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...