Somebeach (Forum Supporter)
Somebeach (Forum Supporter) Dork
11/22/24 3:13 p.m.

I don't have the plan quite worked out in my head yet on what to do with them, but I bought a pile of corvette C5 parts.

I was looking for some Miata subframes and then came across some pictures of corvette subframes. 
 

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/news/what-would-you-do-c5-corvette-rolling-chassis/

That led me to J and J auto wrecking which was about 2 hours away. I called them up they had great customer service, my phone call was pleasant, I asked if they could come down some on there prices. The lady that answered the phone said she would call me back. She did call me back and had spoken with her manager and they were able to come down some on the costs. 
 

I went to pick up the parts today, customer service was good in person as well. 
 

I ended up getting front and rear subframes, calipers, and a front frame cut that I can use as a jig.  The subframes were a little heavy to unload on my own, but here they are on my barn floor. 

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter)
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
11/22/24 3:21 p.m.

Nice!

Somebeach (Forum Supporter)
Somebeach (Forum Supporter) Dork
11/22/24 3:23 p.m.

When I knew that I was going to head over to JandJ anyways I messaged on a Facebook ad for some other parts that was only about 20 mins from JandJ 

 


 

Long story short the guy selling the corvette parts on FB was awesome, he showed me his project that he is working on. Which is a rear engine LS, mated to a Subaru transaxle, with corvette subframes front and rear. 
 

He sold me a slew of other corvette parts that he wasn't going to use, for a great price. 
 

1. Corvette 4l60e and converter
2. Manual transmission torque tube
3. Auto torque tube
4. Rear differential 
5. 4 corvette calipers
6. Corvette leaf springs
7. Rear corvette frame cut
8. Left and right front frame rails 

Somebeach (Forum Supporter)
Somebeach (Forum Supporter) Dork
11/22/24 3:25 p.m.

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

I need to go back and look at your Corvair challenge car thread to see how you mounted your corvette subframes. Your build helped me decide to pull the trigger on these parts. 

Somebeach (Forum Supporter)
Somebeach (Forum Supporter) Dork
11/22/24 3:29 p.m.

Another great find when I was unloading the parts, looks like the rear differential has a limited slip in it.

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter)
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
11/22/24 5:58 p.m.
Somebeach (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

I need to go back and look at your Corvair challenge car thread to see how you mounted your corvette subframes. Your build helped me decide to pull the trigger on these parts.

my front is C4, the steel crossmember is welded into the corvair unibody. The rear is C5.  if i build another one, it will be C5 or C6 at both ends.

for the rear, i scabbed some angle onto the crash beam to hold things in alignment as we narrowed it.  We cut 5" out of the center of the subframe, then patched it into the Corvair unibody.

Somebeach (Forum Supporter)
Somebeach (Forum Supporter) Dork
4/4/25 8:06 p.m.

All the posts on the challenge have me motivated to get working on a challenge build again. 
 

I started to build out a jig to locate, and plan out the mounting of the front subframe and the upper control arm mounts. 
 

Next time  make a jig for something I am going to buy some 1" square steel tube, I was trying to repurpose a old deer stand ladder that was stashed in the barn. It would have been better to also have the jig be square to itself and not just a bunch of random metal welded together. 
 

When I get to the rear subframe, I might just use the whole rear frame cut that I have from the c5 and find a way to weld that into the car, it seems like it would be a lot heavier but easier than designing a custom way to mount the c5 subframe into a challenge car. 

Somebeach (Forum Supporter)
Somebeach (Forum Supporter) Dork
4/4/25 8:21 p.m.

Here are a few rough measurements of the driveline pieces

Somebeach (Forum Supporter)
Somebeach (Forum Supporter) Dork
4/4/25 8:23 p.m.

This is the way I am leaning to space out the front control arms from the frame, this is a screen grab from you tube of someone else's build. 
 

what are the spacers called that the yellow arrow is pointing to? 
 

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