1963 Corvette Convertible Restomod

[Christopher]

I purchased this convertible project car in December and plan to build it into a restomod after the other cars are finished. Initially i was going to do an L88 Clone, but now I am uncertain. I put a deposit down on an SRIII tubular chassis like the one I am using on my 63 split window build. I went back and forth on whether or not to update the original frame, but in the end, the savings just didn't add up.

My options are
1. Build it like the car in the bottom picture, or
2. Build it to look like it did originally with a few modifications to the side louvers.

Here she is. It looks better in the pictures than it actual is. Wheel openings are fudged where someone attempted to repair them and the quarters arent fit correctly. It appears this car was parted out almost completely at one point. Even the floor has been removed...it has a later floor...no deep tubs like the 63 cars had.

[/IMG]

Chassis: SRIII Still making final decisions for the build

Body: The body will remain stock overall, but i plan to add wider rear quarter panels.


Here is the overall goal, except it will have different tires and wheels.

- - - Updated - - -

The rust in the birdcage isn't horrendous, but it will still need repair. The very honest seller(heavy tone of sarcasm), told me it only needed one section repaired in the sill and it was about an 8 hour job...sure, removing the front end, repairing the outer windshield areas, and replacing the driver sill and fabricating steel and reinforcing the lower a pillar is an 8 hour job....times 20. Again, oh well! After a full investigation, the rust areas appear to be pretty contained and all can be repaired without too much of a headache. I like the car and as one of my friends claims, "sometimes they choose their next owner for a reason".

Problem area #1. Looks the same on passenger side. Fortunately, the outer area is still solid. I can see it through the holes. i poked at it with a screwdriver and hammer and it did not puncture or flake.

The worst area is at the bottom of the driver's door hinge pillar. The area in the front, from the sill to about 2.5" up is more or less worthless. Ill fab up some new metal and weld it in these places once all the glass is removed.

 

[Barry]

I think, I looked at that car about a year ago (pictures) Hard to say.
In my little perfect world, the outside would look like the picture you showed but i was thinking of an LS3 or better with a 6 speed.
I would leave the frame and bolt on a different front like a Fatman, up grade the brakes and rear end.
I was kinda of looking for a 63-64 for the project and had it figured out it would take about $30,000 in parts to do the up grade, down to the retrofitting the wheels with new vette sizes and minor tubing to make fit.

BUT the boss spoke and i tucked my tail and and said of course you are right dear.

Retro-mod looking like the picture and proper up grades, would make that a $200,000 car in my book.

Nice project!!!!!

 

[Christopher]

Probably a good thing you passed on this one, Barry! I bought it out of Ohio, but it reminds me of a car that came from a guy in Talboten, Georgia. Was that where you looked at it? Basically he finds Corvettes that have been stripped, then slaps whatever extra crappy parts and fiberglass he has lying around together to make the cars appear whole and then sprays them with cheap black primer as cover up. The rear deck of the car is good, but someone glued quarter panels from another car onto it. They have about 3 layers of paint and i can see where they have been cut into in several places. Whoever glued them in place only removed enough paint to allow the bonding adhesive to grab. The primer on the car is so bad that i can peel it off with my fingers. I'm assuming the guy i bought it from realized that the car had been poorly pieced together and decided to cut his losses! If i were smart, i would bale too and find a better car to start with, but for some reason, I want to fix it and make it into something special.

 

[AutoRodGirl]

Looks like you have a lot of work ahead of you. But it will be so worth it! Can't wait to see this progress.

 

[Barry]

I think it is the same one as one of them was in Ohio but I looked at a few in different states.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The rust in the birdcage isn't horrendous, but it will still need repair. The very honest seller(heavy tone of sarcasm), told me it only needed one section repaired in the sill and it was about an 8 hour job...sure, removing the front end, repairing the outer windshield areas, and replacing the driver sill and fabricating steel and reinforcing the lower a pillar is an 8 hour job....times 20"

It was about 20 years a go, some Doc said "having sex was the same as running 2 miles" another Doc, then said either the Doc has never had sex or ran 2 miles!
Could this be the Doc?

Anyways, the car still does not look like a major problem, just a lot of labor but very do-able.
I think you scored good.

 

[Christopher]

Ha, Nice Barry! Could be, could be...
BTW, my painter really liked the Universal Clear and mentioned that he would like to use it on future builds. He said he was going to contact you about its compatibility with PPG. I had him use your black with the universal clear on the 63 split window i am building. The black is awesome and is as black as can be, which is just what i wanted!

I decided to do a little exploratory surgery tonight and remove the front end. It only took about 3 hours to remove it. Somebody has definitely been all over this car previously and while it's not as bad as i thought it was a month ago, it is still going to need a bunch of work to correct the previous work. The front end isn't in great shape, so I will probably order a new one instead of spending a bunch of time trying to salvage this one...not sure yet, but will known for sure once i sand all the crappy primer off.

The rust in the birdcage is concentrated in the lower areas. The tops of the pillars look good overall.

 

[Christopher]

I finally managed to remove the firewall. I didnt realize there were 3 rivets hiding under the mass of bonding adhesive in the middle of the firewall panel at the cross over section between the wiper cowls. To say it looks like a bomb went off in the garage is an understatement. If you attempt a project like this, you better have a lot of storage space. I have 4 cars in pieces right now and it is an absolute nightmare...I have a problem and need to learn to concentrate on one project at a time!

The passenger side channel and pillar were replaced already and somebody did a really crappy job of patching the section in. They also did a really crappy job of welding the z-bar back in place, so i broke it loose. Ill need to take some measurements off the split window to make sure i weld it back in correctly.

The fiberglass was literally holding the driver's side pillar in place. If i rock the pillar back and forth a few more times, i have no doubt that it will break. Fortunately another forum member has a pillar he is going to sell me. This one is repairable since it is only rusted at the bottom, but it's better in my case just to replace the entire thing.

I find it interesting how the rust is concentrated to only the lower portion. I believe this must mean that the car was driven for a long period of time in area that had salted roads. The way the metal is corroded reminds me of salt air damage I see at the Gulf Coast.

My arse is going to hurt from this purchase for a while. However, i will eventually enjoy bringing it back to life and will make something special out of it. :cheers:

- - - Updated - - -

I had to fix the z bar where "Cletus" had cut it from the center connecting bracket and the passenger hinge pillar while replacing the passenger rocker and pillar from another car. The gray pillar fiberglass dated march 1965 on the passenger side, the 6 holes in the sill, and the dark green paint still remaining on one portion of the pillar glass indicated that the frame graft was from a 65 Donor. The connecting bracket was cut loose and then welded back on crooked. I cut it loose and then drilled out all spot welds.

Weld through primer and plug welds. I smoothed out all the plug welds after all welding was completed.

After drilling out the sheered off glove box support bolts from the z bar, I mounted the dash frame and glove box surround/support to help locate the correct position of the z-bar, cross bar, vin bar...whatever it is called.

After welding the bar back in place...One small step in the right direction!!!

Next I fabricated a piece of steel to reinforce the rotten drivers side pillar and welded it in place. I then removed the Birdcage from the frame and floor pan. Im going to order the luggage stop metal tonight and I will put it in place next week. After that I will address the pillar and inner windshield frame.

The cage is sitting crooked here because one of the rocker brackets is still in place on the front driver's side.

67 chassis will be going on ebay tomorrow with the front end, quarters, and the 65 small block hood. The frame is pretty rough, but the rear end is a BB differential out of a 68, the trailing arms are nice, and so are the front a arms and brakes. Springs are nice and firm.

 

[Christopher]

Strip dance! She is parked on the 67 chassis that i have for sale for the time being.

Proud of my welding work here, especially considering i accidentally had the gas off while welding. The z bar had been cut from the flange/tab by someone previously when they "repaired" the birdcage.

 

[shine]

i have been the belle of the ball in this dance once . i swore if i ever got the car back together i would shoot the next person who asked me to do this. seems to have worked .... better you than me , that's a ton of work . good luck with it. anything you make on this one will be well earned .

 

[Christopher]

ha! Trust me, i am still contemplating selling it. Step 1 was getting the Z/VIN bar fixed and reattached so i could register the car in case i decide to sell it at any point. Step 2: sell off the rusty 67 chassis and leftover fiberglass. Step 3: fixing the cage. Step 4: reassembling the basic internal fiberglass. Step 5: New front clip, wide rear quarters, and taillamp panel.

I already have 40-50 hours in the car. By the time step 5 is complete, it will probably be around 300 hours, if not more.

 

[shine]

back in the 70's they would go to extremes on repairs. the cars were 10 years old or less. the insane part was they did not want to pay anything. many corvettes ended up totaled because they could not find anyone to work on them .

 

[82firebird]

All I can say is...Ohio :disturbed:

 

[Christopher]

I'm Sure. I think someone had good intent here, they just failed miserably due to lack of experience or not caring enough to go all the way.

- - - Updated - - -

All I can say is...Ohio :disturbed:

All I can say is Martha Focker! I stuffed her back in the trailer today. Now back to work on the split window, then the mustang.

 

[Christopher]

I replaced the luggage stop ends, which someone had cut up for some reason, and installed the luggage stop. Now the rear is set up correctly and is stable. The next step will be to replace the rocker channel. I used the extra 66 convertible frame I have as a fixture.

Step 1 was to drill out the spot welds on the old end pieces.

New pieces compared to the old. I really dont understand why someone cut the end pieces up, but i assume it was to remove the center luggage stop. They must have overlooked the 4 rivets.

New metal!!! I decided to plug weld the luggage stop in place to make it stronger instead of using rivets.

 

[Christopher]

I installed the new rocker channel and repaired the pillar.

Here you can see where someone attempted to repair the old rocker channel by splicing in a decent rear section from another car.

The hinge pillars are not reproduced. Fortunately, I put an ad out for a pillar and found one that would work. The one I found was rotten at the top, but solid at the bottom. Mine is solid at the top and rotten at the bottom, so I removed the metal I needed from the other pillar and spliced it into the one original to the car. After much thought, I decided it would be best to overlap the metal for strength.

My welds are not the prettiest, but it will look nice once they are smoothed out.

http://i852.photobucket.com/albums/...Corvette L88 Restomod/rocker4_zpse1a7116a.jpg

 

[Christopher]

Well, it looks like I am going to need another $1100.00 worth of metal before the cage is finished. Whoever replaced the original passenger hinge pillar did not drill out the spot welds and graft in the metal correctly. Instead, they cut the windshield frame in two places, as seen below in the pictures, and then welded in the donor section with a portion of it's windshield frame. The passenger pillar is leaned in 3 degrees and the windshield frame is crooked. I put the windshield from the split window in place to check the alignment and once in place, it confirmed that things were out of whack. It is so tight at the bottom the glass and rubber barely squeezed into place.

Outside of windshield frame where it was cut then very poorly welded back together.

Interior portion of windshield frame. This was all covered up by filler.

Here is where the second cut was made.

 

[Christopher]

The bad portions of the windshield frame are now out. Unfortunately the lower channel was not in stock, so I am going to be forced to wait a little while for it to arrive.

This spot weld cutter bit from eastwood makes drilling out the spot welds a thousand times easier than using regular drill bits.

Unfortunately the pillar is in worse shape than i thought and will require a repair section on the top. I knew it needed a small repair, but I didn't realize quite how pitted it was underneath the windshield frame.

I thought these welds were made by someone messing with the windshield frame, but after looking the assembly manual, i see that arc welds were used on the center sections of the outer metal, while spot welds were used on the edges. So, that is a relief...at least the upper portion and driver's side is unmolested.

 

[Christopher]

I separated the old left inner windshield pillar from the original left outer pillar, which was still in good shape, and replaced it with a new piece.

Old vs. New

I then cleaned the rust out of the internal portion of the outer pillar and upper hinge pillar and applied three coats of SPI epoxy so there will be no further rust.

The new piece fit incredible well...just as well as the original. Im impressed to say the least!

Here is how well it fits. It's hard to even tell where the seam is between the original outer and new inner metal.

I also test fit the outer and inner pieces to the other side and they line up very well! Next up I will repair the top of the pillar and then the only the holding back finishing up the cage is the arrival of the lower channel and the windshield i ordered from auto city classic glass today.

 

[flynams]

Excellent work here....and I'm sure you have thought about it, but our experience here is to have the new windshield before getting everything fastened and welded when you have to go this far....Dave

 

[Christopher]

Gotcha Dave! That is why i went ahead and ordered the windshield and correct weatherstrip, plus some of the molding. Since the driver's outer pillar is original and the windshield I have from the 63 split window fit correctly in that area, i decided it would be safe to go ahead and weld in the new inner portion of metal for that side.