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Restoring the '68     Dick's '63 Convertible     My Three 'Vettes       BIG al's 98

Restoring the '63

by Larry   

The Car
Finally we found it. A '63 coupe. It was a basket case in the most extreme sense of the word. The body was in one garage, the frame in another, and the engine in a third. But it was fairly complete, had the original engine block and heads, original transmission, and most of it's original parts.

It was smashed lightly in the front corner, but otherwise showed no signs of damage. It had been painted dark green and the interior spray-painted black. It was originally a red car, with a red interior, a 300 HP 327, and a four speed.. That certainly met our final criteria; it was about as sellable as a car can be.

We figured out a budget and determined what we could afford to pay for it and still make a profit. We allowed several thousand dollars for the miscellany we would certainly need, and arrived at a price. Fortunately, the seller had dreams of retiring in the south seas, so he was motivated. We finally agreed on a price, but only if we would take one wheel into town and have the tire removed for him. We set the body back onto the frame and dragged it onto our trailer. We started stacking parts in and around the car and in the back of our pick up truck. A disassembled car takes up a lot of space!

Unloading
When we got home, we unloaded and sorted the parts. We put the chassis in my garage and the body in Pete's. The frame had been sandblasted and painted with the wrong paint, so we sanded it down and painted it again.

We made the first of many trips to the sandblasting service with the suspension parts, and the first of many trips to Corvette Specialties for our first list of parts

.Someone had tried to disassemble the trailing arms with a big hammer. We took them to a local expert who was able to save one spindle. That was the first hit on our "miscellany" fund. The rest of the suspension went together with no problems.

The block had one bad cylinder which needed a sleeve, and the transmission needed an input shaft, and the drive train was assembled and installed. We installed all new brake and fuel lines and fuel tank. I learned about the "S" hose to the fuel pump. With the rolling chassis finished, we put it a big plastic bag and parked it.

Now it was time for the body. We sanded off a layer of green paint, and a layer of white paint, and a layer of red, and another layer of red, and eventually found fiberglass. It was in excellent condition (our first positive surprise). The smashed front section provided a lesson in press molded parts and bonding strips. We found the factory crayon numbers on the underside of the body, and were careful to preserve them.

Finally… it was ready for paint. We applied the three wet coats of urethane pint and waited for it to set up. And waited,… and waited. The body shop supply admitted they had had some problems with catalyst.

So we washed off all the paint with lacquer thinner and cleaned and prepped everything again. This time the paint turned out beautiful! Pete is an excellent painter. He has done a number of award winning stock and custom paint jobs (right after I met him, I helped him do a perfect candy apple red '72 Corvette).

We were missing the side windshield trim pieces, and had been looking and looking. No one made a replacement, so we needed to find perfect used ones. We finally found a set, but he would only sell them as part of a package that included a complete reproduction coupe body. We paid $400.00 and put the rest of the body in storage. It is still sitting there waiting for someone to want to build a replica.

What a Body!
Now it was time to mate the body and frame. We carefully lowered the
body and found we couldn't get the bolts to line up. We took the body back off and discovered that the frame was slightly tweaked. Why hadn't we thought to check that month's ago? A quick trip to a frame shop run by a hot rodder who was sympathetic to working with a minimum of paint scratching resulted in a straight frame that need minimal touch up. This time the body fit perfectly.

It seemed like we were in the home stretch now. There were countless hours of fitting and adjusting the doors, then assembling and adjusting the windows. Fortunately, two of the first references we had bought were the factory assembly manual and a restoration manual. The descriptions and pictures were invaluable!

We hadn't found wheel covers in good condition for less than $1,000, so we ordered a set of reproduction knock off wheels. It was May when we started it up for the first time and backed it out into the sunlight. It was done!

Over that summer and part of the next, we took it to numerous shows. We put on 11 miles driving on and off the trailer and in and out of shows.

Luckily, a number of those miles were up to the reviewing stand to collect our trophies. Finally we decided that we didn't want to own a Corvette we couldn't drive, so we sold it.

We got a premium price, and figured our profits came to less than a dollar an hour.

Restoring the '68     Dick's '63 Convertible     My Three 'Vettes       BIG al's 98

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