Finished Engine

After much work, the engine came together. I detailed the entire compartment, including the A/C setup, the master cylinder, and the entire radiator & support. Additions included a new Holley carburetor, a new aluminum intake, a set of original finned aluminum valve covers,new fan shroud, and a complete GM hose kit with the correct tower clamps. We also added a correct open-element air cleaner.

Detailing the Engine Bay

Besides the motor itself, the engine bay was a mess. While I had the motor apart, I decided it would be a good time to detail the whole engine bay. I stripped the firewall, inner fenders, radiator, and core support down to bare metal / fiberglass. I smoothed out all of the rough spots and painted everything in an eggshell black. The whole compartment had years of crud and coats of paint, so I spent the time cleaning everything down to original. I removed the years of paint from all of the wiring. Now the wires in the engine bay look new, and are all the original / correct colors.

Motor Tear Down

I started by removing the top end of the motor, and all of the accessories (intake, water pump, fan, A/C compressor, etc.) Once it was at this point, I cleaned it thoroughly, and painted the heads and block. The exhaust manifolds were in need of attention, so I removed them. The driver side manifold had a crack. We purchased a new one from Mid-America, and I sandblasted and re-coated both exhaust manifolds with high-temp manifold coating from Eastwood.

The Motor

The first thing I got into when the Vette got here was the motor and engine compartment. It was filthy. This car is originally a 300 horse car, but we decided to do it like an LT1.

The Beginning

The car is in relatively good shape...dirty, but solid. Dad is in Pennsylvania, and I'm in South Carolina, so we needed to get the car down here. Before we shipped it, we had a few issues to address. The brakes needed attention. Dad sent the car to the Motorworks in Greensburg for a once-over. They went through the brakes, installed a new Magna-Flow exhaust and repaired a previously unknown cracked rear differential. Now mechanically sound, the car was ready to be shipped to South Carolina for me to start working.

The Vette

This car had been sitting in a garage for about 20 years. It belonged to the brother of a friend of Dad's. After a few months of back and forth, we finally picked it up in the spring of 2006. It's a 1970 coupe with 62,000 original miles. The car is completely numbers matching, and was originally Monza Red. We started this blog to document our restoration. We intend to keep the car original "looking", but we're going to add some of the things we would have wanted if we'd have ordered the car ourselves.