I thought I would make a thread for this instead of hi-jacking others threads with my project (problems).

I bought this car in 2009, it was totally un-planned. Just scrolling a Michigan auction site one night and saw the car, it was going fairly cheap. The paint at the time was in good condition, it ran and I could tell from the pictures the intake/carb/distributor was replaced so I sort of assumed it was not going to be matching numbers, which I didn't really care about. So I put in a bid...next thing you know oops I won it. When I went to pick it up I was pretty happy with it. Brought it home, looked it over and got it registered and insured. I was happy it seemed basically road ready even if it was a bit more of a dog than I expected. It also had and exhaust and a trans leak and needed some misc clean-up and interior repairs. Either way I took to driving it on and off as I started to think about what to do with it. Then one day driving on the highway I punched it and next think I knew there was smoke rolling in... Luckily it was just some oil smoke, I assume oil must have leaked out under the pressure of running it hard. Either way I figured it might be best to park before I did more damage and really broke something. I started to try and figure out a plan of attack since I still wasn't sure. I even posted here to gather thoughts and ideas.

I really wanted ~500HP which I learned was going to be a bit of a stretch with the motor that was in it. So big $$ on a crate engine, then would have to do something with the trans, then the rear-end... You know where this is going. I never really settled on a plan nor ended up having the extra cash or time to do much with it. But before I could figure it out life happened and the vette sat. Ran it from time to time to move it around, but that was about it. I tried to sell it once or twice but it had gotten rougher and wasn't worth hardly anything, especially not being about to verify what was original and not.

It wasn't until 2016 before I got back around to do something with it. by now it really wasn't road worthy anymore and I still didn't really know what I was going to do with it but I had to do something. So I decided I'd pull the motor out and start to inventory what was there. To my surprise it was the original motor and trans... Once I knew this was the case I figured the best thing to do was to stay loyal to the original build. Then life re-entered the plan and I spent most of my free time the next 2 and 1/2 years building a two bath / two bed addition because we were going to need the space with another baby just arriving.

Anyway at I least I have a plan now. Since its been sitting around for so many years there really wasn't much question about it needing to be fully torn down now. I'm going to rebuilt the original engine and trans adding a few upgrades like heads, maybe cam, intake, carb, maybe slightly bore over depending on the machine shop recommendation when it gets there. The interior and paint are going to go back to original. I plan to make some upgrades to the chassis like springs and brakes as well. Pretty much tear the whole thing down and evaluate each piece for repair/replace/upgrade as it goes back together.

So far I have the body almost completely stripped down (just doors and few pieces of trim still on it) and last weekend I dropped the chassis out of it. next will be getting the frame stripped down and ready to send it and several other chassis parts off for clean-up then powder coat or paint. After that I'll see where I'm at with extra money and time to either start getting the underside of the body pre-pared or getting the chassis back together.

 

Here's a picture before the engine came out in 2016


And here it is prepped to separate the body

 

And here's where I am now. The Chassis and the body on their own carts.

Was hoping the threaded rods with ratchet straps cross would be enough to hold the body steady, but it was still pretty shaky. So I had to built the frame in the last picture to replace with and bolted it to the 4x4's Its very firm now, was able to open/close doors and push the cart around, no problems

 

Haven't done a lot, needing some warmer weather to get things outside to power wash. I've looked into the options with cleaning up the chassis, right now I'm thinking of going with acid dipping to strip it then paint, likely will introduce some colors to the chassis and underbody as well...

Started looking over the body a little closer as well, trying to figure out what to do there. I'm starting to wonder if I need to remove the fiberglass from the bird cage and get that dipped too.... The rust isn't to bad, but I'm concerned there's going to be some I can't get to like along the top of the rocker channels. as well at first I thought it would be way less time to clean up what I can rather than take the fiberglass off, now I'm not so sure, by the time I pick around some of these tricky areas that are hard to get to and only get 90% of it maybe the time would be better spent removing and re-installing the fiberglass.


I might look at maybe just removing the firewall, that might give me the access to sand blast these areas.

I also have several areas where it looks like the panels have been worked on or are coming apart some. the panel to the left fender is loose all of the way down.

the rear clip has some as well, along the right side quarter panel to door jam



And in the left quarter this support is completely free or the rear hatch panel and has about a 1/4" gap.

 

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Good luck with the build. Looks like you're on a great start.

 

I'm surprised that doesn't tip over on you! Those wheels should be out further under the weight where the rods are.

 

LOL... It looks pretty sketch I know. but its actually really really sturdy. I don't, but I can actually push it around at the doors and it still doesn't come near tipping. I pushed it once and one wheel went over the the floor drain and it still wasn't tipsy. I did it that way so where it hangs out for the nose they wouldn't be too far apart, but in hind sight yeah they could have been out closer to the rods for sure.

Did you see the ratchet strap design? That one never made it off the hanging straps

 

LOL... It looks pretty sketch I know. but its actually really really sturdy. I don't, but I can actually push it around at the doors and it still doesn't come near tipping. I pushed it once and one wheel went over the the floor drain and it still wasn't tipsy. I did it that way so where it hangs out for the nose they wouldn't be too far apart, but in hind sight yeah they could have been out closer to the rods for sure.

Did you see the ratchet strap design? That one never made it off the hanging straps

 

Yes and I closed my eyes on seeing the car on the Jack stands. WTF! Are you a cat? lmao! You have 9 lives? Lmao!

 

Well took the doors off and got it out of the garage today to power wash the body and frame, first time its been out of there in three years. Was happy with how much I was able to get knocked off even with just water. started picking at different seams around and pretty well convinced at this point it will be worth pulling the fiberglass off the bird cage... wish me luck.

 

Well it took a couple nights to get it, but the rear clip is off. There's a little more damage to the fiberglass than I had hoped, but not as bad as it could have been for sure. putting it back together will be interesting....

I first worked the rib out in front of the halo off, then worked the latch panels out then the panels around the body bolts. Finally cut through the glue over the halo and as much of the floor pan as I could get. Put a strap around it and started working it apart.

 

Well got the front clip off now too, here's link to the thread showing more details of the work - https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...tear-down.html

Now to remove the windshield and firewall and the bird cage will be ready for prep. Next will probably be to strip down the frame so its ready to go as well, but I plan to wait until things get opened back up and caught up a bit before I send them off.

 

Also not sure on prep type. I like the idea of acid dipping. The place I talked to applies (I assume dips) into a water soluble anti-corrosive and it goes to paint or powder coat from there but I wish they had an electro priming dip option as well which is how the factory would have primed it as well.

I'm still thinking some color underneath, my latest thought is the underbody will be the same color as the original lower (Dark Claret). maybe the frame will be either black or maybe similar to the upper color (Autumn Red) and maybe the suspension will be red or silver or white, something contrasting...

 

Well tonight marks a major milestone on the project. I removed the last pieces of the major tear down and prepping the bird cage and frame for cleaning and painting. Now to get the rest of the pieces broken down to send as well and start repairing, prepping and priming the under side of the fiberglass lips and firewall.

 

ya tough choice on dipping..if powder coating or liquid coating im probably not acid or dip stripping. Maybe sand, blast areas you see as that is all you can cover with paint..
i can tell you on my 79 the frames are not electro coated...they maybe dipped bit it was some cheap *** paint..
e-coat would be ideal but noone will be putting used metal through that tank...

 

My question is , what do you do with all those shoves?

 

Silly..! That's his antique shovel collection...

You went a lot farther than I would be capable of doing. But, the frame & birdcage look to be in decent shape (unusual for a Michigan car!), so now you have great confidence that your finished car will be in great condition for many decades. Don't know what method of metal protection you will choose, but verify that the process won't leave corrosive chemical residue inside the frame/cage....or be certain to neutralize it before rebuild. There are long paint 'wands' that can get paint to nearly all of the insides of frame/cage once the metal is cleaned/prepped. Keep up the great work!!

P.S. For future consideration: When you get the body/frame work done, take a bit of time and REBUILD all of the accessory components that are on the car: starter, alternator, P/S pump & control valve, water pump, oil pump, etc. Rebuilding original components can be done inexpensively (less than cost of replacement with poor quality aftermarket parts), and the result will be original components in like-new condition. Much better choice to make.

 

Looking at the bird cage pictures , it looks to be in pretty good shape. Blasting surface rust off with some sort of material probably would be best. Removal of all the media that gets inside hidden areas is the problem. Liquid rust removal has the same problems, flushing all the remaining liquid and neutralizing the chemicals is most important . if not done completely you'll end up with a pile of tin. The next thing I thought about is powder coating. It is a very durable surface coating that a lot of guys are using on frames, suspension parts and many other items. In your thoughts of powder coating the bird cage, will fiberglass or any bonding material stick to it?

 

My hat's off to you. You are really taking that thing apart! Good luck, I'm sure it will be worth it.

 

There's no such thing as to many shovels, you'd hate to find yourself without a couple of them when some one comes around asking too many questions....

I'm pretty thankful that yes realistically neither the frame nor bird cage is very bad, at least leaves me with some options with how to address them.

I am really re-thinking the dipping (I guess its an "alkaline" solution not "acid") but the whole reason I would do it is to not worry about whats growing inside the area that sand can't go. but there's going to be hidden places that at least have some primer now that won't when its done plus then there's plenty of nightmare stories out there of the chemicals seeping out for weeks and months later. I've pretty much decided IF I dip it then it has to be e-coat dip primed as well. There's supposed to be a place in Ohio (an hour or so from me) that does the E-coat process for restores as well but need to wait until the apocalypse is over to see what the process is and what it costs. From what I read about them is they dip into a couple pre-cleaners, then e-coat dip and bake it. It would still need Alkaline cleaning because their pre-clean removes just light surface dirt and rust.

So depending on the cost and timing it will be Alkaline dip, bring home make any repairs needed that process exposes, then take it for the E-coating. OR get a decent media blaster and blast as much as I can get to, cut out the end cap of the frame rails and run a wire brush in there like a dryer vent cleaner to get as much of the loose out as I can then use the rust conversion and internal frame paint products from Eastwood and move on with it.