1971 Corvette Hot Rod Build

[Arrowsmith]

Once the interior was out, I began toiling on the Corvette instrument cluster. Recall the broken tach needle? Part of the tach needle needle had fallen off, so it meant taking the cluster apart. I managed to locate the missing part (inside the tach housing). It wasn't damaged, but in preparation, I bought two reproduction needles from two different sources. As it turns out, both were junk made in China parts (evidently, from the same manufacturer). They were "soft", bent easily and weren't even close to the same mechanical configuration, but worse, they fit too close to the gauge face and during the sweep would get hung up on the face screws (which mount the face to the tach internals). I had to resort to Plan "B": Fix the original tach needle. I discovered they are actually manufactured as two-piece assemblies, so the fix was simple: I used a metal safe epoxy and fused the pieces together. It worked and it’s as good as new!..The accompanying pix have captions....this was really fiddly work and you don't know how many times I put down the tools and walked away.

Here's the before. As you can see, part of the tach needle isn't there.


Found it! It was floating around inside the housing.


Original needle on top, junk made in China reproduction on the bottom. Chinese part looks right but that's about it.


Because of the horrible quality, I decided to try and fix the needle. The needle itself is actually manufactured in two pieces. That meant I could fix it.


While I was at it, I swapped the tach face for one from a high performance (solid lifter) Corvette. The difference is the redline.


Done. Somehow, the odometer rolled back to zero too...Don't know how that happened...L-O-L …I thought since I will have touched every single fastener in the car, the odometer should reflect that. In truth, I wasn’t happy with the speedo face in this picture since the screening didn’t match the tach. Apparently, the gauges fade over time, so I took it all apart, bought a new speedo face to match and installed it (not shown here). Repros are supposedly made by the original equipment supplier. They look great.


Tools of the fiddly trade...L-O-L. medical hemostats are lifesavers when it comes to fat fingers and tiny parts...


The park brake handle in the Corvette was really gouged up. I figured...hmmm...easy switch. But with this car, it was a little job that took a while... You can't just replace the plastic on the handle. You have to replace the entire handle. No problem, although it's another fidgety Corvette job. But when I went to take out the original handle, one of the four 5/16-inch bolts was really tight (odd for this car). I managed to get it out. Sure enough, the threads were piled up. I removed the old handle, fixed the threads (fortunately there was enough material to make everything happy) and swapped out the handle. I’m glad I did because I had to go under the car and release the cable from the equalizer. Oops. Joe Restorer forgot to the tighten the nuts on the equalizer.

Here's the old handle. It had a lot of scuffing and bruising you just can't see here.


This is the new handle assembled on the park brake mechanism...


Aggravation...L-O-L. You know when this is out, there's always trepidation.


Fixed the fastener too...


Installed...Next!