update 7/5/07:
Sunday (7/1) was the day we finally were able to get started on this project! With our schedules it took a while for us to be able to start but we made decent progress today for only working a few hours. Worked from about 10am to about 1pm or so.
We had myself, Brian from our club (our "tech leader" on this project), the young man who owns the car (Mike), his dad and his 2 younger brothers.
The goal was to start getting the body prepared to get it lifted off the frame so we got the car up on jack stands, got the wheels off, removed the seats and battery. Than the hood was removed than the radiator was disconnected and removed along with the fanblade and fanclutch.
Next, all the body mount bolts were removed. Last, the steering column was unbolted from the coupler and pulled back to disconnect it. Lastly, we disconnectd a number of ground straps and the battery ground cable from the frame and the entire front end was unbolted from the main frame and jacked up to support it from dropping until we are ready to lift.
That's where we called it a day for Sunday. We all felt it was a good first day's progress.
Tuesday morning a fellow club member and I went to pick up a body dolly that someone has locally and is lending us for the project and after getting the body dolly there I stayed and Mike and his brothers showed up and we spent another 2 hours or so working on the car and got the rear bumper unbolted, most of the engine bay vacuum hoses and wires marked and disconnected, drained the master cylinder and disconnected the brake lines from it.
I figure about another 2 hours or so of work and she is ready to lift up and place the body on the dolly so we have the chassis available to strip down.
Today (Thursday) we have another fellow club member driving to North Central PA picking up the replacement frame and bringing it back. Depending on the condition of the frame when it gets here we will determine whether to simply wirebrush it clean and oil it as you suggested or if it's pretty cruddy than we will get it sandblasted and paint it since we now have the ability to get it sandblasted for free.
On addition to this progress so far, I ran into Lance Miller at a local show a couple weeks ago and mentioned the project to him. He had already heard about it but we discussed it in more detail. I asked if he would be able to perhaps help us gain the support of a good parts vendor or vendors since we will need a significant discount or maybe even a donation of parts. We were hoping to at least one or two contact names from him we could speak to.
He asked me to email him the project details which I did and man he went BEYOND the call for us. Lance emailed both Mike Yager at Mid-America and Andy Bolig, the editor at Corvette Enthusiast magazine and explained who we were and what we were doing. Andy immediately emailed me back saying the magazine thought it was a great project and they wanted to help out and asked for my number to call me for more details. I spoke to Andy on the phone on Monday and we told me the magazine is behind us 100% and definitely wants to run the story about it. in addition he knows that we are still waiting to hear back from Mike Yager and if Mid-America chooses not to participate than the magazine will also use their contacts to help us get participation from other parts vendorsfor parts donations, etc.
As soon as we get the body off the frame and can get a complete list of required parts we wants us to send it to him so he can forward it to some parts vendors to help us out.
So, as of Tuesday that's where we are on this project. We should have the body on the dolly within a week or so. I spoke yesterday to a few of the others that are helping on this and we will be back at the car on Sunday morning and our goal for the day is definitely to finish up unhooking everything and set up the Block & Tackle rig and actually get the body off the frame onto the dolly by late Sunday afternoon (fingers crossed!!).
After that I figure we should have the motor out of the frame and rest of the frame stripped off of suspension and all other parts within a week or two.
At that point we will start to need the new parts.
The car has almost 100,000 miles so certain items we haven't even looked at figuring we will just simply replace, no questions asked, and these are all safety related items such as bushings and ball joints on the suspension, new brake and fuel lines, new master cylinder (the old one had the worst looking OLD, NASTIEST fluid in it and the inside looked as dirty and rusty as the outside), power steering pump (bad leak), along with known parts we already identified need to replace such as new body mount bolts (broke 2 as we removed them) and body mount cushions, and of course anything else we than see that requires replacing when we get the body off the frame. The car sits a lot lower than the '81 another club member who is working on this project has so we figure we may need to replace the front coil spings also and the rear leaf spring has the insulators coming out from between the leaves so I guess we will need to get new insulators and re-do that or get a replacement rear spring.
I just got the first pictures posted up on our club website so here you go:
http://www.vetteclub.org/1980 Project/projectpics1.html
Please keep in mind that when you look at the progress pictures that the project Corvette is not overly "pretty" in it's current condition and from most visual looks will not be "pretty' when we are finished with it. We are not getting involved with body and paint work nor interior work on the car. We are simply doing a frame replacement and our goal is to make the car roadworthy and safe for Mike to be able to drive it and enjoy it until he can take on the cosmetic restoration work himself.
