1971 Corvette Hot Rod Build

[Arrowsmith]

When working on the engine on the Corvette, I noticed the French locks weren’t folded over (as they should be) on the exhaust manifolds. Hmmm. Red flag…And this was in addition to many of the other issues I discovered even earlier.



With that in mind, I decided to remove the back shock absorbers. I started on the passenger side. Thinking I wouldn’t drive my shop buddy Teddy nuts with the shop air compressor, I decided to use a breaker bar and a ratchet to remove the back wheels. Ooops. Lug nuts were just over finger tight. Didn’t need the breaker bar, let alone an impact gun. The lug nuts hardly moved this beam torque wrench....



Investigating further, the lower shock mount nuts were loose. On the driver side, take a close at the top (both sides), the sequence of hardware is wrong (lock washer on the bolt instead of the nut). This means there is nothing to actually keep the nut in place. In fact, there was no nut on the driver side.



Moving up a wee bit, I noticed the cotter key for the castle nut for the (extremely important) trailing arm bolt wasn’t bent over. It can easily vibrate out. And on the driver’s side, there was no cotter key. Okey-Dokey!





Since I was close, I checked the (also extremely important) French locks on the rear stub axles. They weren’t engaged either (you must tap the tab over the properly torqued fastener). There’s nothing to stop the stub axle fasteners from falling out.



And since I was in close proximity to one of the body-to-frame mount bolts, I decided to check the torque. I have a number of torque wrenches, and this is the right task for a good old fashioned beam job. Chevy specifications for these bolts call for 45 foot pounds of torque. The bolt I checked barely cracked 15 foot pounds. Oops again.��

The bottom line is, my Corvette sure is pretty and sure is beautifully detailed. Check it out:



I absolutely love the car. But it's a beautiful train wreck. As a result, I’ll have to verify and fix pretty much everything on the car, from engine, transmission, rear end, suspension, steering, brakes, fuel system, cooling system, electrical system (I’ve found black electrical tape “fixes” here and there!!!) and so on. Essentially, a complete re-rebuild.