Where I’ve Been, Corvette Edition

So, I listed off all those events in my previous post and you may be wonder how many of those events were for work and how many were for pleasure. To be perfectly honest, I see every one of those events as work. It’s hard for me to differentiate the two, which has its ups and has its downs. Either way, 2012 was a special year for me, because I drove the Corvette more than ever and had a great time doing it. The car is in need of several repairs and upgrades, but hey, that’s what this stuff is all about. Here’s where the Corvette has gone this year…

The first show of the year was just down the road in Graysville, TN. Here, my car is parked with Bill Sims’ roadster, which had just been finished at my dad’s shop.

The Corvette Continued…

The Story of My Corvette blog was wildly successful, thanks to being selected as a Freshly Pressed post, but the story of the car is most definitely incomplete. Obviously, I’m attached to the car and I’ll likely give it to one of my kids someday, but I’ve made a lot of changes to the car since it has become “mine”. When I first started driving it, the car constantly ran hot, due to the fact that it had a .060 over 327 and 4.11 rear end gears. The throttle linkage was very sticky and a touch of the brakes would pull the car unpredictably to the left or right, which made it exhausting to drive. Watching the temperature gauge like a hawk, I would carefully select the gears, because my dad had drilled into my head the likelihood of getting it hung up between gears. I found that my dad’s gripes about the car were totally true, so it was time to do something about it, instead of just dealing with it every time I slid behind the wheel.

Nothing beats a mountain drive in an old car with front runners, drum brakes and stock suspension.

Cool Picture of a Terrible Car

I’ve been known to buy and sell cars in an effort to make a couple bucks on the side. I rarely strike gold, but I struck the color brown when I got into the habit of buying Pontiac Firebirds. In the past 5 years, I’ve bought 4 of them, all fourth generation Firebirds. Three of them were Formulas, meaning they had LT1 engines. One of them was a six-speed car. I have never had any luck selling these cars, even when I feel like I get a good deal. Anyway, the whole point of this post is a pretty cool picture I took of my latest Firebird purchase, which occurred this time last year. The street light makes for a super green background, and the lights from our garage give the red paint a nice look. I told Christina to slap me if I ever consider buying another LT1 car, haha!

Ok, so not ALL LT1 F-Bodies are junk...but the ones I've owned haven't been too great.

The Story of My Corvette

If you pay attention to this blog or see my Facebook, then you know that I have a ’64 Corvette coupe that isn’t necessarily a purist pleaser. I mention the car all the time in my blogs, and have plenty of great stories involving it, but I have yet to explain the history of the car on here. I don’t know a detailed history on the car, but I do know quite a bit, as it’s been in the family for more than 25 years. It came from the factory with a 365 horse 327, a close ratio Muncie (M21) four-speed transmission and a 4.11 gear. Revealing only these specifications, you can tell this car was quite a screamer in its day. Low geared, light weight and lots of power, thanks to a solid-lift small block.

Here's the car as it looked in December of 1968. I bet those skinny rear tires made the car a handful to drive!

12 Bolts…

That’s how many bolts I installed today on my Vega. And I even took off work at 2:30. So let’s see, start working at 3:30pm, finish at 9:30, giving me a total of 6 hours of work time. With 12 bolts installed, that’s a rate of two bolts per hour….astonishing, I know. It was a frustrating day in the shop, but I was able to get the header installed, turbo clocked and installed, and down pipe installed. Oh, and I got the oil supply and return lines run to the turbo.

My little Vega sitting under the street light...this photo was taken a couple years ago. I'm finally putting an engine in it.

The more I look at it, I actually got a fair amount of work done, but it sure didn’t feel like it when the header bolts started giving me trouble. Everything appears to be resolved, so now I need to track down a few more bolts to bolt down the intake. One that’s in place, I can fabricate the piping to and from the intercooler. I’m almost ashamed to say what engine will be powering my Vega, so I’ll leave you hanging on that one…you’ll figure it out soon enough.

The Henry J Saga–Part 3

Rewind to about 10 years ago, I had already bought and sold a few cars, and I wanted a Henry J so bad I couldn’t stand it. My dad and I found a very good candidate in Pigeon Forge, TN one year but the price wasn’t right…or so I thought. I’m pretty sure the guy wanted $1,800 for it and it was about as solid as Henry J’s get, but I didn’t know how badly these cars rusted at that time. So we passed on it and waited for another one to come along. The search was on.

Wish I would've bought this car...SO solid!

My Cars–The RX7 Phase

Alright, so I’ve owned a bunch of cars, and this series of blogs will show some of the most notable ones…I’ve covered that before, but it’s been a while since I’ve contributed to this series. For some reason I’ve always been into weird cars, so I’ve always had a hankering for a Henry J or a Chevy Vega. Growing up, what I didn’t know is that I’d go through a phase in my post-high school years that would involve Mazda RX7’s. I owned three at one point, but when I sold them off, I had finished my RX7 phase and moved onto other stuff. No more RX7’s for me…unless it’s cheap and really cool. And it has turbos.

First paint job...sprayed it in a buddy's garage.

The Henry J Saga–Part 2

In part one of my Henry J saga, you read about my first inspiration to own a Henry J, which was my dad’s drag car if you do not recall. What didn’t reach the surface was my excitement each and every time I saw a Henry J at a car show. I am still very attracted to these cars, even if they aren’t built to suit my tastes, so if I see one, you can bet I’ll be checking it out thoroughly. I’ve probably seen 100 Henry J’s in my life, and I can appreciate all of them.

All along the way, I’ve taken pictures of EVERY Henry J I’ve laid eyes on, and I still do the same today. If I see a Henry J I take a picture of it. With this in mind, I figured Part 2 of my saga will show my ongoing inspiration to buy and build a Henry J. This blog won’t be nearly as wordy as Part 1, but you’ll see some of my favorite J’s through the years. Check ’em out!

Okay, so I didn't take this picture...it's another Henry J my dad owned. He never raced it to my knowledge.

People Just Don’t Get It

So, a few years ago I decided to try something different on my Corvette. The car had run a set of Weld Draglite wheels on it for years, and I needed something different. I’m definitely a fan of the old days drag racing, so I thought maybe I could take this approach with the Corvette and see how it looks. I bought a pair of 15×4-1/2-inch U.S. Indy slotted “mags” for the front and stuck a pair of stock steel wheels on the back…it was a great combination, aside from the rear tires, which were the only ones I had lying around the shop at the time. I didn’t want to buy new rear tires if I didn’t like the way this mis-matched wheel setup looked, but I ended up loving the look.

The first mis-matched combo on the Corvette. I should've kept those skinny slots!

I’m Actually Working on a Car!

It’s a good feeling, even with all of the frustration that goes along with it! We’re in the process of rebuilding the front suspension in my wife’s ’67 Camaro, so it’s nasty work that always seems to present problems along the way. It’s actually not that bad, since we have a total of 5 hours invested, and have already torn down the front end, stripped the control arms to bare metal, installed new bushings and ball joints, and hung the sway bar in place. It’s now ready for springs and spindles, and then we can replace the steering box, pitman arm, idler arm and tie rod ends. I’m really hoping the front end overhaul makes this car drive better because it was downright unsafe before the teardown.

A few of the new parts from Classic Performance Products.