Wiper Motor

After getting the window motor to work, I took a look at the windshield wiper motor. It was not working either. While it was attached to the car, I noticed that its ground wire was missing. I added a new one but that didn't help. So I took the motor home and cleaned it.

Before

After

It took me a long time to figure out how the motor should work. And to get it working... I took it apart three or four times before I found the problem. Luckily I also found this Willcox Youtube video that explains a lot:

It's not exactly the same motor but functions in the same way. But still, no matter how I connected the wires, the motor would not turn. Finally I noticed that there was a small metal strip on the circuit board inside the motor. The board and the strip had small metal studs that seemed like they should be touching each other, but weren't. I bended the strip so the studs touched and voilà, the motor worked perfectly! I still can not understand why there had to be the strip and the studs? The connection could have been made by just soldering a wire to the board... Oh well, at least I knew the motor worked but the wiring harness in the car didn't.

Window Motor

As the garage was about 10 kilometers away from my home, I took smaller parts home to be fixed and cleaned. One of these was the electric window motor which looked like this:

One of the connectors had broken and it had been "fixed" by screwing a long screw next to it. The wire was then wrapped around the screw. Very professional looking... I disassembled the motor, cleaned it and added fresh grease. The connector was fixed by soldering short wires to it. The motor still wouldn't turn but luckily this was only because the adjusting screw on top of the axle was too tight. After loosening it, the motor worked fine! :)

Brake Problems

The car also had some issues with the brakes. The front right caliper was leaking a bit and the emergency brake seemed stuck. The brake caliper leaking was to be expected as the car had not been driven in a while but the fix would have to wait until I got new seals. So we checked the emergency brake.

The cable seemed OK but after removing the rear wheel, we found a little surprise. There was no brake components to be seen! I guess someone had thought that they were unnecessary parts and had removed the whole emergency brake system except for the cables. Luckily I managed to add those parts to the order...

First list of missing stuff

At the beginning of September I sent out the first of many parts orders. It included a long list of small parts like front parking lights, all the bushings and joints from the chassis, bearings to rear, new weatherstripping to everywhere etc. I also found the missing window and other driver door stuff from Contemporary Corvette.

While waiting for parts, we also checked the floors. Here's what they looked like:

Under the thin metal sheet there was polyurethane foam and some other crap to fill the huge hole. Luckily my friend is pretty good with a welder and fixed the passanger floor in a few evenings:

After this repair the leg room was increased considerably! Unfortunately the driver side still needed the same fix.

Electrical explorations

During the first month we mostly went through different systems in the car to see what I needed to order from USA. There are some stores that sell old US car parts in Finland but what I really needed was a specialist Corvette parts source. After going through a few (and there were a lot of them), I desided to use Corvette Central. Prices there seemed to be a bit lower than in other places and, more importantly, they agreed to send stuff through USPS. UPS, DHL etc. were convenient but expensive when shipping from US to Finland.

We stripped the interior and found all kinds of fun stuff from the wiring harnessess. Many wires were cut and hanging loose, some new connections had been made between wires, some were made from dozen small parts and just wrapped together etc. Pretty soon I realized that the wiring diagrams in my Chilton Repair Manual just weren't accurate enough.

I searched around and found excellent wiring guides from Dr. Rebuild. They have proven their worth during our electrical repairs. You could rebuild the whole wiring harnessess with these! And, as we later found out, we would have to...

Project plans

Now that I had the car, it was time to go through the project plan and goals.

As this was my first project car and I didn't know that much about car tech, the plan was to mostly do and learn. I was lucky to have an experienced friend to help me so I hoped to learn much. The goal was to build the corvette to be a reliable cruising car and fun on the street. Oh, and preferably the keep the costs low.

The high number of missing and not working parts meant that there would be no swapping in a big block or modern LS-engine. Mostly just fixing and getting the car to run and have fun with my friend while doing it. Performance upgrades would be on the list after getting the car registered.

First thing we did was remove the interior and start going through the electrics.

First inspection

It was the beginning of August, 2009 when I got the Corvette. I paid the seller to bring it to the garage because I didn't have a suitable car to haul it around. He seemed very keen to get hes money and get out as soon as possible. He arrived with 3 or 4 friends and together we rolled the Corvette out. I paid with a bank cheque and he was also pretty sceptical if it was real or not...

After the seller had left, we moved the car inside on to a lift. Then began the more thorough inspection. And, boy was there stuff to fix. This was the initial list:

Body

• Both the driver and passanger floors had to be changed. Some previous owner had "fixed" them by screwing a really thin sheet of metal on the huge holes in the floors and then filled the gaps with polyurethane foam. The foam was painted black so it would be more difficult to see.
• Polyurethane foam was also used to fill some other holes in the bodywork.
• Weatherstripping was mostly missing.
• The paint had run in a couple of places and needed a bit of fixing.
• Driver side window was missing.

Chassis

• Front right brake caliper was leaking.
• Rear wheel bearings were loose and needed to be changed.
• Nearly all the bushings and joints needed changing.
• A section of the exhaust needed fixing. It was not leaking but was pretty badly done.
• Transmission was leaking a little oil. Seemed that it was just the gasget but the oil pan was also quite badly dented.

Other

• Odometer was not working.
• Most of the lights were not working.
• Most of the other electrical systems were not working either.
• Some vacuum hoses were hanging loose.
• Etc. smaller stuff.

So, this was the list after the first few days. And there was more to come. But hey, at least I had my first project car! But I sure was glad that I had a friend to help me...

The Corvette -76 Project

In this blog I though I might write a little about my car project: a 1976 Chevrolet Corvette.

I actually bought the car already a year and a half ago and have been working with it ever since. Until now I've been writing about my project in FinnShark, the Finnish Corvette Forum but thought I'd try blogging too.

In the next few posts I'll go through what's been done so far. Let's start with the search for this car.

I've never had a project car before this, nor the skill to build one. Then I got a new friend who was a professional car mechanic and a car nut. We started talking about a project car and he agreed to help. He also promised that we could build the car where he worked. A professional shop with car lifts and a lot of tools sure sounded good. This closed the deal and the hunt was on.

At first I considered a few different models: Corvette, Camaro, Mustang and Firebird. I looked through what was on sale in Finland and eventually desided to get a Corvette. There were a few reasons for this: its body is made of fiberglass so it does not rust, parts are really easy to find, there were quite a few of them on sale and the styling of the C3 model is wonderful! If you're going to get a project car, why not get something cool, thought I.

I went to see a few cars but they were in really bad shape. Paint was flaking off, interior was rotten, they would not run, frames were rusty etc. But then again, they were the cheapest on sale... Then a yellow one appeared that seemed perfect. Seller was complimenting how it was in great shape, had been recently painted, rust free, was running great and what not. It was still a project so some work was left for us to do. It was more expensive but still in my price range.

We went to see it the same day and found the car from a large garage with about a dozen other cars. Seller told that the garage was his and that he was renting the space for others to store and work on their cars. There was a nice looking Camaro, a tuned Supra with a huge turbo, a Porsche etc. Then there was the Corvette in the back room.

We looked through the car and found that it was maybe not as great as advertised. Paint was new but not perfect, there were some electrical problems and some parts missing. But there were good sides too. Interior had been changed and was clean, frame did not seem rotten, engine was running pretty good and had been rebuild recently. The seller said he had driven the car bit so the automatic was working. We could not do a test drive ourselves as the car did not have plates but it seemed like a car we could work with. In the end I bought the car and it was delivered a few weeks afterwards.

And pretty much everything went downhill from there...