25thToi

I knew I liked you for a reason!! We share the same Birthday!!! though I've "orbited the sun"a few more years than you!
Hope you had a great day and yes, you're making great progress tackling parts of this project that are not for the weak-hearted!

Bryan

chazde3

Started to work on the passenger's side flares today. Lots and lots of old bondo dust and new VPA dust. In more fun than making clouds of dust news...I put iinsurance on the car yesterday. I plan on plating it early next week and will continue to try and bust tail on the body work. Hoping to have it out at my city's fourth of July car show. In bare fiberglass of course.

chazde3

2 hours at the Secretary of State and it's official!


Now to wait for the plate to actually come in. Paper temp plate for now. So much VPA dust in the garage at the moment.

doorgunner

The PAPERWORK is the scar(e)y part! I did the paperwork first just to get it out of the way.

chazde3

Haha the paperwork was probably the easiest thing I have done on the car. The last plate on expired in '83, 36 years later and they didn't even bat an eye at plating it. Michigan has no vehicle inspections, no nothing.

doorgunner

Wassskeley Wabbit...….every time I brought my paperwork in to have it approved on my motorcycle a different clerk "helped" me.....and gave me another form to fill out.

chazde3

Well last night I made a decision I can't back out of...
Attachment 48347398

Getting the bonded in portion has been a giant paint in my butt and I'm not quite done. I will work on that more tonight. And hopefully I can start to build back up the fender with some fiberglass tonight as well..

doorgunner

I'm just guessing here...…..clean up the inside fiberglass and build up a thick layer to match the inside curve of the door jamb

/then bond your door jamb....and fill in the gap on the outside area with fiberglass......but you already knew that.

You can do it. Take your time

chazde3

You've pretty much got it! Debating on bonding method at the moment. VPA sets up pretty quick and test fitting has taken a good amount of time to line it up nicely. I may use some sem body panel adhesive that I used for the headlight header bar that I have left over. Fitment took longer than expected tonight, i will hopefully stray fixing glass issues tomorrow.

Door jamb mostly in place in the picture below. The panel is much thicker than the stock one, I need to grind down a lot of the gel coat to fix the thickness issues. One step at a time.

chazde3

Test fit the front grills tonight. I need to drill holes to mount the outer grill supports in the morning. I also bolted the seats in and got the lap belts installed. Hoping to drive it a bit tomorrow, but have some things I need to do on it before that.

chazde3

A little shakedown run this evening while practicing driving a manual car.


The first of countless fill ups. No more hauling 5 gallon cans to test the engine on.

AllC34Me

Whoo Hoo. Love to see you enjoying the car Chuck. Enjoy that special ride..

standardbyke22

dont drip gas on the fiberglass!!

thats cool, your making some good progress, have you got that B pillar glued in yet?

chazde3

Yup, was especially careful gassing up. I haven't gotten the b pillar finished yet, maybe this weekend.


I've been out enjoying the car, including making it to the annual car show in town. Unfortunately it may be the last one as the club that hosts it seems to be dying out and announced they were ending the show, but other clubs may pick it up. I got lots of compliments on the car. A lot of people could see the potential and said they hoped to see it painted next year. Unfortunately more people seemed to stop at the 2010 challenger that was parked next to me, just have to shake your head at them.

The wife enjoying her first ride the other day. She wasn't so sure at first lol. A little more power than she is used to and she isn't a huge fan of feeling the shifts.


Out at our friend's party on the 3rd.


Got to the show early to get a spot in the shade, apparently you don't get to pick a good spot and they just line you up in order starting at the worst spots. Wasn't super happy about that since I had to sit in the sun all day.






Drove the nephew from the show back to my house. He had fun.

doorgunner

Your Dad is da Man.....and you are making the car awesome again.

scrappy76

Honestly, she looks great just the way she is. I bet you felt on top of the world and your eyes were watering.

chazde3

Thanks guys!

Haven't been home much because of work so not much has been done, but the license plate came in and got installed tonight. Not too bad looking.

68l-36ragtop

Looks like its coming along... totally dig the look. It's interesting our cars have a similar look and story.

chazde3

Thank you!


Took a 3 hour round trip drive tonight to pick up a new toy for the vette.


Happy to have the ability to take video of some future drives. Planning on taking some video while driving out to the Gilmore Car Museum's 2nd annual corvette show on Sunday, should be a great 55 mile drive out there and back. Hope the rain holds off.

chazde3

Took the vette in on Friday to have the alignment done. Got a call in the early afternoon that the chassis had so many loose bolts that they would have to spend around 4 hours and $300 of my money to tighten everything up properly. I'm not shelling out $300 for a guy to tighten some bolts, so I had a very nervous and sketchy drive back home. I guess I should have ran through all of this stuff when I got the rolling chassis back from rebuilding. Also the right front wheel bearing had backed out and the only thing that kept me from having a nasty accident was the brake caliper, which turned out to not be torqued to spec, holding the rotor onto the car. I figured the culprit for that would be missing cotter pins on the steering knuckles. Turns out I was correct on that.



Learn from my mistakes, always double check everything when you have someone do work on your cars. I got very lucky that I wasn't in a bad accident because of some missing cotter pins and torqued bolts.