Body Assembly
Unfortunately, the work done at the local collision shop was not up to par. The final result of their work was unsafe, not structural, and not functional. The car had to be taken to a Corvette specialist to have the below work undone, and then redone correctly. Click here for further info on the delay and things watch out for when looking for professional body shop help with your restoration.
The body was cleaned and loaded up for the first trip to the Local Collision Shop. On this trip the hood, door sills and jams, and the deck lid will be cut in. The body panels will be aligned and mounted. This is done so that these parts can be assembled before the rest of the car is painted. This will minimize (hopefully eliminate) any assembly scratches. The air box has been aligned with the carburetor and glued onto the hood for the cowl induction and it will be cut in as well. Both doors had 'hinge groove' cut in them from week king pins. These have been fixed as well as the door sills finished.
Here are the door jams and inner doors are getting a fresh coat of LeMans Blue. Swaaeeeeet!
The panels are on and lined up now! The door reveals around the front and rear fender are great! Now if it can just get cut in I can assemble it and have it ready for final paint pretty quickly.
Finally the body has been poly'd and once the doors are reattached and the rear deck lined up I can bring her home for assembly! It's very dirty now and the body shop has some touch up work to do in the engine compartment and inner fenders, but that's part of the job, my least favorite part!
The body came home for the Holidays, but unfortunately must go back to the body shop for some front clip work. Apparently it isn't easy to glue one of these things on:) Other than that, the color, the lines, the entire shape is looking fantastic! The rear deck lid fit with just a little persuasion and the convertible top frame was trial fitted. See the "Tops" page for a couple more pics of this.
The front and Rear clips are on and the jams are complete. I stripped the 6 coats of paint off the doors and deck lid and primed them according to instruction from the local collision shop. (yes 6 coats: factory primer, factory blue; yahoo's primer, urine yellow; another primer & black) The inside of the car has had the glass reinforced and primed just for uniformity. This will not be painted blue. Before any of the sanding began on the car, all of the holes for lights, emblems, accessories, etc... were cut. The seams on the front and rear clips have been sanded down, blocked, and primed.
The air filter retainer would not fit over the Edelbrock carb with the electric choke so I had to cut a recess and weld in a large enough space for this to sit level. You can see the choke wires hanging down on the left front of the carb. I also upgraded to an electric fuel pump to feed this motor. The new fuel pump and filter are mounted under the tank on the passenger's frame rail. A small bracket was welded to the frame for each.
The Driver's door sill was badly damaged and required replacement. I took this piece from a '76 and sized it to fit the piece I had removed. Once in place I glued it to the door stop support and then glassed it in. This will get a finished sanding and be cut in when the body is at the paint shop.
One of the first jobs I new that needed work on the bottom of the body was the battery compartment. The existing compartment wouldn't of held a AA battery in place let alone a 70+lb battery. I cut the worst of the bottom off and trimmed the edges. I went to the donor tub (seen on 'Body Tear Down' page) and cut the bottom of the battery compartment off and then made the cut's line up with my car. I glued and riveted the new bottom in place after reinforcing it with new glass where a couple of stressed cracks had developed.
The driver's side sill and pillar support needed work - this is the main reason I bought the donor car. I new there was rust there, but had no idea the amount until I cut the sill support away. Below are the rusted sections that were removed. I can't stress enough how important it is to remove all of the offending metal. To rebuild this I used metal from the donor car and welded the pillar support in with no problem. The main piece of the sill support is shown below with the piece it is replacing. The holes that are drilled into the replacement piece are to "spot" weld this into the pillar support and sill support bracket in the same place the factory did. The same process was then repeated for the passenger's side.
The "tub" or "birdcage" section of the car needed quite a bit of repair. There were over 50 cracks or holes that needed attention. Some of the holes as can be seen were significant. I went back to my donor car pieces and used that as a template to fabricate new fiberglass parts. Where Possible, I would use a piece from the donor as a patch.
After days of grinding, patching, repairing, and sanding the bottom is complete and now I'll feel safe sitting in it.
The windshield frame was so rusted on the top that most of the metal came off with the glass. I used the frame from the donor car. I cut off the rusted section of the frame and then welded the donor piece into place after measuring the dimensions 3 times and clamping it in place. The donor piece was from a T-top so I had to fabricate the rear support lip where the molding and rear view mirror mount. To remove the T-top section and upper section of the windshield post I had to remove over 60 spot welds. This would have taken well over a couple of hours with a drill, but the plasma cutter did it in about 3 minutes! I don't know how I lived without this tool. The finished pic is before final grinding was done.
Here is the meat and potatoes of my work for the body. Two new clips and new inner-fenders. I have been getting plenty of advice from local shops and watched an original front end being installed to get me ready for this. I will bolt the tub back to the body with the doors on and then put the rear clip on, then the front. Here are the pieces I received from Vanacor Corvettes.
After I got the tub back onto the chassis I put the clips on for a trial fit. There is much work to be done to the bonding strips on the front clip and the rear will sit about 2 1/2" lower than it is sitting here because the cross support beam has not yet been seated.
The inner fenders are bolted to the radiator mount to hold in place during the front clip installation. A piece of 2x4 is used to maintain the correct distance from the firewall so the hood will fit properly, 43". The fenders are the last to get glued after the front clip has set. It's important to drill any holes and rivet any brackets in place prior to putting the front clip on for ease due to space.
Here is the hood trial fit. By this time I have had the front clip on and off about 4 times. Grinding here and there, making the bonding strips line up correctly, and mounting the inner fenders and adding their hardware, mostly made from scratch. I'm getting close to gluing it on. There is still a 2" gap at the front bumper mount, but I may have to shim this?? It will close some during final assembly. The L88 hood has 1/4" clearance from the L88 intake airbox, and looks perfect!
Copyright © 2004 CorvetteProjects.com, Putnam created/owned/maintained. All rights reserved
