Projects "Hot Rods to Hell" Corvette build finale

I love this idea, brings back childhood memories of watching the movie. AHHHH, crazy hotrodders!

 

Great find on the nose and great price too. It's coming together little by little.

 

Nice score
This is going to be the perfect Vette
Makes me want to find a Bird needing a cage and FE


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I like where this is going! Can't wait to see some more progress.

 

Here I separate the old 57 style upper fire wall section and attach the new 58 one. I'll get around to fixing that fine looking shifter hole soon to.

 

This is so cool!

 

This looks like a fun build!

I Always like when people did bad things to a good car, to make it look evil! So thats what I See here, and I like it!

I always dreamed about doing one with the early one headlight pr fender set-up, and that 57-58 rear fenders, radiused rear fenders and a High Winding 301 w/webers and a four speed.

But even If I did despicable things to my own body for cash, for the longest time, and saved all my paychecks, its gonna take for ever to save up for early vette. And we dont get them like that on this side of Lake Atlantic. :sad:

 

As a kid the movie was classic .....I remembered the cars and always brought up the movie because of them. To watch the movie today it sure is dated but the thrill of the theme is still cool. I tooled around with many 62 Corvettes in my time and still appreciate a "correct" NCRS car......not crazy about NCRS gurus , but my craze goes into a hot rodded early Vette. What you are doing will certainly wow the onlookers. Cool idea. Oh,......I managed to hold onto a couple off the 62's ......... For one of the cars I made some three inch blocks to wedge under the front crossmember for some attitude and altitude. I remember the hot lick back in the day was to wedge some I beams between the frame and crossmember. I wonder what was under the movie car.....who built it , etc.

 

Love it!
Thanks for posting, looking forward to more of your updates.

 

The upper dash, cowl vent area and center console are now installed.

 

sweet when I was a kid and they closed mgm back lot we were able to go in there and I remember the back half of the vette from h t h laying in the lot ............

 

Like it so far! Where is the girl

 

The retirement home if she is lucky.

 

Very cool. I'm digging the dismembered Vette pictures. Keep them coming.

 

Utahvette: Nice fitting work on the upper cowl. This is gonna be one cool "glue job". Looking forward to your progress.

 

Mimsy Farmer is retired and living the good life overseas.

 

At this point I have sanded all the old paint off down to bare glass and flipped the body over to access the bottom. This was a good opportunity to clean the bottom of the car and to fix the poor splice job where the two halves were attached. The front and rear body parts were misaligned by as much as a 1/2 inch in places. Thank goodness they got the door opening length right or it would have been a LOT more work. This was a good time to clean up the lower rear panel that I spoke of earlier . I repaired the shifter hole and the rear wheel well chunk that was missing also. Makin lots of dust! A couple of tips when grinding fiberglass, if you use a grinding stone its better,the stone makes dust where as a grinding disk makes little needles. Always direct the particle stream away from you. And if you do need to get the itch out you should try those clothes rollers with the sticky tape . Pulls those little suckas right out. Kinda like waxing your legs.(not that I've ever done that) Then scrub down with your wifes loofah sponge . That might just leave a surprise for her the next time she uses it.

 

Johnny Cash would be proud.

 

Keep up the good work, I am enjoying this build. It's nice to see some one start with something that most people would walk away from and bring it back to life. This shows that there is still a way to get the car that you want even if you are on a small budget if you are willing to put in the hard work and time scrounging up parts. Plus its saves another car and makes for some amazing before and after pictures.

 

As an owner of a 62 Corvette I like this! Keep the pictures coming!

 

Nice work, keep up the good progress and pics.

 

Time to mock up the chassis. I'm using a 350 out of a 89 corvette. These have the aluminum heads on them and use a tuned port fuel injection setup but they have a normal bolt pattern for a regular intake manifold. I changed the stock roller cam out for a old school solid lifter one and did a quick port job on the heads. 2 1/2 inch Corvette exhaust manifolds will be used . The trans is a T-5 from a V-8 Camaro. I modified the frame (cut holes) so the exhaust pipes run straight back instead of zig zag through the frame X member like they did stock. I also built side mounts for the engine instead of the using the odd front mount arrangement they had originally.

 

The second pic you posted has a mid-year front end and a C-3 front clip; is that your yard?
Cool build btw, dig it.

 

Yes, I've got a pretty good pile of fiberglass. Just not quite enough to build anything out of.Yet.

 

In order to get the front of the car to set high I followed the age old tradition of building 4 inch spacers for the front suspension. While 4 inch I beams are commonly used I didn't have any on hand so I built these out of some scrap I had laying around. 4 inches is about the max height you can go before you run into steering linkage issues.

 

The body work is roughed in now with the firewall holes filled, no more heater. The frame is painted and to protect it during body and paint I covered it with plastic sheeting. I cut out holes in the plastic where the body mounts are and when the car is painted I can just tear out the plastic and the frame still looks good. It now has the first coat of Featherfill. I patched a few inner fenders together to get this pair. Here you can see the radiator support spacer necessary with the 4 inch frame spacers. I captured a frame from the movie to see what was used in the movie car. You can also see that the sway bar links are missing .

 

I want more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Man you work fast! Cool to watch, thanks for taking the time to post this up.

 

Awesome build, great work saving the body from what was a Franken-vette.

 

In his first post he said the car is already done ... I think he's dolling out the pics a few at a time.