Initial Purchase

This is my second 69 Vette, my first was stolen in Jan of 2004. When my insurance company settled the claim, I decided to get another one and start over. I bought this car in St. Joseph, MO from a retired body shop owner. I drove 7 hours to look at the car and when I arrived it looked pretty good but there were a few discrepancies from the original description. First, the ragtop was trashed, the seams were rotted out and the canvas was in poor condition. Second, the car didn't run worth a damn, the carburetor was pouring too much gas into the engine. The engine did look clean and the owner had receipts from a very recent (at least mileage wise) engine rebuild (see #10 below). I liked the car overall and I always wanted a 427 convertible (my first 69 Vette was a 350 Coupe) so after a renegotiation in price I loaded it on a trailer and took it home. Additionally, I bought this car not expecting the numbers to match, but I later found that the engine, transmission, and rear end VIN, casting number and date codes all matched.

The car is a numbers matching 427/390hp, with a close-range Muncie M-21 4-Speed, and a 3.36 HD Posi rear end. Air was not available with this transmission, but who needs it with a convertible. The car does have Power and Tilt/Telescoping steering.

1a The parking brakes on the drivers side were a solid piece of rust, I had to beat off the brake shoes with a hammer to get the parking brake assembly off the drivers side. The passenger side parking brakes were missing. The parking brake cables are rusted solid. I haven't fixed this yet, it requires a stainless steel parking brake kit.

1b Ordered the SS kit on the 27th of April along with both door pillar weatherstrips and a ragtop pillow, details and pics once I get it back from #10c below. Installed the kit on April 11th, everything went pretty well, but I forgot how hard it is to put parking brakes on a vette. The cable that connects to the brake handle was large in diameter than the original and it required drilling out the guide slot to 3/16" instead of 1/8".

2 The ground wire for the wiper motor and heater fan motor was connected to the main starter lug. The previous owner had run an individual ground to each item, but apparently it had been hooked up wrong for a while because it melted the shielding off the main power feed wire. The state of the wiring under the hood was pretty lousy so I pulled the wiring off the starter and replaced all the wiring under the hood, following color and size as closely as possible. I went ahead and ran an auxiliary power feed also and installed a relay to run my after-market electrical components.

3 The paint on the rims was lousy and the spare rim was a piece of garbage. I took all four tires off and sanded the rims down to the base, they had multiple layers of paint and quite a few runs. I used a grinder, files, and lots of sandpaper but finally got them down to a good smooth surface, one of them was a bit too rough to ever get it right, so I bought a new wheel and used this one for the spare. I painted the insides with high-temp gloss black and the outsides are the correct rally silver.

4 All of this was done without me having successfully driven it once. I ordered a carburetor the day I got it home. The carburetor on the car was a Holley 3310 with vacuum secondaries and the choke was rigged up with a paper clip. I really don't like vacuum secondary carbs with manual transmissions so I decided to replace it with a Demon Carbs SpeedDemon 750 with mechanical secondaries and electric choke. The problem with the carb was actually the fuel pump, whoever built this engine put an electric fuel pump on without a regulator (or filter for that matter) and the 11lbs of pressure blew out the seat gaskets. While I was waiting for my Holley Blue series electric fuel pump and regulator (which I traded my old carb for) I also figured out that the pump was mounted badly, i.e. on the passenger side head, and the few times I was able to drive it I had vapor lock problems, this may have also contributed to the carburetor issues. Just for the coolness of it, I put an inline fuel pressure gauge on the fuel line assembly. As you can see, someone strapped the fan shroud up with wire ties, I bought the correct bracket and fixed this.

5 The tach cable was shot. The cable shielding was good, so I bought a new cable, pulled the cable out of the shield and slid the cable into my existing shielding, this necessitated taking the dash apart to get to the tach side of the cable. While I had the dash out I discovered the car was originally blue with a saddle interior, the dash and door panels were died black, but the back sides were still saddle. I also used this as an opportunity to rip the POS aftermarket stereo out and throw it away. Also I replaced the console data plate with a shiny new one and replaced the leather steering wheel cover. I have yet to get a replacement stereo, yet another item on my list.

6 Sometimes a car can be too original and when it comes to points, original sucks. Just for fun I wiped the dust off my dwell gauge and tried timing the car. I couldn't get the dwell anywhere near right, when I set it to 29 degrees the intake vacuum went way down. I looked and saw exactly what I expected, the distributor cam was round, there was hardly a raised edge left on it. This didn't really break my heart as I wanted to change to HEI anyway. I bought a MSD Pro Billet Tach Drive distributor, and installed the vacuum advance lockout kit (I forgot how much I hate snap rings). I changed the springs and advance limit bushing to get a little more aggressive timing curve. I coupled it with an MSD 6AL ignition and an MSD blaster SS coil. I chose the passenger side fender well to mount these items.

7 The deck lid was improperly aligned and the fiberglass hinge points were trashed, I took this to a local boat shop and had them rebuild the hinge points. I theorize it was misaligned because someone put weather-strip on both the upper and lower surfaces. This didn't help anything as the correct upper piece of weather-stripping was hard and brittle. The rear compartment vent has a broken vacuum line and is frozen up from lack of use. This is on my list but not a priority.

8 When I pulled off the ragtop I realized it has been neglected for years, the frame was rusted out pretty bad and had many pits and notches from rust. The first thing I did was sand it all down, I had to use a grinder to get rid of some of the rust build up. Then I filled in all the holes with JB Weld and re-sanded the whole thing. Once the surface was smooth I painted the frame gloss black. I bought a new stainless steel screw kit for the frame and replaced all the fasteners. I took the car to a Hot Rod specialist about 30 miles away and had him put a new ragtop on (corvette central has the best deal on a full kit with weather-strip and screws). After the replacing the guide bushings and polishing the pin brackets and latch handles, the top is now the best looking part of the car.

9 The weather-stripping is abysmal.

10a Now that I have a new ignition, new carb and new top, I'm ready to get it road-worthy. I get a set of Taylor Spiro Pro spark plug wires and go through the excruciating process of custom making all the wires. I fire it up and take it for a little spin, it runs like a bat out of hell when I'm accelerating but like shit when I'm not. So I check it out and it sounds like I've got some lifters rattling. I don't have a junk set of big block valve covers to cut holes in so I call the local speed shop and they tell me they'll adjust the rockers for 25 bucks. I take the car over and leave it. Then the bad news comes. They adjusted the lifters but it was still missing, they ran a compression test and found a stuck/burnt valve. So I tell them to pull and check the heads. They find the exhaust valve on my #3 cylinder is stuck, the valve springs are the wrong ones for the competition Magnum 270 cam and the springs were shimmed to get them close to spec. The receipt I have for the last owners head work shows work performed, just not performed well. All the valve guides need to be replaced because quite a few of the valves are "sloppy". Im not sure if the valve springs were replaced but they aren't on any receipt I have, so either they just reused the old springs and shimmed them or they used the wrong springs and shimmed them. Either way, the car must have sit for quite a while because a few of my valve springs were compressed. So to wrap up this long story, they cleaned up the valves and seats, put in new valve guides, and new springs. Thankfully the bottom half engine work was done by another machine shop, maybe it's right.

10b It turns out, that I was blaming the wrong guy somewhat. Even though the springs were wrong, the car did sit for an extended period and therefore the springs were compressed and would have been even if they had been the right ones. After replacing the valve guides and doing a valve job (on a set of heads with less than 500 miles since the last one), the aforementioned speed shop started the car and it still had lifter rattle. They pulled the valve covers and connected a drill to the oil pump, with 70 lbs of oil pressure there was no oil coming out of the push rods. So they deducted that the root cause of the problem with the heads was probably the rear cam bearing being improperly installed.

10c Since they were quite backed up and in the hope of saving some money I took the day off work and pulled the engine. Hot Springs Speed and Truck was kind enough to let me use their tools and I spent about 5 hours pulling the engine. There are a few positives to this disaster, first I was able to pull the engine out and inspect the rest of the previous machine shop's work. Even though I didn't get as far as the rear cam bearing (so I haven't verified it was the real problem yet), the rest of their work looked pretty damn good, they balanced the crank and connecting rods, they installed a new double timing chain and a new gear, and the pistons are new. The cylinder walls still look freshly honed, they spot welded the oil pump pickup to prevent it from falling off as Chevy's are prone to do. The lifters and push rods are new. It has a new clutch, pressure plate and throw-out bearing. One negative was the gaskets, they apparently didn't feel like using gaskets, they used a very sloppy amount of silicon, but it doesn't matter since I have to replace them all anyway.

10d Another negative was the oil pan. In addition to being the wrong oil pan (also missing the windage tray), it had a huge dent in it where they pounded a hump in it to make it fit over the power steering control valve. I ordered a replacement from GM and the four main bearing cap studs to install the windage tray. Hopefully this will make the dipstick read accurately. Also this gives me a chance to put the vacuum canister back on as it was removed at some point and cannot be installed with the engine in the car. I ordered an LS7 oil pan from my local Chevy dealer on April 30th, it showed up on May 4th and I almost made the mistake of buying it on E-bay. It was cheaper direct from GM. This oil pan is a big improvement over the POS pictured above. When I installed the engine with the new correct oil pan it was necessary to take off the power assist arm. Five minutes worth of additional work to do it right.

10e When the speed shop had my heads off I stopped by to look at the head work, and we looked at my intake and discovered the damn thing was rectangular port and not oval port. So I had yet another thing to replace. After taking some measurements I determined that I wanted an Edelbrock Air-Gap RPM oval port intake and I bit the bullet and ordered it. Whoever the previous owner had rebuilding this engine was obviously smoking crack as they don't know anything about air-flow or fuel pressure.

11a Well today (5/8/2004) I finished up what I started Thursday (5/6/04). Thursday I put the engine back in the car. When I was done I still needed to mount the radiator, stick the distributor, install Z-bar, water pump, power steering, alternator. Today I arrived at the speed shop and started wrapping it up. After adding the finishing touches we fired it up and it sounded wonderful. It purred at an idle and had great throttle response. I still need to put the hood back on and burp the engine (remove air from coolant) and install the SS parking brake kit from 1b. Im doing this now because I need to bleed the brakes after taking the brake booster off to install the vacuum canister, and I figure I might as well do all the brake work at once. While bleeding out the brakes on 5/12/04 I got as far as the front passenger caliper, then the bleeder broke off in the caliper, we drilled it out, used a left hand extractor, heated it with an acetylene torch, all to no avail. I drove down to the auto parts store and traded in my caliper. It really wasn't worth all that effort as it was leaking like a sieve. Then I got back and the fitting on the brake line snapped off. This necessitated another trip tot he store to get some 3/16" brake line and a compression fitting. I don't like splicing but it will do until winter when I plan to do a frame-off.

11b Well I brought the car home on May 16th, to wrap it up I had to fix a power steering hose leak. The low pressure fitting needs some pipe tape. The car runs pretty good, it still needs some tuning, but its good enough to enjoy for while before messing with that.

12 The "Stingray" logos had no speed nuts, the rear bumper brackets are missing and both rear quarter panel bumper bolts are missing. The speed nuts are fixed, the bumper will have to wait.

13 The carpet is trash. Needs replacing.

14 Both door panels are borderline trash, need replacing.

15 Both door springs were broken/missing, they've been replaced.

16 The passenger vent knob is broken and not attached to the cable. Some of the fiber-optic light indicators don't work.

17 The clock is stuck (no big surprise).

18 Some of the welds were broken on the driver side header, I had an exhaust shop pull it off and re-weld. Apparently the automotive genius that built the engine just jammed the header in and didn't care it he broke the welds. When performing #10c above, I pulled the headers again and painted them with high-temp (1200 F) black paint.

19 The wiper door is stuck (needs to be cleaned and lubed) and the vacuum and wiper fluid hoses are in a state of disarray, the washer solenoid valve is broken and needs replacing. I took out the wiper door assembly on 5/21/04 and lubed it up good, I replaced the seal on the actuator and I may need to get the door bolt holes rethreaded. Im trying to track down a correct wiper motor for this car now.

20 The oil dipstick and tube were incorrect so I ordered an original set. Even with the original set, they didn't read accurately, see #10c above.