Hi, Bruce -
I've attached some photos of the '63 Corvette Grand Sport replica I built.
I built the car in 1995 from a raw tube frame and raw one-piece fiberglass race body shell I bought from D&D Corvette in Akron, Ohio (now out of business). It was built as an exact replica of Grand Sport #003 as it appeared at the 12 Hours of Sebring in March, 1964, driven by A.J. Foyt and John Cannon.
It used C4 Corvette suspension and brakes, Aldan aluminum coil-overs, an Appleton sprint car power steering rack, JAZ fuel cell, custom-made Griffin aluminum radiator, and Phil Schmidt (PS Engineering, Torrance, California) made the Halibrand replica wheels for me from the original Grand Sport patterns.
Power was a relatively mild 383 I built with Edelbrock aluminum heads and intake; engine dynoed at 430hp @ 5800 and 440 ft-lbs. @ 4600. Used an M-21 and a 3.08 cruising axle; didn't need any more gear than that, as it only weighed 2340# wet. Hedman custom-made the under-frame headers for me, and the 4 sidepipes were open - no mufflers or baffles. Also added Vintage Air A/C for summer cruising, as the D&D race body shell had no provisions for ventilation. The only production Corvette parts in the body were the door hinges and latches and the windshield - everything else was fabricated.
I put about 6,000 miles on it and sold it in 1998 to an east coast collector to make garage space for another Corvette project; one of the many cars I've built that I should have kept, but you can't keep them all and continue to build/restore new projects.
Photos attached of the finished car and a few taken during engine pre-run in the chassis before body drop; use whichever ones you like.
Regards,
John Hinckley (JohnZ)
