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My wife and I picked up this car in October of this year and have been working on fixing up a little neglect and making it ours. I enjoy both creating build threads and reading about what other people are doing/have done. So I decided to start documenting what I've done before I get too much further.
We picked up this car from a retired car salesman and he did a great job at hiding most of its problems before the sale. I am impressed honestly because I'm a former GM Service Tech and have been wrenching since I was 12. I have bought, fixed or broken, and sold more cars already than most people will in their lifetime. I still came out ahead in the long run because we got it for a reasonable price but it was definitely a little more work than I was expecting.
I'll list what I've done with any pictures I have but it may not be in the order it was done.
Heating the new balancer in the oven. A half hour at 350 and it slid right on.
Installed and torqued. The LS motors have an interesting process for balancer replacement. If you've never done it, google it before you attempt it yourself. Its not a lot of fun.
New AC belt, tensioner, and idler.
Rack and sway bar out for balancer install.
I did the zip tie mod on the intake with a new Wix filter. I may upgrade down the road but after a bunch of reading it doesn't seem like there is much more power to be had than how it is now.
You may notice a few parts missing off the front. The car came with a brand new OEM front bumper still in the packaging. I took advantage of the easy access with the front off the car to do a bunch of maintenance. I replaced the radiator and condensor while they were off because both were original.
I had the new bumper painted at a somewhat local shop. They did a killer job on it and matched the color perfectly.
Nice work so far. Best of luck with the rest of the build.
Thanks Vetteman. I enjoy wrenching so its honestly therapeutic lol. Its getting close to how we want it. I have a bunch of assembly and a little more paint touch up that I hope to get done by the end of the long New Years weekend.
Then its on to the interior...
The first post was getting a little long in the tooth so I decided to break it up into a few posts but apparently all my posts have to be signed off on by a moderator?
Anyway, back to catching up:
The brakes looked a little crusty so I cleaned them up and put a coat of por15 on. I think I'm going to hit the raised letters with some black to make it stand out a little more.
It had the typical corrosion on the frame rail from battery acid leaking on it. I wire wheeled it, treated the rust, sealed, and painted it. The top coat is still wet in this pic but you can see the pitting in the frame. I had to remove the inner fender to get to it all. Reattaching it was great fun lol.
The brake fluid was pretty nasty. I scored a killer deal on some Brembo DOT4 at Ollies so I flushed the whole system.
I painted the letters on the calipers today. I had some time between coats on a fender repair while I was waiting for the color coat to flash off so i knocked this out. Came out ok imho.
I picked up a Nitrous Express kit second hand. Trying to decide on where to mount the bottle. I only plan to run a 100 shot. I have a few more small pieces to pick up but I have most of what I need.
Johnson, Mike, and Mr Black, this is actually my favorite vintage corvette. Yes I realize tastes are very subjective and many arguments could be made why model year 'x' or build package 'z' is a "better" car. But to me this was the pinnacle of corvette. I'm also kinda partial to this color combo. The first car my wife and I bought together when we were first married was a torch red C4 with a tan leather interior.
I love bringing cars back from the dead too. That actually wasn't very hard with this one though, it was nice enough that I drove it 200 miles home after purchase. Its issues are mostly cosmetic. It was hardly "dead" lol.
We have big plans for the car but it will be slow going because I'm both OCD and ADD so it takes me awhile to get anything done. I also have very little free time.
We replaced all 4 tires, they are factory sizes. The car came with Michelin Pilot Sport run flats on it that had been heat cycled a few too many times. They were pretty much shot. I decided to go with a set of 400 treadware Accelera PHI 2 as replacements. Never tried them before but they're a matched set in the correct size for a reasonable price. If they suck or don't last its all good because they were mad cheap.
While crawling under the rear of the car to fix the poorly hung exhaust I found this. Factory 3.15 gears! I'd rather have 3.90's but at least they aren't 2.73's!
We wrapped the roof in 3M gloss carbon. This stuff is crazy hard to work with! It's mad thick and takes a LOT of heat to stretch it. Good product but I should have practiced with an easier product first lol.
I'm partial to the relatively inexpensive Gorilla lugnuts you can get on Amazon for like 40 bucks. I have them on damn near everything.
The nice thing is if you get stuck in a pinch you can still remove them with a socket and not wreck them. They will keep the honest away from getting them off as well.
The clear top on my 1997 has at least a half dozen cracks coming in from the door edges. I would like to grind those cracks out a bit and then back fill them with polycarbonate glue. Then wrap it with the 3m in a Gloss black.
I also just blindly assumed the top would be a pretty easy first wrap project. Thanks for the heads up that it may not be lol.
Wrapping the top is actually a very easy first project. There are minimal curves/contours. A helper makes it a LOT easier and a good hair dryer or better yet a heat gun is a must. I was mostly just commenting on the carbon wrap. It is extremely thick and hard to work with. A solid color wrap is much easier to apply.
Gorilla makes good products that last. I originally bought model 41137, but the profile was too round at the top and didn’t look right to me. I found a set of 41138 LT’s on eBay, and they have a flatter top that look closer to the originals (but whose quality are wayyy better that GM). I believe that the 41138 is now discontinued, but you can still find them on eBay, and Gorilla can help you find something similar if you can’t locate them.
So two votes for Gorilla lug nuts. I will definitely check them out. Its not real high on my priority list but whatever is on it now looks like crap.
I spent a good amount of time working on the car today and managed to get everything back on except the hood. That will probably be next weekends project. The headlights gave me a lot of grief. The fun thing about taking on projects that someone else has done a lot of wrenching on is all the halfassery that you dig up in the process. There were so many missing screws and broken mounts and tabs! 23 years and God knows how many owners made for a lot of fixing things in order to fix things... if that makes sense lol.
Here's some pictures. Because threads without pictures suck.
Yeah I made that for my wife at our old house. I need to put it back out in the garden sometime. Its on the endless list of things I need to do that I may someday actually get too lol
1998 Coupe Build
