Frame Restoration

With the body removed I could now get my first clear look at the Chassis Frame on the Corvette. Without the body it was now easy to lift the frame up to a nice working height on axle stands and give it the attention it needed.

One of the things that had me choose to build this car was my original experience of restoring a 1958 Vette when I realised that between Corvettes having a glass fibre body and a chassis frame made from girder thickness steel, the need for rust repairs and welding was eliminated. However, once the body was off this car, I was surprised to see a couple of areas of frame had rusted through. Still, I suppose that for a 50 year old car it isn’t so bad. They were in the bottom of the frame rails around the leaf spring front mounting point on the RHS.

As part of the roll cage fabrication, a couple of plates had already been welded on to cover / reinforce this area but there remained more to do.

After an abortive attempt to get my 160A ‘Hobby’ MIG welder to generate enough penetration, I gave a call to a local mobile welder who came out one Saturday morning and did all of the welding on the frame (including a little bit of seam welding to strengthen things here and there) in a morning. It would have only taken about an hour if the two of us hadn’t found far too much common ground to talk about with American cars and V8 engines; he is apparently a big Camaro fan!

With the welding done, it was time to clean up the frame. Mindful of cost and wanting to have everything under my own control I loaded up an Ebay purchased twisted knot wire brush into my angle grinder and set to it. I ended up wearing one of these out completely before the job was done but the £2:99 seemed a small price to pay compared to the cost of having the whole frame shot blasted and avoided all the trouble of getting it to and from the blaster’s.

To the bare metal I first applied a coat of FE 1-2-3 rust prevention primer from www.rust.co.uk .

Actually, it wasn’t me, but my lovely wife who, in the week after we got back from our Dominican Republic honeymoon, brushed on first the primer and then the Satin Black Chassis Paint J Thanks Baby!

The finished article, repaired, clean and painted ready for new and restored parts to start to go back on. At last the “reassembly” part of the project can begin!





Body: Part 1

Time to get back to this blog after falling in love, getting married, new jobs and other wonderful things that have kept me away (somewhat) from cars!

I’ve taken the Corvette down to the body shop and they managed to lift off the body so that they can work on that whilst I concentrate on the mechanicals.

Without a body on it, I had hoped that the frame would seem small and easy to manage and work around in the workshop but to be honest space has still been an issue as you can see from this picture of the unloaded chassis back at base.

That however has been improved recently with a couple of the long term (immobile) residents of the workshop having departed :-) !

My friend Karl the carpenter / joiner made up a ‘Dolly’ for the body to sit on from plans I got in a booklet on Corvette restoration. However, it turned out to not provide enough support of the overhanging rear section of body work so the body shop have had to put on a ratchet strap to stop the arse from sagging!

Note, the bike frame is not intended to remain as a feature of the finished vehicle in case of mechanical failure or running out of juice!

As you can see, the preparation and priming of the body has gone well but with the slightly floppy nature of the separated body, the painter is worried about cracking the top coat when lifting the body back onto the frame so the plan now is to get the frame refurbished (with powertrain fitted) back to him so that the final spray job will be done on an assembled vehicle.

This re-assembly should happen in time to allow Nigel to spray the car during the quiet shut down period over Christmas and New Year so I am looking forward to the prospect of a very shiny New Year’s gift!