Daily Slideshow: Split-Window Racer Hits the Streets

1. Used Car

The 1963 Stingray you see here came into Mark Rife’s life in 1972. Mark, a Vietnam veteran from Dayton, Ohio, saved the car, which had 22,000 miles on it at the time, from an aborted restoration. Though he kept all of the coupe’s original parts, as he told Popular Hot Rodding in 2012, “I bought it to race. It even had a rollbar in it. I had it together that winter for a mall show in Dayton and by summer I was racing the car, autocrossing it. We didn’t embarrass ourselves too bad.” The “we” Mark is referring to is his immediate family, as well as his family of racing buddies. As Mark related, “We made many friends. It was a great big extended family group of about 20 or 30 of us. All the kids grew up together. We were all tied together because of that Corvette."

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2. Next Level

As often happens with racing, once Mark got the bug he got serious and his next step was taking the ‘Vette vintage racing. As his interests expanded—to vintage stock car and spec Miata racing—the split-window took a back seat for a while. But Corvettes are forever so about seven years ago, a member of Mark’s extended racing family urged him to take the ‘63 out of mothballs and go vintage racing again. He updated the car’s safety gear and got ready to race, but as he was about to leave the grid at his first race in all those years his oil light came on!

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3. Plan B

The ‘Vette went on the trailer, but it was a part of the family so he wasn’t ready to put it out to pasture yet. In the process of repairing the oiling problem (the culprit was the oil pump drive off of the distributor shaft), he decided it was time for a dramatic, more modern, transplant. Mark had recently learned about Tray Walden at Street Shop in Athens, Alabama, who specializes in updating older Corvettes using C4, C5, and C6 suspension elements. Mark decided to go with a C4 chassis because of its front-mounted transmission, as opposed to the later transaxle-based chassis, so that he could use a Tremec 5-speed and not have to cut into the split-window’s classic body (the flares, by the way, were added in 1975).

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4. Plan B+

With the ‘63’s body separated from the original chassis, Mark realized two Corvettes are better than one and decided to use the '63 chassis as the basis for another vintage racer. “I had the body off, so I took all my old race setup off, and I bought a ’69 Corvette from eBay,” Mark explained. “I sold everything off of it and put that ’69 body on my old ’63 chassis. I don’t have any memories with that car, so if I tear it up, who cares? It’s just money.” Turning his attention back to the ‘63 body, Mark told the crew at Street Shop that he wanted to fit 315/35R17 (Kumho) tires on the front and 335/35R17 on the rear (on Team III 11×17 and 12×17 wheels) under the original flares. “I told [the team at Street Shop] what wheels I wanted to put on, so he put some extra gussets in the chassis,” Mark remembers. The ’96 Corvette Dana 44 rear end the split-window runs was narrowed by 2 inches, also helping fit those monsters under a 55 year-old body.

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5. Plan LS7

Mark decided the revamped ‘63 deserved a GMPP LS7 crate engine to bolt up to the Tremec transmission. “I had been at probably about 500 hp back in the day with the old 327 small-block, and wanted to keep the power about the same. You can’t do that reliably with pump gas these days without fuel injection. I bought the LS7 crate motor and the Tremec five-speed—it’s all stock. I put a K&N filter on it and that’s it,” Mark said about his new engine. That engine, with a good tune, was now putting out 454 rear-wheel horsepower @ 7,200 rpm, and benefitted from a new Griffin custom aluminum radiator, Quartermaster clutch, 1⅞-inch long-tube headers, and a new 3-inch dual exhaust.

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6. On the Road Again

By October of 2009 the split-window was ready to go racing again. Mark took the car to the Charlotte Goodguys and won the autocross—remember he was a veteran autocrosser, too. Sadly, soon after that Mark lost his wife to cancer, but the Corvette remained as a link to his life with her. “I’m kind of finishing off the dreams that we had with the car,” Mark shared. He decided to do a full tour in 2011, autocrossing the ‘Vette at Goodguys Columbus, Goodguys Indy (where he won a PHR Street Challenge jacket), Goodguys Pleasanton, Goodguys Scottsdale, and Goodguys Del Mar, also making time for a SEMA show the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational. “These five or six weeks of coming out west and all the Goodguys stuff fits right into it. We never got a chance to travel out west due to business, and I’m just completing that dream in her memory. She would’ve enjoyed all this for sure.” A car can never take the place of a loved one, but sometimes it can keep help keep shared memories alive.

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