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Thought you might be interested in some radical Corvettes we are building down here in Australia.
Started out just building one, but four of my friends wanted to join me, so now we are building five.
Essentially we are starting with suitable C6 Z06's salvage cars as donors, and installing heavily modified '69 bodies on top of them. If it sounds simple, trust me, it isn't. Lots of passion, stubbornness, and persistence at play here, coupled with a lot of time, with five mates having a ball and building our dream cars.
The approach is somewhat different to most who embark on a pro-classic journey. No, I'm not suggesting these are pro-classics, because we have had to make wholesale changes to the body in order to make it work with the largely unaltered C6 aluminium frame.
It must also still look like a chrome bumper C3, albeit it will "have" to be different for the reason explained above.
Why?, some of you might ask. Well, personally, I'm done with old cars, well driving them at least.
I've been lucky enough to own many Corvettes over the years, and the stand outs for me have been the C5's and C6's. Fabulous, fabulous cars, superb in every way. Styling is OK, but of course nothing compares to the timeless classic designs of the C2's and chrome bumper C3's:- at least, not in my eyes.
So,started these journeys of combining the old with the new.
A few years back I built a car called Prodigy, which was a C2 modded body on top of a C5 Z06. 8,500 hours to build this, website is www.prodigy-z06.com
Have included a pic of very early in the mockup stage of this new car we are calling the C36.
Yes, I know it's not to everyone's taste, but if it helps or inspires somebody else, then maybe this thread is worth it.
Coming, in the meantime there's a link on the front page of my Prodigy website that gives further earlier pics, plus a more detailed rundown of the build
Coming, in the meantime there's a link on the front page of my Prodigy website that gives further earlier pics, plus a more detailed rundown of the build
Very nice!!! I cant wait to see the finished project. I was hoping someone would do this for the C4s. Theyre cheap around here
Yes, C4's are relatively cheap here also, but I figure if you are going to spend thousands of hours building your dream, you might as well strive for the latest technology ( well, it was when I started )
When we started this project around 4 years ago we had 2 windscreen manufacturers left here in Australia. Went to get serious and order these new screens a few months back, and both these companies are now gone.
Seems like we can't make anything here anymore, so we need to get done in China.
OK, it is what it is, so we had to prepare a pattern that they could use to manufacture our screens. We needed to buy a minimum of 10, so amortized over 5 cars wasn't a horrid situation, we'd each have a spare screen, and they would cost about $600Aus each.
Hope these pics help explain
Pic 1
We laid up a fibreglass copy of the original C3 windscreen, and then cut it down the middle and fitted to the new C3 frame. You can see how much we widened windscreen frame.
This first pic shows widened C3 windscreen frame mounted on top of the aluminium "A" pillars of the C6.
We used the top of the "A" pillar of the C3 as well, this had the top hinge mountings, which we used in helping locate mounting the C3 doors.
Of course windscreen frame is steel, and C6 frame is alluminium, so we intend to glue and bolt together.
Pic2
Shows insert installed in fibreglass windscreen. Now this needed to be turned into a usable pattern for the windscreen manufacturers.
Also in this shot, we were working on a larger windscreen sweep for the wipers. Had to move pivot points, but after a bit of trial and error, we got what we were after. Yes, we used a modified C3 wiper mechanism, and we powered this with a C6 wiper motor:- worked a treat. As we are using all the C6 electronics and wiring, we needed to use this motor so that it talked to the BCM
Pic 1:- shows where we widened the hood to suit the C6 frame. Prior to this we had already widened it right down the middle 1" to make the hood scoop more balanced with the rest of the process.
Overall widened about 7.5" at base of windscreen, and only 2" at the very front. At the time it didn't seem to sound right with us, but to achieve the look we needed that's what we had to do.
Pic 2:- needed to move back wheelarch 4.5" to make it work. This was
achieved by taking out about 2.5" from side to side just in front of the windscreen, and extending front valance by 2". Installing C6 side marker lamps. Also added 1" between the top of the wheel arch and peak of guards along the side to make it look more balanced. When planning these mods, didn't for a moment think we would end up doing this, but we are all pretty happy with the result.
These cars will have tilt fronts, but different to what you see on C3's.
It will hinge just below front bumper line, so the front valance will stay in place:- like a C4.
clearly shows the widening process of the hood. It's a 60-72 Big block/ LT1 hood bulge raised 1" at the front, and blended into a later wiper door delete rear section. Hood had already been cut down the centre with an 1" added by this stage. We widened it 31/4" at the rear each side, and barely 1/2" each side at the front. We were chasing the C3 look with tyre hanging out the wheel arch from a frontal perspective.
This wasn't in our original plan, doesn't sound right, but we feel it looks great.
Pic 2
If you haven't noticed by now, you'll see it's a tilt front, and this is a top view showing measurements. 71/2" wider at the rear, and only 2" at the very front. Note an original hardtop sitting on the windscreen frame.
She's a fair bit wider. Starting to take shape now.
07-26-2017, 07:29 AM
'69 modded vert body on top of C6 Z06 platform
