Hello, everybody. While I've talked to a few guys about different engines, and mentioned my project, I've not posted pics before, so here goes... (since this website is NOT user-friendly, I'm posting a link to the photoalbum, so you can see them all... )

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/breath...xNitCBVWCJV7ZC

The shots of it in dark green, are from when I first bought it last March. The paint was 1/8" thick, seven different colors this thing has been painted over the years... I won't include close-ups of the paint bubbling and chips... Suffice to say, it was NOT a pretty sight...

As you can see by the engine compartment pic, it was a MESS... the wiring melted badly, the remote-start relay plug busted... Under the dash is worse! A line-lock added in, plus an attempt at a remote ignition switch (to prevent theft, I would assume, since the ignition cylinder is busted, and never makes it back to the column "lock" position), etc...

After eight months of razor-blades and a lot of long nights, I finally stripped most of the nasty paint, 1/2" of bondo (from the nose) and got down to bare glass... Surprisingly, the original body is in relatively good shape. I got lucky. Of course, when the money was available to purchase parts for the engine, I did so... But when money was short, I went to Home Depot, bought more razor blades, and kept going...



The pic of the engine with the hood open, was taken last week... a few days before I tried to start it...

Unfortunately, when I finished pre-lubing the engine, dropping in the distributor and trying to start it, the thrashed-out wiring harness (which I had patched up extensively) failed, and I was left with a dead engine and an ozone-smelling mushroom-cloud.

In disgust, I called Summit Racing, they had a wiring harness in-hand within 36 hours.... ($350, with overnight shipping). Now in the process of ripping the old one out, so that I can do it RIGHT. :o

I'll let you know how the Painless harness works... God knows, it can't be worse than trying to patch a 30 year-old harness designed for a smogger engine...

 

Links arn't working

 

the links do noty work for me...cannot find the site

 

sorry but the links dont work

 

CRAP.

I'll check it out, and redo it...

GOD, I hate this setup... wish we had simple HTML instead of this.

 

OK, try THIS!!! Just the photo-album for all the pics online... I'll edit the first post later...

Sorry...

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/breath...xNitCBVWCJV7ZC

 

You have made some major progress. The engine looks awesome.

 

Lookin good....looks like a ton of work...........motor looks like it gonna ROCK!!!!

 

I remember when you wanted to trade wheels with me, I would be honored to see them on that vette now, but they are sold along with my car. You are making great progress keep it up

 

What are you thinking with such a crappy engine? You should be ashamed..

Wait, I was looking at the pics of my car in my wallet... Yours is kicka$$

 

Wow, really making progress! Looking good!

In defense of the board admins (being one myself) you simply CANNOT allow "simple HTML" in boards of this size. You're begging to be hacked and have your members get caught in HTML exploits if you allow it. Too many jerkwads out there to allow it.

The IMG tags really aren't that difficult to use. People get confused with how to make the http URL properly to put between the tags I guess. I always just toss pics up to my "personal web space" on my Comcast account and use image tags here. I keep meaning to write a how-to for Comcast users here.. have to be a ton of them.

 

nice blower
what color are you gonna paint it?

 

Looking very good Hope your wiring goes painlessly

 

What color do you choise for it ?

Its great work !

Challe /



http://race68.com

 

Looks like it is going to be one sweet ride!

 

I went with the painless harness, MUCH easier to install than a new OEM/repo harness.

 

Gonna be one badazz car bud!! Question. Why did you drop the motor in before you painted the car?? just a test fit or you going to mask all that off?

 

To all, thanks for the feedback... Yeah, it's still got a lot of work, but I've been working steadily on it for a year now, and I'm actually to the EASY part... The body.

Considering the BS that's required to do a blown big-block in a Vette (esp. when it's not a kit that you just shell out big $$$ for), it's a challenge to make the pulleys all line up correctly, get a tensioner that'll fit, the ignition and all the rest... Still a lot of detail work, but it should be worth it, when done.

As to the color...? Well, Chevy had a metallic orange or bronze on their pickups in 2003, that I really liked... I'm leaning to that, with black on the lower belt-line, and maybe some old cyclone rims or just Cragar SS rims...

Any suggestions (I'm not going for red, blue or yellow... TOO common) as to paint???

I must admit, jet-black urethene still rattles in my mind, though I know the body-work will have to be PERFECT... Of course, I've done black cars before with good results, but the thing is, the intensity of labor required to make a black car look perfect is ~3X more, than a medium-dark color...

 

Since the car needs extensive amounts of work, both to the body and interior, I always find it easier to have it be able to move under its' own power, when doing the work... I haven't decided if I'll pull the engine to paint it, because it was such a miserable SOB to get in, to begin with.... I discovered that dropping a big-block into a car that has an AC suitcase (for a SBC) is an adventure into anger-management...

I'll be redoing the fuel system later, along with a few other details... And since a lot of holes in the firewall need to be plugged, I'll probably just leave the engine in, paint the engine compartment black, and mask off the engine when it comes time to paint...

Whatever I ultimately decide to paint it- metallic bronze or black- will determine if I'll shoot the hood while on the car. Metallics are hard to match unless the hood is installed, but solid colors don't care... So we'll see. It's all a question of how much block-sanding I'm up for...