OOOH! Very Nize! On the positive front, everything's still moving along. Hopefully you're financially positioned to simply absorb this hiccup with a sigh and move on the all those visions of what you're doing to do with all that garage space.
OOOH! Very Nize! On the positive front, everything's still moving along. Hopefully you're financially positioned to simply absorb this hiccup with a sigh and move on the all those visions of what you're doing to do with all that garage space.
Hi! Hopefully you're settled in the new place and back on the, um, Corston, or is it the Astvette? Please let it be the former!
Sorry for the lack of updates. We moved into the new house. I had to quickly gut and renovate the apartment above my new garage to make it livable and move a family member into it. We completely renovated the first floor of the new house and I replaced almost all of the plumbing and electrical in the basement and first floor of the house.
Unfortunately, the car project was pushed into the back of the garage and is patiently waiting for me to free up some time to work on it. The garage needs to be rewired and lights hung so I can work in there throughout the winter months. Luckily enough it is a heated garage. For now here is the car sitting in the mess of clutter that I didnt have time to find a place for when we moved. Ill be getting back to the car by December I hope.
ok and we are back at it. I finally have so space cleared out in the new garage to get this back going. I made some down and dirty stands to lift the car off the ground for the body design and construction to save my back and not work on the floor anymore.
After months of staring at the car and contemplating life decisions and such, I have made some design changes...stick with me here.
so rather than making a copy cat supercar body that in reality will still blend into the crowd, lets build something that will turn everyones head. Open top roadster, no doors or roof. Basically building my own front engine Lotus 311.
Im pulling inspiration from the 311 and the Vuhl, as seen below. stay tuned
As im simplifying the car I realized it will much easier to actually rewire the entire car than to try to retrofit the factory wire harness to my needs. So out with the old...
with that out of the way it time to remove the roof yet again. now without a roof, theres no need for glass (except a windscreen which will be addressed much later), no windshield wipers, no AC and no sterio. With roof removed, complete AC system deleted (I will be installing an aftermarket heater core and running heat in the car) I was able to actually see the back of the engine. I may be the only C5 owner that has seen the backside of the engine without removing it!
I was able to find lots of little oil leaks and easily repair them. The intake manifold came off to replace the leaking gaskets and the PCV lines were completely disintegrated so they were also replaced.
with the chassis stripped its time to further strip the chassis sheet metal down even further. To mount the roadster style body Ill be making a tub style chassis which will require the existing corvette door jambs at the B pillars to be removed so I can make the tub.
Lots of grinding and cutting right next to the fuel tanks to remove the excess sheet metal.
stay tuned. more to come
In reply to jlk16188 :
Whoa. That's a pretty significant plot twist.
I didn't see that coming, but it will definitely be an attention getter!
I like the roof, a lot, but also know that how you made it fit shows you'll go somewhere awesome with no roof. I'm looking forward to seeing it take shape!
Also, your new garage looks awesome and what you consider clutter is pretty funny compared to what I'm used to. ;-)
Can you do me a favor and take pictures of all your fuel lines and evaporative emissions stuff and all that that is behind the rear bulkhead in front of the rear wheels? I'm working on a similar C5 kind of project and I know I'm missing parts there but not sure what
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
I will. I may be able to give you all of mine. Im deleting all the emissions systems so what I dont need would be going to the trash
In reply to jlk16188 :
Either option would be absolutely fantastic and I thank you for your assistance
I was going to comment about a 3 to 4" loss of headroom with the Tib roofline, but that's academic now.
In reply to jstein77 :
actually the tiburon roofline gained about 3 inches of headroom over the original corvette roof and huge amounts of driving visability since the A pillars were very slimmed down. The original A pillars were meant for a convertible chassis (all C5's are made with convertible windshild frames) with sure thick A pillars in an effort to support the car in a roll over which made the pillars very intrusive to your visibility.
Agent98 said:I like the new plan!
(careful with the mission creep, or you'll wind up with:)
well it has to end up somewhere!
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