Still haven't made much progress yet. The weather was beautiful on Wednesday so I had to take my 67 for a nice cruise on some southern Indiana backroads. We had a bunch of rain the day before so I wasn't too concerned about salt. It was about a 2 hour round trip and the car ran and drove perfectly. This GS400 has never failed to impress me with how well it drives and performs. Other than build a nice mild 400 or 455, I really can't think of a single thing I'd want to change from stock on this car. Today was the first time I touched my 85 Corvette since September. Of course the last time I worked on it, I had the whole wiring harness split open, so it took me hours just to retrace my steps and figure out where I left off. I am being a bit OCD about this 6 speed swap. My intention has always been to make it look and feel like a factory stick car, so I have been wiring it exactly like the FSM shows for manual equipped cars. This means tracing back to splices, unwrapping harnesses and laying things out so that I use as much of the factory wiring with as few deviations as possible. It is absolutely overkill, but the interior was already gutted. Wiring the car per the FSM means it will be possible to troubleshoot using existing diagrams, even if someone other than me owns the car in the future. One totally unnecessary part I installed, a better designed door ajar switch. The originals stick in place and are pretty much guaranteed to fail. These seem like a way better design.
Not overkill. I do the same thing for the same reasons with wiring. I hate having to deal with bad wire jobs, and it is satisfying knowing your not kicking a can down the road.
Good job! That wiring would have made me procrastinate as well! Once you get that done you will be burning rubber in no time!
Rather than get overwhelmed, I would just pick one car and focus on just that car until you achieve what you want on it. That will give you the ambition and incentive to follow the same process on your next favorite one.
Still plugging away on the 85 Corvette. One of the jobs I decided to tackle was swapping out the "ancient" stock ECU for something that you can tune with a laptop and datalog. The bulk of the work is swapping of some pins on the ECU harness and converting from a MAF sensor to MAP sensor. I have been unable to resist the urge to cut out as much of the unused wiring as possible. I don't see any reason to fold any of it back into the harness. This car will never be a Concours restoration cadidate so I'm not losing much sleep over it. Once I finish the Map sensor wiring and O2 sensors, it might be time to start assembling things enough to fire the car up and make sure everything is wired correctly. Once that is done I can finally start putting the interior back together. I've been putting 8 hours a day into this lately and it has been really nice getting back into the groove of things.
Defiantly do wiring the right way. Terminate ends properly, double check connections, cover up exposed wires. A simple mistake in wiring can burn a car to the ground in a worse case, or not run correctly and be a wiring nightmare. I have a factory TPI wire harness laying around.
Wiring is definitely something I take seriously, my day job is aircraft avionics so I do stuff like this all the time. For any of the unused wiring in the car, I am making sure to verify it will no longer have any power going to it, and then capping it off with some closed end heat shrink.
Quite a few of my coworkers have some pretty sweet rides. I didn't have a chance to bring one of my cars last year, but we typically have a family day and car show in the Fall. Saw this badass 71 Riv but wasn't sure who the owner was.
Not too much car progress so far this week. When I bought my house in October of 2021, I knew there was something off about the sump pumps. They made a ton of noise and ran much too often. Finally got around to replacing them as one of the pumps failed to keep up during the torrential downpours in Indiana last week. The pump I removed was about 12 years old. There was no check valve installed. Now I know almost zero about home improvement work, but owning a home I have been trying my best to figure it out. And yes, I am aware of how horrible a job the previous owners did with "encapsulating" the crawlspace. Definitely on my to-do list. I did get to a few things earlier in the week on the Corvette. Started off removing a bunch of things trying to find the broken end of the HVAC vacuum line. Gave up after a while and decided to disconnect it at a more convenient location and just run new line to the plenum. Eventually this motor will come out, I look forward to re-looming the harnesses and can fix the vacuum line properly then.
Still picking away at the Corvette but I need to also start making sure I have what I need for the 67 in time for May. I bought a set of DG code 14" Rally wheels last year that I want to paint body color. I figure I should probably order tires now so I get them in time but I am torn on what to go with. I like the bias look radials. I have a set on my 59 Buick and they ride amazing while still looking period correct. I know the order form mentions white walls or redline tires as options. I went with the whitewall look before but this time I think white letter or red line is the way to go. Just not sure how they will look with the white pinstriping on the car. What do you guys think?
Depends on the "feel of the look" you want. Personally, I'm a white letter fan as it gives her a more aggressive stance. I'm looking at putting Cooper Radial GT's on my GS. It meets my look vs budget vs expected handling (I've been very happy with cooper tires on my truck over the years) criteria. -MIG
I decided to go with the redlines simply because they were a factory option for 1967. I originally ordered the RWL tires but called Coker to change the order. The RWLs might still show up if they didn't change the order properly and if they do I'll just go with it. I've still been messing with the Corvette but not getting as much done as I would like. I even got sidetracked buying a set of C6 Z06 brakes. The car doesn't need them, but they look so much better inside the 18" wheels. Still waiting on front caliper brackets. Today was the first day in over a week I could actually function. I am just getting over a really bad sinus infection, which also caused me to burn up my last 3 sick days for the fiscal year. Two of those days were earmarked for the Nats so I am going to have to get creative to figure out how to spend some time there now. The worst case scenario is I'll come down, spend a few hours there and head home. It would suck, but better than nothing I suppose. I'm trying to narrow down the reasonable projects the 67 needs finished before the trip. I know it will make it there no problem as is but I'd like to take care of a few cosmetic issues and repair a few things. I still plan on throwing on a TA Performance water pump, replacing the driveshaft ujoints, turning the washer jug into a temporary coolant catch can, painting the horizontal grill trim, painting a set of DG wheels gold and maybe trying my hand at some minor paint restoration. The paint on this car is well past its prime, but it would be nice to see if I can remove a few stains and clean it up a bit. I really wanted to throw a vinyl top back on but I think that is too much to try and do in the time I have left and would make almost zero sense at this stage of the project. I did repaint the rear trunk trim. It is extremely pitted and blistered, but with a few coats of trim black, it at least matches the condition of the rest of the car. I decided to order another GS badge for the rear and then I'll figure out how to secure it and the repop "400" emblem. They come with no real easy way to mount to the trim piece.
