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!

[napa68]

Now you can redo the silk screen on the tach face for a 7500 RPM redline

[Arrowsmith]

I actually spoke to two outfits who silk screen Corvette gauges. Both told me it was easier and less costly to buy new faces...One of them told me they stopped doing C3 tachs for that reason. So...that's why I bought new faces.

[Arrowsmith]

Accomplishing a transmission R&R on a C2 or most C3 Corvettes with a stick is a royal pain in the you know where. To remove the gear box, you have to first remove the driveshaft and shove it out of the way. Then the shifter stick has to come out (and sometimes, the entire shifter). Next you remove the bolts to the bellhousing. The transmission is pulled back, rolled over on its side and then slid back toward the rear end assembly. From here, the distributor should be removed and then you allow the back of the engine to drop on a jack while you point the transmission input shaft in a downward angle. If you’re lucky, the input shaft clears the hole in the bellhousing and the trans can come out without smashing into you. In some cases, the bellhousing bolts have to be loosened to get more room. Grrr….

Here’s the stock setup:



The entire reason for this Gong Show is because automatic transmission Corvettes have a removeable transmission crossmember. Stick shift Corvettes do not. It’s an extremely common issue addressed on various Corvettes forums ad nauseam.

I decided I’m way too old for all of that. Plus I work alone. My Shepherd Teddy won’t help , so I searched for various options on building a removable crossmember. There are several good options. But in my case, I didn’t want to weld anything on the car. So that limited me to two choices. I copied one that I saw on several different C2 Corvettes. It borrows a bit from a vintage Mopar setup. But it does require a lot of cuts (13 of them in my case).

First things first, I marked out my cuts with a white paint pen. There’s a lot of cell phone camera distortion in both of these photos (the vertical lines are actually at 90-degrees):





There’s not a lot of room under the car, particularly between the frame and the floor pan. I used a compact air saw along with an air powered die grinder and some 3-inch cutting wheels to slice and dice the crossmember. I used up my fair share of saw blades and cut off wheels. It was definitely a long "pucker moment" cutting this thing out....L-O-L:



This is the cut-out piece. I made up some plates out of mild steel to fit:



Since I don’t weld, I took them to town and had them welded to the crossmember:







Next I put it back up in the car and checked the fit. It was extremely tight. I had to use a dead blow hammer to install it and a pry bar to get it back out. Getting it to fit nicely, but still allow it to come out took quite a bit of time. Once it finally fit cleanly, I marked and drilled the eight holes necessary to mount it. Finally, I painted it semi-gloss black:





Here it is in the car. There are four 3/8-inch grade 8 bolts holding in place, plus it’s in double shear so it’s not going anywhere. I’m really (Really!) happy with how it turned out.

[Arrowsmith]

It was my plan from the beginning to install power windows in the Corvette. Since the interior was out, it was a pretty straightforward task, but there were a few, uh, learning moments…L-O-L

I purchased a complete power window kit from Corvette Central. It uses mostly US made reproduction copies of OEM parts (I’m not sure of the motor source). In terms of fit, it was great. The backorder time was brutal, but it eventually arrived. In the photo below you can see the differences between the crank up setup and the PW system.




The console part of the install equation was easy-peasy. Pretty much a plug and play job. I could have used the repro non-power window console that came with the car, but it was just easier to buy a new console with the switch holes already opened up. I treated the console to a new park brake slide while I was at it.



Installing the mechanism in the door was straightforward, but I made a dumb mistake. I forgot I hadn’t installed the upper window stops when I went to test the setup on the driver side door. To compound the dilemma, I had a made up a jumper harness for the PW motor. I used a red wire and a white wire to go to a shop battery. But…which wires connected to yellow and to black? The window can work either way. So naively I moved forward. Ooops! I picked the wrong color mix...L-O-L. The power window regulator shot the works right up out of the top of the door and with it, the spring exploded out the big opening in the door. Lucky for me, the spring missed me, Teddy, the Corvette and my pickup truck. It took a bounce off the garage door and ended up underneath my truck. So, I took everything apart (again) and re-installed the spring. This can be done by clamping the body of the regulator in a shop vice and manually cranking the spring back into place by way of the main arm. It’s not difficult but you have to be wary: That spring is under a lot of tension. Getting the window installed is another challenge. You basically have to drop the front end of the glass in first (the window is almost at a 90-degree angle in relation to the door), align the front roller and then work your way back with the glass. Sounds easy enough, but this part of the assembly took some teeth grinding and a few choice cuss words. The reason is, there’s precious room for the rollers at the top of the door.



Next, there’s rubber wire conduit that must be installed between the door jamb and the door. I initially thought it could be maneuvered into place by hand by opening the door all the way. Not so fast Buster! I searched the internet and someone suggested I might be able to accomplish the install by fishing it into place with a section of twine. After an hour or so of playing with that notion, I decided to do what I swore I wouldn’t do: Remove the door. Because I work alone, I had to come up with a MacGyver arrangement (there are some specialty tools for this job that attach to a floor jack but I don’t have them). I used some moving blankets, a jack stand and a cherry picker to hold and maneuver the door while I installed the conduit. Here’s a little tip (no picture available): Instead of scribing the hinge mount bolt locations inside a door, simply spray them with a contrasting color of lacquer. No one will see the paint when you’re done and it’s way easier than scribing around a washer in a tight location.



This is the rubber conduit I’m referring to. You can’t see it here, but it has a molded index pin on the door jamb side, so it can only go in one way.



Next up: Carefully slide the door back into place and before it’s all the way home, pop the conduit into the door.



All of that to get these two wires inserted into the door…



This is the finished conduit install…



The gaps and alignment on both doors were the same as before…



I installed new window fuzzies (wipes) and re-used the OEM stainless molding. Once that was done, I adjusted the windows. It’s not a difficult task, but I did remember to tighten all of the adjustment hardware…L-O-L. And as a preview, you can see I installed Hushmat in the cockpit. I’ll get to that next.

[Too Many Projects]

Wow, lot of work to get that rubber boot in. You should be able to just wipe any aerosol spray paint right off with a rag moistened with lacquer thinner. I use SEM guide coat, only because it's here and is very easy to wipe off.

[TimG]

Good job on the removable cross member. All the vintage race guys perform the same conversion on C2 and C3 manual transmission chassis so they can remove their transmission easier.

[Too Many Projects]

Originally Posted by TimG

Good job on the removable cross member. All the vintage race guys perform the same conversion on C2 and C3 manual transmission chassis so they can remove their transmission easier.

The only thing I would do different would be to secure a pipe inside the frame box section, so when the fasteners are tightened they would clamp to a solid surface. Since he doesn't weld, that would require an epoxy bonding agent.

[Arrowsmith]

Good idea on the thinner, but in this case the respective fasteners are all inside the door. No one will ever see them. And yes, this has proven to be a challenging, extremely labour intensive build. Plus the costs have turned out to be higher than expected because I’ve had to replace so many parts. But in the end I’m ultimately responsible for buying into this project and I believe it will end up being a super nice hot rod.

[Arrowsmith]

Originally Posted by Too Many Projects

The only thing I would do different would be to secure a pipe inside the frame box section, so when the fasteners are tightened they would clamp to a solid surface. Since he doesn't weld, that would require an epoxy bonding agent.

That’s a good idea. I might consider that, but right now each side of the fastener is tightened into .250-inch of mild steel so I’m not too worried. I have a friend who is a retired Mechanical Engineer so I’ll ask him.