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Sue's 59 Corvette project....
OK.. we DO have a forum for 'Non-trifive Chevy Projects', so Over the next days/weeks I'm going to try to pick up with this project thread and get it off the ground. We'll begin with when the bought the car in October 2017. This was the day she returned from trailering the car back from Ohio where it was purchased, and here it is resting after being driven into the shop. Sue's desire for a 'older Corvette' began after she and TrifiveRichard had collaborated on his '56 Chevy HT, and when it was finished she wanted to DRIVE it a lot more than Richard wanted it to be driven (He may want to comment on this part!).. :)
Here they are posing in front of the '56 HT just after completion...
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She wanted an older car which was updated with all the modern conveniences along with 6-spd manual trans and modern HP engine, and after some consideration she decided it needed to be a 1st gen Corvette, so their search culminated in the purchase of this car.
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Stripping the old paint...
After assessing the fiberglass and seeing some old (not so good) repairs to the front clip, Richard and Sue decided they wanted to replace some/most of the front clip, but the rear portion mostly seemed good, so we first chemically stripped the top layers of paint and got it nearly down to the fiberglass, then they had a local 'bead blasting' (or soda blasting?) company to come and strip the remainder of the paint off the rear clip..
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Richard had already ordered the needed fiberglass parts from Sermersheim's Fiberglass. Sermersheim has changed names (https://scorvette.com/) as a result of the original founder/owner passing away, but they have done the best and most correct fiberglass parts for early corvettes for many many years, using the correct formulation and press molding the parts just as Chevy did in the 50's. Richard and Sue knew they wanted the best fiberglass people doing the fiberglass work, so they had the parts shipped to Masterworks Automotive (http://www.mwauto.com/aboutus.php) in Madison Heights, MI as they would be taking the car there for the fiberglass work.
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Some more 'catching up'...
Right after purchase of the '59 Corvette Richard ordered a chassis from Corvette Corrections in Seguin TX so that it would be ready when they needed it. Richard had experience with Art Morrison as he put one of their chassis (with 9" F rear) under his '56 Hardtop, but Richard had also gone with me to Seguin, TX when I retreived my Corvette Corrections chassis for my Nomad, and he got to see how their chassis are built and met with Billy Dawson and his wife Sherry and their crew there in Seguin and he chose their chassis for the '59. To get the chassis a little sooner, it was agreed that Billy would build their chassis in time for the large NCRS show in Florida which is held in January each year, he would use their chassis for 'display' during that show, and we would meet him in Mobile AL on their way back to Texas, which we did. We met Billy in a hotel/restaurant parking lot very early one morning and unloaded the chassis from his big enclosed trailer to our open trailer (after changing out Billy's tires/wheels for some 'rollers' we'd taken with us).
The following photos show Billy's dual rail custom frame mounting the C4 Corvette front cross member/suspension and RnP steering, brakes and rear suspension/diff. Richard chose the Dana44 option for his rear and got the 3.45:1 rear Posi gearing. The final photo shows the chassis loaded on our trailer ready for the 350mi trek back to Huntsville.
https://www.corvettecorrection.com/c-1-frames/
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