Welcome to My77Corvette.com.
I decided to build this ongoing weblog site to somewhat document and share my experiences with my 1977 L48 Corvette restoration project. Over the last 6 or 7 years I have slowy but surely worked on bringing this baby back to life. The car finally went into the paint shop back in August for the last phase of the rebuild. It is now Sept. 26th and it appears we have about 2 weeks before bringing the bad mama jama back home.
My parents originally purchased the Corvette back in 1981 from the 2nd owners. At the time the car was in excellent shape. My parents simply wanted a car to enjoy on the weekends. The sad part for me, was I was in the 12th grade at the time and I wasn’t allowed to touch it…. Dude, that’s like hanging a giant piece of candy in front of a bus load of sweet tooth kids…However there were a few times in my early college years I snagged the keys and drove it around the block(maybe a bit further, but Ill never tell). Now don’t think I didn’t get caught, because truth be told, I did.
Here’s A Few More Related Posts
Now keep in mind, the car was drivable, in good shape and simply needed some new valve springs to clear up the occasional puffs of blue smoke from sitting so long. So there it began. No sooner than I took off the valve covers, I had already started tearing down the engine compartment. Even though the car had been in a covered shed for years, the weather was still able to get to the frame and engine compartment. Rust was not a big problem, but there was areas that were showing weather stains, slight rust and just nasty ole grease. Now I never claimed to be a mechanic, nor have I even found the first shade tree. Foruntely my good friend and cousin Doug Briest was pretty much an expert when it came to this stuff.
The next wekeend, Doug brought over his engine hoist and we went to town tearing down the motor, radiator and everything else necessary to pull the 350 engine out. The hardest part was labeling all the parts and trying to find a place in my small 2 car garage to put them. Let me tell you now, it’s a real good thing I did. Almost a year and a half went by before we put the motor back in and all these labels came in nice and handy.
Living in the Charlotte, Concord area I worked with several race teams and knew the owners of some of the NASCAR engine building shops. I was abe to get one of these specialist to rebuild my motor during their off season time so basically it was a waiting game for me and I was’nt really in a hurry. This also gave me plenty of time to get all the miscellaneous engine parts jet coated, powder coated or spray painted back to GM corvette blue color.
Somewhere during all the events up til now, I got married. Next thing I knew, we had more cars, less garage space and a better half nagging at me to do something with the car. …Good ole cousin Doug to the rescue again. Doug has recently finsihed up a few projects and had a hug shop behind his house to not only store the car but begin all the frame, and suspension restoration. This ended up going way over budget but hey, if you are gonna do something, do it right……right? The list includes frame, A arms, Trailing arms, front suspension, brakes, rotors, mufflers, tail pipes, chasis paint, body bushings and who knows how many small parts I lost track of. We took our time and worked when we could, Doug did most of the work and I went over every chance I had. It was a pretty bg challenge but we had a lot of fun working away at it.
We managed to get the motor back in after prepping out the motor compartment. All the external parts sure go back on slower than they came off. Can I say that again? 
Eventually we fired the ole girl up and she roared like a well tuned rocket. You could definetely hear the difference in the new Cam with 30 over bore pistons. Even better, the stupid catalytic convertrs are now in the trash can.
After we took some brief road test, it was then time to find a Corvette Paint and Body specialist. This is not an easy find. In fact my car went to one person, who had done nothing but Corvette restoration fo over 30 years. He actually was able to mount my new PlexiGlass bumpers and that is as far as he made it before having a heart attack. This was pretty much a big let down to me, but waht you gonna do? It was just a car and fortunately the man was still living. After this I pretty much gave up for a few years after being put off by several other ‘too busy’ paint and body specialist. So the car came back home to take up space in the garage of our now new house.
Now I mentioned before my better half was nagging to do something with the car right? Well guess what… yep, the nagging has come back to haunt me again. Long story short, my lovely wife Jennifer decided she was gonna take care of getting the Corvette painted. Her goal was to ‘get it done’ as a 40th birthday present to me. To her credit, she landed the perfect person to do the job. I will provide a post specifically about the owner and detail his work on the car. For now, let’s just say the car was in the paint shop within about a week after Jennifer picked up the phone.
The paint job was estimated 8 - 10 weeks which included body work such as perfecting the seams, bumper alignment, stress crack repairs, door jams, hood, sanding, wheels, paint and weatherstripping. Every detail was covered and quoted for about $6500. Along with this we agreed to replace the original stock radiator with a new high performance aluminum Direct Fit radiator. Not to mention a new set of Uniroyal T/A radials.
I’ve checked in on the car several times now, and it’s pretty cool to see it getting closer each time. Excitement is building and we expect to pick up the Corvette any time now. it has been slightly over ten years since I took over the car. Sorry, that is just the best I could do. I will be posting many pictures of the completed project here on the site for all to see. I hope that some of my post, pictures and general information shed light on what is involved in restoring a classic corvette. Perhaps the site lend some tips here and there that may help someone else down the road. If nothing else, please enjoy the site as I share my 77 Corvette story.
