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The project thus far:
(order of completion is oldest to newest)
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The Digi-dash: The instrument panel was busted pretty good, or at least that's what everyone who saw it told me. I believe the phrase that was most used was "very broke." Oh well, gotta do whatcha gotta do I suppose. I was figuring about $300 for the repair, however Ecklers, after a good hit off the crack pipe, quoted me $600. I quoted them "no." After some searching about, I was referred to Gene Taber who quoted me a more reasonable $450. That's as good a price as anyone locally could give me and Gene seems like a real nice guy too so I accepted. Very pleased, the package arrived promptly with instructions for installation/removal.
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The Charging System Nightmare: Happy days were here again! The car was now on the road and I was drivin' it. In retrospect, I see a few symptoms: pulsing headlights, pulsing dash lights, sick sounding 'ding' noise (like when you leave the door open), difficult starting, etc... I figured those were all little quirks and I'd get to them in time, but the Corvette had a different schedule in mind. Had been driving fine all day, just got back from a joy ride with my father (I've never in my life seen him drive aggressively like that before!) and shut the car down. Went inside, got a drink, and went to leave again...but this time she won't fire up. Crap! Ok, what's the readout? 10 volts!? Grrr... must be a bad alternator. Well, after I replaced the alternator and saw that at 2400 rpm she actually dropped voltage, I decided that there was certainly something fishy afoot. Remove the alternator and take it back to Discount Auto for testing; it came back....good! Wait, it's good!? Test the battery! What!? That's fine too!? Oh hell, this is going to be a very interesting next few months. Well not really. I posted a message at CorvetteForum.com, and got INSTANTANEOUS replies from Scorp. With the info that Scorp posted, we traced the problem to a bad 10 amp gague fuse and had the car back on the road that very day!
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The Cracked Targa Top: When I bought the car it had a good size crack in the accrylic targa top. Asside from being an eyesore the crack also allowed greater exposure to the elements than I was willing to permit. The first repair that was made consisted of 3 strips of duct tape. This fix was more unsightly than the crack itself, however it did keep the wet out. The tape did not last very long though and when it had finally lost its adhesion it was time to A.) shell out a whole lotta cash and get a new one or B.) make a more permanent fix to this top and worry about getting a new one after some more important projects have been completed. Choice B prevailed. We tempotatily fixed the crack by drilling small holes at either end of the crack to stress releave it to prevent the crack from spreading any further and then we drilled holes along the rear side of the crack and inserted some very small machine screws. To the machine screws on the inside of the top, we cut some small sheet metal tabs and put them on and affixed them with nuts on the screws. We cut off the excess length of the screws on the inside and JB Weld'd the crack on the outside to prevent water from leaking. The result is the crack is no longer spreading and I'm safe from the watter. Also, the fix is not really very noticable at a glance.
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The Air Conditioning System: The charging system repair seemed to fix much more than the charging system: my ABS warning light has not been alluminated since and more importantly, since then, my electronic a/c controls work! Oh hell yes. This means no more cruising arround Florida in 90 degrees in a black car with the defroster on! I could...umm...turn off the defroster...but I could also fix the a/c now that I had restored control! We checked out the system first by dropping in some cheap 134a refrigerant and using a freeon leak detector to tell where the leak was (the system had been bone dry for quite some time I immagine). The geigercounter went crazy near the compressor. Since there was nothing in the lines, the compressor would not actuate the clutch (safety feature I guess) so we ran a hot wire and started it ourselves. You could hear the piston just slapping arround in there and it (the compressor) got hotter than the gates of hades. 1 compressor, 1 reciever/dryer, 3 canisters of 134a, and 4 hamburgers later we had 40 degree air out of the dash.
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The Brakes: Short story really... The pads were squealing (pad wear sensor) and by the time I had the time to attack them with my pliers, I had time to replace the pads so that's what I did. The pads still had alot of life left but I did not have quite so much patience left. I replaced them with a set of these:
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Some Switches: I went to Ecklers several weeks before and purchased some small odds and ends (which only cost me my left index finger and one kidney): I got the hatch shade retainer clip upgrade, a new handle for the lever that keeps the targa top safely restrained when not acting as a roof, 1 power door lock switch and 1 power window switch (it turns out that these are the exact same part!). The hatch shade clips and the power window switch I installed immediately (easy job, no need for details...), the targa handle thing will have to wait because the part it affixes to is broken, and the door lock switch I was planning to avert until I had the door panels off for re-finishing, but, several weeks after the purchase, I had nothing to do that day and so decided to go tackle that job...and what a job! Geez... Rest assured that if your Corvette ever gets broken into, you definantly will not have to worry about anyone stealing your pdl switches! Well after several hours (2 or 3) of tricky unscrewing, delecate prying, and viscious swearing the job was done, I did not crack any vintage 1987 plastic pieces that would require a bank loan, and I can now arm the factory security system without reaching over to the passenger side! I can once again lock and unlock my doors in traffic at will.
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The Charging Nightmare Returns: It had been several weeks now since the charging system had been repaired...indeed it had been several months! This is why it came as such a shock when I looked down at my dash, en route to some undoubtedly important destination, and saw 11.9 volts. Goodness gracious! Well, I continue on my way and look down a little later and it reads 13.4 volts... ok well that's normal, maybe it was a fluke... yeah it was a fluke... wellllll, this 'fluke' became rather routine when it decided to manifest itself every day! Until one day, that is, when I was on my way to the gym and my once strong Nile River of voltage was mearly trickling out a measley 10.1 volts. Well, at this point it was quite certain that the alternator had somehow divorced itself from the battery. This is not a good thing for a busy young man such as myself. By the time I made it safely to the parking lot, I was reading a pittiful 7.3 volts. My friend whom I was meeting at the gym pointed out a very important piece of evidence though once I opened the hood; the length of 8 gauge wire that links the alternator to the battery had severed from the alternator, save for 1 or 2 strands! The battery had given its all, Discount Auto confirmed its demise, but it was still under warantee and was originaly purchased from none other than Discount Auto! I picked out the very best battery they had (which came with a 3 year warantee) and they swapped me even! With the new battery in place as well with a new length of 8 gauge wire, I sometimes get as much as 13.9 volts at idle! I now can sleep easy; my charging nightmares have been vanquished...for now...
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The Breakdown: Well, I'm cruising all peacefull like, radio and air conditioner trying their best to please me, when all of a sudden the motor makes a wierd noise and backfires. I also notice that I can no longer rev the engine! Wierd! No biggie though, I just put it in neutral, depress the clutch and restart the motor...or at least that was the plan, but alas all of my key turning yeilded naught. I sighed loudly and used my remaining momentum to pull into a median. I tried to restart again but it was to no avail. Man, this is gonna suck. I had to push the car into the grass so it'd be outa the way and I then jogged to a nearby animal clinic. The office was full of women, not a man to be seen (save for myself), and they were really nice and gave me water and let me use their phone. I called my father to inform him of my misfortune. About 15 minutes later someone was down to pick me up. When I arrived back at his office, I called a tow truck and the insurance company (to put my IROC back on the road). I had no time to fix the car so I was forced to have it taken to the shop. About two days later I get the car back and the mechanic says that "the coil shorted and blew out the ignition module" and so he replaced both of those parts. The bill came to over $200.
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The Transmission Rebuild: First off, the transmission in my Corvette is known as a 4+3 and it's a wierd egg. It is actually not one, but two transmissions put together: it consists of a Borg Warner Super T-10 4-speed manual transmission with a 2-speed automatic bolted to the back of it! The function of the automatic is to provide either a normal ratio or an overdrive ratio when in 2nd, 3rd, or 4th gear. This is what gives the 4+3 its name: 4 gears + 3 overdrive gears. In truth though, it is possible to keep the automatic in OD gear and then switch to 1st gear, so if you look at it that way it has 8 forward gears. Now this may all sound cool, but the overdrive version of a gear is almost exactly identical to being in the next highest gear (i.e. 2nd OD is almost exactly the same ratio as 3rd gear), this means that 4th OD would be like 5th gear if there were one. The most important thing to remember though is that since this system consists of 2 transmissions, the likeliness for transmission problems increases by 100%!
This rebuild was of the manual 4-speed transmission. The automatic has not worked since I bought the car (it will not shift into OD), but it seems to be an electrical problem. The symptoms that lead up to this rebuild were: grinds in reverse, grinds in 2nd, starting to grind in 1st, and it had a nasty habbit of popping out of 2nd gear on deceleration. I ended up purchasing a rebuild kit and a locking slider (to cure the popping out of gear) from Brian at SK Speed. Brian is very knowledgable, very kind, and VERY busy! This is where the kits that Eckler's sells come from so I just cut out the middle man. At the beginning of this, I knew just enough about transmissions to do.........absolutely nothing! BUT thanks to http://www.corvetteforum.com I met up with a guy named Romeo Barrera who owns a pristine black '84 Corvette and also a less than pristine burgandy '84 Corvette :). He (at the time a complete stranger) offered to help me do the rebuild! This was a VERY fortunate thing for me as the person (a crook named Ron Scott) who was supposed to help me with the rebuild originaly skipped town with $130 of mine that he was supposed to use to buy the needed parts!!! What I got was $130 worth of experience... But the important thing is I made a new friend and learned how to rebuild a transmission and that's worth much more than that for sure!
Read all about the gruesome details of rebuilding a Super T-10 4-speed manual here. <<(NOTE: it's not finished yet)
<<---- Click here
to see pics from the rebuild.
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The Exhaust System: First let me express the sad state of disrepair into which my exhaust system had fallen: I had but one muffler when I bought the car because the other had rusted and had fallen off. The other muffler fell off during the above mentioned tranny rebuild. The broken rear Y-pipe (which was at that point more like a V-pipe or something) released the angry exhaust gasses directly beneth the hatchback. The cargo area of my car acted as a gigantic reverb box. To say that the constant drone was obnoxious is a gross understatement. I picked up a pair of 3-chamber Flowmasters from a guy who had to get rid of them (for one reason or another). In my corner they sat for weeks, nay months! I purchased a pair of LT1 tips off of a newer Corvette from -= Jeff =- from corvetteforum.com and sanded and painted them. Once that was done it was time to visit the muffler shop. One problem with the Flowmasters that worried me was their offset offset design and this did prove to be one of 2 big problems, the second of which being their length. It would have taken some stupid piping to make those mufflers work for my aplication but luckily for me, the guy who runs the muffler shoppe made me a deal and I traded him my Flowmasters as credit toward my total cost. I ended up going with a pair of Dynomax mufflers. The new system is a true dual system that consists of mandrel bent piping from the factory headers back to the new mufflers and out my cool rectangular LT1 tips with a balance pipe welded in between the two exhaust pipes somewhere aft of the fluid pan for the OD transmission. The car sounds like it wants to rip your throat out through the back of your head and eat it for lunch! (graphic, eh?) yet there is absolutely ZERO interior resonance whatsoever which was really the primary goal of this step of the project!
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| ^^ My Flowmasters | ^^ My mean new setup |
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The Tune-up: Nothing crazy here; new Delco spark plug wires, new NGK copper core plugs (installed with anti-sieze as a precaution to ensure that they will not become a permanent fixture of my cylinder heads), and a new Accel cap & rotor. Got all 8 plugs without getting under the car... though it did take a little while.
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The Headlight Motors: The headlight motors had not worked since I bought the car and deploying and retracting them by hand was getting very old very fast. I figured that while I was at i, I'd also upgrade the lights to the more reliable 1988+ style motors so I bought a pair of headlight motors (complete with brackets, body pieces, and actual headlights) from someone at http://www.corvetteforum.com who was parting out an 1988. The parts arrived on the first day (a thursday) of my 4-day weekend from work, but low and behold the parts were not as functional as I had expected; the light pods would just spin freely in the bracket. I tested both motors by hooking them directly to a battery charger and they both worked but they would not turn the lights. I am told that the reason for this is worn bushings inside the motor that can be bought from Eckler's for ~$5 per motor (as of the day I wrote this, I have not installed those bushings yet). Also the box was missing the headlight motor actuator that is needed to opperate the newer style motors. Normally what this would mean is the project cannot continue til I get that part right? Wrong! I was fed up with turning the lights by hand. I figured that I'd test my old 1987 headlight motors using the same method I tested my 1988 lights just for the hell of it. I was surprised to find out that they work! Upon further inspection, I found that the strange box which I assumed was a poorly wired security system that wad installed by a previous owner looked strikingly similar to a headlight actuator (there's a picture in Eckler's catalogue)! The big significance of this is that 1987 and earlier cars did not have such an actuator! This meant that someone had already upgraded my headlights to the newer style!!! I unhooked the actuator and discovered that the electrical connections were covered with corrosion. I disassembled the actuator to clean the electrical surfaces and I noticed that several confusing looking electrical pieces were either rusted or burnt. I tried to plug it back in and pull on the lights but that did not work. I was going to wire switches from the battery to the lights until I talked to Romeo. A family member of his who owns a very clean 1988 Burnt Orange coupe had recently bought a new actuator because his old one had become damaged and did not work properly so he gave me his old actuator! The plan was to make 1 good piece out of 2 bad ones but I figured that I'd better try this new one before I did anything else. With the new module plugged in, the LH light would deploy but would not retract. Ironically the RH motor would retract but would not deploy. Each headlight has a green wire and a grey wire. One of the 2 connectors that plugs into the actuator has 2 green wires and 2 grey wires. This terminal connects each headlight to the actuator. Sooooooo.... I rigged it. I spliced the greens together and the greys together right before the connector. Bada boom, my headlights work for the very first time and I'm pleased as punch. (Note: The rigging has since been replaced with a properly working actuator).
^^^ The poorly wired security system (aka headlight actuator)
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The Targa Top Revisited: It would appear that cracked accrylic has a shelf life. My mangled transparent roof panel finally gave up the goat one fateful night when I was talking on the phone and leaning on the car. The sound was like ice cracking. I tried to push the new cracks back into alignment but all that got me was a 1/4" slice into my index finger. Now ~3 weeks later, that cut has STILL not healed completely! Agh! Scarred for life I suppose... I bought a new solid roof panel from a member on corvetteforum.com who sent the new top to me asap cause I was affraid that it might rain and ruin my day... The new top was in VERY good condition and had a brand new headliner even. The only downside is the roof was (and still is as of the time I typed this) white and my car is black! It doesn't look so out of place as you may think though. I will paint it when I have time, til then though I suppose I just won't be entering any car shows. Actually the white paint on the new top is beautiful; so beautiful infact that, when the time comes, it will break my heart to sand it. The replacement of my old mangled roof eliminated ~80% of my annoying squeaks and rattles and significantly lowered the interior temperature when the car sits in the sun! The transparent roof panels have their charm, but I do not think that I would want one unless I also had the solid roof (and at ~$500 a pop, I don't anticipate buying one anytime soon!).
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The Un-sticking of The Sticky Gas Pedal: My gas pedal would sometimes not fully depress without an unusually large amount of input. It would 'stick' at about a little less than 1/2 travel. This was very annoying. I tried WD-40'ing the hell out of it but it was to no avail. I left the problem unsolved for some time until one day I was trying to fix a new problem (an excessively high idle sometimes as high as 2400rpm) when I figured it out. Eureka! You see, the throttle cable has a plastic lining around it and that plastic lining is damaged on my cable. What was happening was a seperated piece of that plastic lining was catching sometimes on the plastic guide tube thingy that contains the throttle cable. Removed that broken piece and I was back in business with smooth acceleration (but I still have a crappy idle sometimes. Expect to see this fixed pretty soon.).
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The Aircleaner: My aircleaner assembly was missing the left "ear" that recieves the threaded rod that holds the airfilter lid on when I bought the car. I bought an aircleaner assembly from a corvetteforum.com member as well as an open air lid. Well, this aircleaner assembly that I recieved was in in less good condition than I was expecting; you see, it had a missing "ear" on the right side. Well, it wasn't exactly missing I guess, it just was not attatched. I used some JB Kwik to reconnect the "ear" to the assembly and also to fix a crack that was forming on the left "ear". I also purchased a K&N airfilter from a different corvetteforum.com member. I took one weekend morning to finish sanding and painting the new aircleaner assembly and install all of the parts. Well, one problem was I did a pretty poor job of painting (I'm gonna re-paint using different stages of sand paper to prepare and satin finnish paint for the painting) and another problem was the left hand bolt-thing that holds the housing onto the car would not come off. No matter how long I turned the knob, it would just spin and spin and spin. I got the old assembly off by accident when I was trying to wiggle it to get it off; I slid the whole assembly left and slid the bolt-thing sideways out of the space that holds it. It'd take a thousand words to accurately explain the design of the aircleaner fasteners, but it can be effectively described in 1 word: retarded. I plan to re-visit this area sometime soon and put a more reliable fabrication in place.
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The Door Panels: At long last, it is time to clean up the interior of the car! The very first step was the door panels. The old door panels can be found here. As you can see they were in sad sad condition. In my opinion, those door panels were the single most severe blemish on the interior of the car (well ok, I suppose the rear carpet would take 1st place here...). I purchased a set of graphite (that's what GM calls grey) door panels off of an '84 (and a damn fast one at that!) from a member at corvetteforum.com of all places :D. The panels were in pretty good condition as was stated. I did learn however that somewhere between '84 and '87, a few things changed: the hatch release switch & the handle cover & power door locks. I just used my old stuff for these pieces. The '84s had a push button PDL switch with a lock button and an unlock button and the hatch release switch on my '87 is a slide-down switch whereas the '84 has a push button switch... No big deal really. There are only 2 other differences that I could find. The first is dependent on the stereo in the car; cars equipped with the Bose system have square holes covered with grilles to accomodate the door panel speakers and non-bose cars had no speakers in the doors and therefore no holes for them. On the back of each '84 door panel there was a template etched where the square would be cut for a Bose car so I used a saber saw to cut out the squares and it worked great. The other difference is minor but it kept the panel from fitting on my door! I really wish I had gotten a picture of this but instead I'll just use 1,000 words I guess; there is a ridge on the panel where the handle cover goes (the handle cover is what I'm calling the black insert that contains the PDL switch) and I had to cut it off because it interfered with my PDL switch in such a way that I could not attach the handle cover to the door panel. For this task I chose a hacksaw. The panels are now installed (minus carpet) and they are much quieter and MUCH more aesthetically pleasing.
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The Clutch Pedal: I had (and still may have actually) a problem where I could not pull the car out of gear and the clutch would not completely disengage. I was told to check the clutch pedal bushing (a small $6 piece of plastic, part #14094900). Since it was cheap (HA!) I went ahead and got it without inspecting the old one first. Well to install this tiny plastic circlet, you have to move the driver seat to its full rearward position and tilt the steering wheel all the way up. You must also remove the cover on the underside of the column that hides all of the wires and such, but mine was already off and I have not yet put it back on. You then must contort your body in such a way that your back sits where your bum would normaly be and vice versa leaving you staring straight ahead at a spaghetti farm and, somewhere within it, the clutch pedal linkage. The bushing is what keeps the hydraulic rod properly aligned (and attached!). There is absolutely no way I could have taken a picture of this, sorry. My old bushing had deteriorated almost completely so I have no tips for removal of the old one. Mine just came off. To install the new bushing, I removed the clutch rod from the pin on the pedal and slid the new bushing onto that pin with the 4 little fingers pointing toward the outside of the car (also known as right if you're positioned as I was). I then forced the clutch rod onto the pin and bushing using a pair of pliers where my hands lacked enough "persuasion" to get it to go. I do not know if this fixed my original problem or not, but it certainly did make the clutch pedal opperation alot smoother.
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The Interior Restoration: At long last, the time is finally at hand! Plenty of pictures were taken, however my digital camera does not like artificial light not one bit. That's a shame too cause it looked really scary for a while there. So far, I have replaced ALL carpet with brand new mass backed black carpet. Carpeting a car, I have learned, is not a fun job. If you ever are looking into buying a Corvette, get one with a good interior. Seriously, I would now take a car with a perfect interior and dead motor rather than the inverse thereof. The hardest piece of carpeting to install was the huge piece that covers the hatch floor and the hatch rear wall. Re-finishing the plastic pieces is no walk in the park either especially if you're inept at spraypainting like I am. It seems that EVERY piece of plastic on my car is damaged in one way or another. Interior pieces are VERY expensive for some reason and some pieces have been discontinued by GM. The other big new improvement is a new pair of seats! My old seats were chewed up pretty badly and new seats were definately in order. The new ones looked to be just normal base seats, which was fine with me, but uppon closer inspection, it turns out that they were sport seats that had been re-covered and the recesses for the sport controls had been covered over. My guess is that the motors burnt out in them and instead of going through the hastle of replacing that stuff, whoever originally owned these seats just removed the extra stuff and had them covered as normal seats. That was probably a smart move, but smart moves have not gotten me where I am today so to hell with it! I will replace the sport features on these seats! My pumps for the lumbar support are toast (melted actually) so I'll definately need new ones.
