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Hello!
I just wanted to introduce my new project that I picked up for a few hundred bucks last week. My plan for this project is to do a restomod but my main goal is to get this car back on the road in the next few weeks. As of right now I'm looking to get a new fuel tank and sender unit with an upgraded fuel pump, any suggestions where to buy? Also is there any fiberglass wizards on here that could tell me if it is possible to repair some of the fiberglass damage on this car or if I should get new panels. I do plan on doing a build thread just wanted to introduce the car before I start digging around on the forum. If anyone would like to pass on some knowledge on tips/tricks/steps who have done a C4 restoration please do so!!!
St. Jude Donor '05-'06,'07-'08-'09-'10-'11-'12-'13-'14-'15-'16-'17-'18-'19-'20-'21-'22-'23
Welcome to the forum! You’ll need a lot of time and somewhat open checkbook to get it going. The C4 parts for sale, including WTB postings, Craigslist and finally eBay can help you save on parts. That looks like a ton of work for an 84, which due to the crossfire not too many are fond of but good to see someone taking care of her
I had to come back to this. If you get this thing in order you deserve an award. You are either crazy or very determined!
Please post lots of pics of progress, not only is it fun, but it is helpful when you want to sell it and even if you sell it here people can find the documentation of the resurrection.
The body is SMC.
Even a decent used C4 commonly needs:
Fuel pump, filter, etc
Window trim seals
Wheel bearings
U-joints
Ball joints
Window regulators for early models
Radiator cleaned
Shocks (kyb is a common cheap yet good option)
Bushings, some go poly now
Head light motor gears
Not saying it needs all this, but they are a common problem and make the difference between a great performing c4 or a beater no matter the looks.
Last edited by pologreen1; 11-05-2018 at 11:14 AM.
Ive been waiting to see a car cheaper than my $650 86 car come along the forum.
As someone who at one time had the time and the money to ressurect a car that should have been a parts car, i can say that depending on what your ultimate goal is for this car, you should first price out the parts for the restoration you are considering and then see if your appetite changes.
im not trying to rain on your parade as i did exactly the same thing.
i see a LOT of $$$ and man hours there.
again, not trying to discourage, just. e sure to price out all the obvious things that you can see that u want to do then adjust plans as necessary.
my thread: the car is still not done but i have been driving it for two years.
Complete newb questions but what does stand for SMC?
@VikingTrad3r I plan on turning this into a track car(after motor swap)/weekend car. The motor runs I just need a new fuel pump and gas tank (I'll post pictures tonight of the current condition of the two). For my purpose would it be easier to get an OEM gas tank and fuel pump then upgrade the fuel pump later once I get a new motor?
Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I will post pictures as the build continues.
The hood will have to be repaired as its specific to the 84. It appears that the car is all there albeit a bit rough. There are a few things that are 84/85 specific though so understand a few things will be hard to find.
Seeing your thread made me reminisce on mine....it was very rewarding. im in a different spot today and wouldn't take a project of this magnitude on but if you honestly have the time, you can REFINISH most of what is in the car to make it look as new. You asked upthread about the pump and the tank. I would personally not replace the tank. I'd clean it. There are threads on here where people reach in and clean it. But ultra carful man. fumes are more explosive than the liquid. I'd buy a known good used pump myself. the reason i would do that (which may be different than you) is that a project like the one you are entering into will eat your pocket book alive if you don't be uiltra diligent on repairing and refurbing vs buying new replacements. seeing as your car will never by and you are not intending it to be, a showroom piece, i'd go cheapest route everytime. there will be things you will be forced to spend money on like your windshield and your weatherstripping. and your body work. just the panel bond material is expensive! But with enthusiam, you can definately do this. as another poster has said, it does look like the car is mostly all there. which is good.
So in the spirit of helping you along, I will share how i would approach this, given i have only ever done one extreme refurb like this, so take my experience as just suggestive.
Lets assume you are wanting to get this car to the stage where its clean and nice enough to take a girl out, and, at times, go on some HPDE trips.
Most of your HPDE equipment will be the same no matter if you are doing a roach (like this car, and the one I did) or a nice new car. Things like hawk pads and special tires. So lets forget about those.
my personal experience (which was on an 85, and an 86) here is how i would approach this car in a methodical manner, based on the images you have provided. I would normally say start this whole operastion with a compression test in all cylinders. just to verify that the car will perform at least to stock levels after all the following work is completed. I am going to assume that you already know the engine runs. If not, I'd confirm this first. However in your case if you are already talking at engine swap that it may not matter.
I'd push the car outside, jack it up on those 4 jackstands that you have, cover the alternator, distributor, and if there are any water access points into the intake on that 84 (ive never seen on in person) i'd cover them up. I typically use grocery store bags.
grab a shop vac and suck all the solids out of the engine bay.
you want to suck the leaves and cobwebs out because they can gather in drain ports and plug them up. get rid of it all. Then i would pressure wash the engine bay, and the undercarriage of the car.
wash allll that crap out of there. i used simple green at full concentration and warm water in my pressure washer. have far more degreaser on hand that you think.
then i'd spend some time under the car and see if your frame has any rot or soft spots. if it does, it will be right in front of the firewall where the rails taper and rise towards the front of the car. hopefully not. if yes, part the car out. note you may see surface rust on the frame near the battery tray and that is from both leaking battery acid and leaking brake fluid. this is never a problem from what i have found. inspect all the lines down both sides of the car. rusted? crushed? cutoff? any jacks been put through the floor? (depending how bad, its fixable) https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...ched-pics.html
grab some egg containers. with the little spaces in them. that is how i kept all my kibbles and bits organized. KEEP YOUR FASTNERS organized. i used a sharpie to label each container within the egg carton. then i'd remove the seats, lift out most of the carpet, and suck all the roden **** and wipe away all the p!$$ that will be in the car.
if the carpets are close to worth saving, i'd grab a stiff brush and some dishsoap and warm water and go to town scrubbing them and rinise them out. use a dishsoap that you like the smell of. i chose to use actual carpet cleaning soap it smelled best. If the carpet looks good, keep it as is. if you want to give it a colour refresher, only do this with teh same colour...no color changes...then get the SEM paint to match and give it a light misting but this is not a magic sauce that will make a carpet look new but it will clean it up. the trick is not to do a color change, and don't go overboard so it doesn't look like its been sprayed. comb out the carpet with a long stiff-ish brush before the paint/dye dries so the carpet hairs don't stick together.
wipe those seats off with warm soapy rag, then treat them depending on the fabric. they look vinyl which is fine.
then i'd remove all the dash plastic, and wash them in warm soapy water, being extra careful about breaking the abs plastic bitties. and the vent louveres can be carefully removed, CAREFULLY, so you don't break the retaining tabs, and let them soak in warm water and use a long bristled brush to clean them all up. same for the dash panels. clean them off real good using soapy water.
now if they cleaned up nice, your done, but if they look like garbage, then i'd get a couple cans of SEM "landau black" and give them a light misting. don't do this if they look decent and still have the white decals for all the switches. don't go overboard with the landau black. it has real weak coverage on purpose because its not meant to be coated on hardcore. i did this and did not put the replacement decals on yet. i probably won't.
Then, with all this stuff out of the car, i'd test every electrical switch. you will need access to the wiring and switches, with all the stuff out of the car. fix it as you go. then you won't have to remove the interior 3 times by the time you are done like i did my first time. this is when you find out if you need to replace the signal light relay, headlight switch, turn signal stock, radio (looks like you need one) speakers. When you have electrical switch issues, post them here and we will help you troubleshoot them.
i am assuming you will have electrical issues behind your door panels, or, that your door panels themselves will need to be rebuilt. you can do this by using a soldering gun with the flat tip on the end. you cal effectively plastic weld the whole thing back together. for re-enformcements, you can use a piece of b vent, unroll it, and cut the real thin tin to shap as backing for re-enforcement. the only type of glue to use, is weldwood DAP. i got mine on amazon. none available locally. let it tack up. nothing will come apart. there was a mention of the metal grab handles as drop in re-inforcements in the door panels. one small piece of tin under the arm pad and keep your stock look. it will make sense once you remove it. the white plastic will be shattered. it can be plasitc welded back together if some of the retaining tabs are broken. lego is abs plastic and can be used as fill, you can shape it with the flat blade on the soldering gun. not the pens., not hot enough. gotta be the soldering guns.
Now deal with whatever electrical wiring issues you have behind the doors. clean it all up. tighten and lube all the fitings. use dielectric grease on the plasitc parts. i lubed my oldschool window actuators, the white nylon bands, worked great. if your vapour barrier is gone, you can cut new ones. i went to home depot to the insulation section. the plastic that makes the bundles of insulations bags is real thick and free. worked great.
OK, now what colour are you going for interior? Looks like your interior has been painted with black paint as was mine. I spent the time to restore my interior to OEM colour which was medium grey. acetone wiped onto the vinyl will pull the black paint off. if you are careful on the vinyl, the original colour will be kept as you pull the black off. if not, order the match from SEM for your color and it takes very little return your color to as OEM match. lots of guys like the black interior as well.
if your electric mirros are not working, 90% chance it is the lower motor inside the actuatos inside the black housing, behind the mirror itself, is rusted and siezed. i have not found replacment electric motors, i wish, they are so cheap, like less than 1$, but i cannot find a source.
i attached a rubber hose onto my shopvac and get inside all the vents and pulled all sorts of crap out. also take the blower fan out of the engine bay and you can use your cell phone to take pictures around the corner to see how much stuff to suck out with your vacuum.
now i would turn to the brakes, i see your front calipers are unattached. this could mean the caliper pistons are seized. carefully push the pistons back in. if you know how to bleed brakes, the simple brake push with a 2 liter coke bottle and the hose below the fluid level in the coke bottle method works best for me. i can see the bubbles come out then. and the crud. don't strip the bleeder screws.
now i'd put the driver seat back in, and work on the engine bay. if you are doing a swap, go for it. if you are going to drive it for a while and enjoy it, i'd just start cleaning and refreshing all the electrical connections and inspect wires for any damage/melting.
if your pads and rotors look good, a great trick i have used to bring new stopping force back to old pads that might be glazed over is to put the pad face down onto sandpaper and just sand it back and forth. remove the glaze. works great. then go through the break bedding process. but also, with a car like that, you want to be ultra cautious your first time out, your break lines may need replacing so be careful there.
Then driveline system fluid flushes. IF YOU do the atf drain and fill, be cautions about over tightening into the tranny housing. i stripped a couple bolts which lead to learning how to helicoil.
id drive it for a bit with no interior and just the driver seat. you will find things that need to be sorted out after you think kyou are done and it will save you from having to remove interior 2 or 3 times. You are going to have plenty of driveability issues to fix. i won't be able to help as i am not an 84 guy but there are plenty here who will help you and if they see you working hard to restore your car you will get the help.
now id do the body work. the toughest for you is going to be the rear end. I cannot help you here. I have not done anything (yet, i have similar but not as bad as yours to fix on my rear end as it took a hit) on the body repair. i have used the panel bond material though, and i wouldn't be affraid to build up the panels with smc panel bond from evercoat and then sand and shape it. Personally, I'd get the colour matched and hopefully its bright red, which can be bought in a rattle can duplicolor, and do the small repairs as best as possible. i wouldn't invest in a new paintjob, i'd repaint it myself using a cheap hvlp gun. i recently did a 1993 truck and it came out looking amazing and i did it outside! that is all i would do here.
then after the paint is restored you have the weather stripping. which is real expensive, but also real rewarding if you are putting it onto a car that you can take a girl out in. its the icing on the cake.
ANYWAY, i have spent waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time reliving my project here in your thread. it was fun for me to re-think all of it and write it down. good luck to you, there have been MANY who have embarked on the journey you are wanting to take and very few people have the time space and capital to finish the job. take all my advice as suggestive and with a grain of salt, you will know pretty quick if you are in over your head but from what i see from your pics, the guts are all there.
a final reiteration: unless you are loaded, seriously consider my advice of holding back on ANYthing you don't have to buy. If you can repair it, repair it. If it was more of a collector car that you could get your money out of, I'd be suggesting differently. You will find things (weather stripping (btw, don't buy the cheap sutff, only the corvette rubber company brand, sold by wilcox), transmissions, wheelbearings, engines, poly bushings, shocks, tires, pads, replacement calipers or brake lines) that you will HAVE to replace with new or known good used parts and it adds up to 4 or 5 thousand fast. refurb what you can. example: i had a hole in my rear Y pipe. i sanded the rust off, took a quarter, which covered the hole, smothered it in JB weld, and epoxied it over the hole. worked great. Still holding today after two years of hard driving.
I would keep it and do a build thread.Ported92, one day there gonna be no 84 cars left to restore as everyone has trashed them to death or parted the out or made carts out of them.
Even the nice early C4 cars are pricey to keep driving, but well worth the effort.
You could clean up the car and get it running, then sell for a profit so you can buy another C4.
Last edited by Mike Holmen; 11-06-2018 at 10:09 AM.
@VikingTrad3r Thanks for taking the time to write up that post. There was a lot of good information/methodology that I probably wouldn't of considered until I read that. I've always wanted a corvette since I was kid. Also with my grandpa working on the Corvette line when they were produced in STL just made want one even more. I would say that this project has been a long time coming. I've really only brought old motorcycles back to life and done some wiring here and there. Not to mention that my DD is a 25 year old truck that sat for 8 years and I've been driving it now for about 6 years. So I'm hoping some skills can be transferred to this project. After reading all the posts up to this point my game plan has slightly changed and I will be doing everything I can to rehab the old plastics pieces which I found most of the missing trim pieces in the hidden compartments behind the seats.
My next few steps are as follows:
1) Clean out the fuel tank, vacuum and clean the entire car
2) Get new fuel filter and fuel pump
3) Get the car to stay running at idle
4) Do a full tune up plugs, air filter, grease & lube, full fluids flush (ATF, MOTOR, COOLANT)
5) Get the brakes back in working condition. NOTES:
-The leather tarp that is rolled up in the back. Anybody have any ideas of how to unroll it without causing it damage?
-"now i would turn to the brakes, i see your front calipers are unattached. this could mean the caliper pistons are seized." - funny story.... was rolling the car off the trailer into my garage and my brother smashed the brakes and locked them up which ultimately lead me to removing the rotors LMAO
-"then i'd spend some time under the car and see if your frame has any rot or soft spots. if it does, it will be right in front of the firewall where the rails taper and rise towards the front of the car. hopefully not. if yes, part the car out." Got a picture of this area. See the video below and let me know if you can see any issues.
-Do I need to move this thread to a different location if this is going to turn into a build thread? ADMIN HELP!?!?
i think guys have put on some rubber gloves and wiped out the tank by reaching in.
the only frame shots i saw in the video were from these two shots. try and take another vid showing the actual frame. looks fine so far. its is extremely uncommon to have a soft or rusted frame in a c4 because the frames were hot dip galvanized.
get more of this frame from the door hinges forward past the front wheels. it looks fine so far.
can u take some more shots or video of the rear damage. i think u should get a handle on that rear passenger bodywork.
take lots of pics and another long vid and get some opinions on here if it can be fixed.
ling as you get clarity on it being fixable-ish (doesnt have to be perfect but also cant cost a fortune to get it looking respectable from 6feet) then proceed on your list.
also, try to get a few more shots of the frame and you can put that one to bed.
also, take some good detailed vids of your door panels moving slow over the panel seams and mounting surfaces. ill be able to get a good idea of what you're r up against just from that.
Last edited by VikingTrad3r; 11-06-2018 at 09:43 PM.
11-04-2018, 04:33 PM
New C4 Build!!!
I wouldn't waste my time going any other route with the intake sadly... Learn from my mistake, people don't stand behind their crap anymore lol.
