auto to manual and it is a good swap to go to an OD.

At 4 or 5 k you can do what ever YOU want to it and not feel guilty about modding a more complete and expensive car. There are even some threads on here where someone is building the rear bumper to mod it to a chrome bumper car since you are wanting one.

Just read, read, read and you'll find tons of info on everything that you want to know in here.

 

The only thing Ill comment on is the choice of years. As you kept mentioning chrome bumper cars, normally Id say spend 10ish for a rough chrome bumper coupe and have fun, but from the sounds of things you want to play with it, mod it, put a 5 speed in it, etc. In that case a $4000 (or maybe $3500 cash? ) '75 might be the way to go. Nothing to lose, no worries about originality or resale. You will understand that its a low value car going in and you can just play with it and have fun. Why not? Don't save the receipts.

 

Based on the posts.. I'm going to say some things that you need to hear - rather than jump on the rah - rah bandwagon and tell you how wonderful a decision you're making.
First off -- I believe you're underestimating what it will cost to fix that $5k vette up.

How about if I told you that you should have at least $3 to $5k to spend on it to bring it up to minimum reasonable standards. That's before the whole foray into changing transmissions -- which is a ill-advised notion. This is a Corvette, not a Pick-up truck. To spend what will be $12 by the time you get done -- to have that value scrapped by conversions is anti-productive. So let's say that meant buying the fixer upper for $5 still meant you should have like $8,500 to $10k in your budget (now.. not later.. now). Now that you KNOW you will need spend some $$ to get it into shape question is, do you think you're better off spending $8,500 to $10 on a better condition vette OR are you really truly into fixing this up (paint, mechanicals etc.) ?

So..

1. If your answer is anything along the lines that you don't think you'll need to put $3 to $5 into the $5k Vette, then you are completely unrealistic and probably not ready to buy this car.

2. If you do realize it but don't have that additional money, then you are not ready to buy the vette.

3. If you never thought about it, but have the money then you have a decision to make. With respect to Chrome bumper Vettes, I just saw one on CL the other day in the $9's, $10's, $11's and $12,'s -- all nice.

Save your money and buy the best one you can.
You are NOT repeat NOT (emphasis on the meaning of word NOT) going to get something for nothing. Your friends uncle's mechanic's sisters friend whatever would buy the Vette IF it were that much of a steal.

NOTHING in life is free. If it's too good to be true, it is.

Good Luck