Introduction

When I purchased my Corvette, the idea was to drive it for a few years, then convert it over to manual, with a Tremec TKO600 kindly donated to by my dad from his Daytona Cobra as he moved to a TKX. Whilst some other upgrades were planned, I didn’t think I would go this extreme, and do a massive, restoration, which included brakes, suspension, practically a new engine, and others, including scrubbing and repainting the entire frame and underside. Regardless, I am very happy with how the car came out, and is now in tip top shape. It took far longer than anticipated, roughly 2 years and a handful of months. Albeit many of the slowdowns and delays were due to specific holdups.

I’ve detailed below what we’ve done, and tried to include as many pictures I’ve taken over the years as possible.

The Project

Naturally the first thing to do was to pull both the engine and gearbox out. They come out together as a unit, and it’s a lot of work. Obviously it’s quite heavy, which meant I had to stand on the engine stand whilst jacking it up, while dad un did the bolts.

Eventually, wed did get it out without damaging the car which was always a positive. The engine didn’t come with the car, and was a very low compression, and relatively low powered SBC 400 from a 1977 Chevelle. The TH400 didn’t come with the car either.

I don’t have too many photos of the underside before I cleaned up, but you can see here from the front end and the inside hoses how filthy the car was.

You can also see how absolutely filthy the cross member was, and all the dirt that came off it.

A special thankyou to our friend George too, who gave us plenty of help along the way, and also came around so we could measure some things on his C3 to compare.

From here, there was a lot of preparation work and cleaning, of not only the engine bay, but scraping away 50+ years of dirt and grime

The engine bay also came up really, really well, as did the diff, as we painted all the way to the back of the undercarriage. You can see in the engine bay that we replaced both the lighting and engine bay harness’s with new ones, as they were very worn out. You can also see that the vacuum take is gone. Whilst we replaced the vacuum system with new components a few years ago, it was always very hit and miss, so we went to a fully electric setup. More on that below.

Over the years we have fixed up a lot of poor work that was done on the car, and this project was no exception. There was lots of bad fibre glassing done, which needed to be completely patched (and then repainted).

We also completely redid all the arms and bushes on the car, both front and rear.

From here, it was time to start putting stuff back on the car. One of the main complaints I had with the car was the steering. The factory power steering wasn’t great. I had originally planned to go with a Borgeson box, but a new Steeroids rack and pinion came up for sale, which I picked up. I’ve been very happy with it, and it’s a much lighter setup than what I had.

We also had to pull apart the column to replace both bearings, which unfortunately happened several times to get it right, as well as make sure the length was setup correctly with the new Steeroids kit.

I replaced the front brakes with Wilwood calipers and rotors, which are very nice. I cleaned up and painted the rears too, as well as did the lip seal to O Ring conversion, however we’ve had nothing but problems, they were painful to bleed, and we had leaking issues. You can see in other photos that I also replaced the master cylinder with the Wilwood model.

We also installed the Ridetech Street Grip suspension kit.

From here, we worked on the auto to manual conversion. The Tremec swap is very popular, with places such as Silver Sport Transmissions selling full conversion kits, specifically with the TKO600, which are bolt on. What is important to note, which we didn’t know, is the casing on their TKO600’s are slightly different, and rounded to fit in the C3 tunnel precisely, so we had to cut away and redo some of the fibreglass in the sections. A lot of measuring and trial fitting was required, as well as making sure the gearbox, which was originally on a ford (despite being on an LS motor), would work with the bell housing.

We also had to modify the crossmember to support the gearbox. Being an originally automatic car, it was handy that the corssmember was a bolt on first. We also modified the handbrake pulley, as the gearbox along with the drive shaft has made things a lot tighter, so we now run a dual pulley setup.

Whilst this was all happening, and the engine was all stripped down, we purchased a new rolling assembly from Skip White Automotive in Tennessee, as well as had the engine built by Simon and George at NT Performance. Only the block remained, which was bored out to a 406.

The car was really starting to come along. The chassis were painted and ready for the side pipes. One of the first ideas we planned was to remove the existing exhausts, which ran really hot, and replace them with sidepipes of the factory style from 1968. I don’t have too many photos of fitting these up unfortunately. We also had to get new hugger headers for it, too.

My car came equipped with factory air con, but since I’ve owned it it never worked. I looked at replacing what was broken, but that was basically the entire system, so opted to go with Vintage air. It works fantastic, and also tidied up the engine bay quite a lot. Routing the hoses was almost impossible, which was the only real downside. Overall it’s a great system. The heater box is replaced with a larger underdash unit. We could remove a lot of the items in the car, different valves etc, which also tidied things up.

You can see in the first photo above an electronic motor for the wiper door. This has by far been the best upgrade to the car. I went with Richard454’s kit, which is just fantastic, as was his support both before and after the sale. It completely eliminated the wiper tank, so much wiring, valves, headlight canisters, and solenoids. It’s really great. The engine bay is so much tidier for it.

At long last, after heaps of work, it was time to put the new engine back in!

The biggest challenge we had with the car, was the pedal box. We sent it away to be modified for a new pedal and hydraulic clutch put on the car. We waited a while for it to come back, and when it came back, it wasn’t right. The new bracket on the pedal box had been made incorrectly, so we had to redo it, as it could not bolt up to the car. After that, hours, and days were spent bleeding it, but we couldn’t get a good clutch out of it. We had to send it back twice. We then had to modify the throw further. It added months to the project unfortunately, but now that it’s right, it works really well.

After that was sorted, it was the nightmare job of putting the interior back together. That was a lot of work, but it came out a treat.

I also put a Holly Sniper 2 on the car. It works really well. It was pretty hard to fit, new return lines had to be run, and that took a lot of time. It’s pretty great now, and we can tune the car whenever we like without having to take it places. It did at a lot of wiring to the car, along with the pipes, and some other bits and pieces.

Finished

I am so happy with the way the car turned out. It’s an absolute treat to drive, and performs really well. I also have a double garage at home now, so it’s great that I can have it with me, as opposed to my parents.

The Future

There’s nothing this car really needs or I want to do, I probably overdid it. Things were hard on the car because I changed so much. I would like to the an LT-1 style hood at some point, which would also allow a slightly taller air filter, and the later C3 aluminum rims to be lighter and support more accessible tire sizes.

Thank You

Thanks to George and Simon at NT Performance, the several FB groups that we asked lots of questions in, but most of all my Dad. I really loved doing this with you, and thankyou for all the work you did on the car, especially when I wasn’t there.