1975 Plastic fantastic aka Corvette

[68scott385]

I'm pretty sure this is how I'm going to fix the quarter panel
[ATTACH=CONFIG]26053[/ATTACH]

and the rear bumper
[ATTACH=CONFIG]26054[/ATTACH]

I'll buy 11" wheels for the back, and move the 9.5s to the front.... then I'm doing a 6.2 LS swap in front of the 4 speed.... that should make a for a good next-season racer. The year after, I'll run the Fiat.

Nice Vette. Disappearing hard top option?

[SuperBuickGuy]

I'm pretty sure this is how I'm going to fix the quarter panel


and the rear bumper


I'll buy 11" wheels for the back, and move the 9.5s to the front.... then I'm doing a 6.2 LS swap in front of the 4 speed.... that should make a for a good next-season racer. The year after, I'll run the Fiat.

[SuperBuickGuy]

it's not leaking oil..... However, I'm still very thankful I didn't have the car available. The rear spring was loose, and I still don't think my friend could handle this car on the track. He was having trouble with the BMW..... anyway, on to the starter
oh look, a crack (dammit)


stainless wire in the welder


grind and clean out the crack


carefully heat to 400 degrees then weld


et voila... finis



yum, tasty problem

[Scott Liggett]

Get an oil dye kit. Works just like the AC freon dye kit. Use UV light to find leak. Much easier.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Kill it with fire.

working on it

[BBR]

Kill it with fire.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Let's play "find the oil leak"

as I mentioned before, they were concerned (and I was concerned) about an oil leak from the Corvette. When I checked the car before putting it back on the trailer, it was dripping so fast that I'd even call it a drizzle from the area in front of the oil pan. I never touched the harmonic balancer seal, and it wasn't leaking before I did the oil pan.... but now, I have a drizzle... here's the pictures
what you see is silicone.... where's the oil?

there's a bit on the bottom of the starter


there's an antifreeze leak at the back of the head


nothing here

there is ONE spot of oil on the bottom of the timing cover


oh yeah, and some body work because of the rock in my driveway - you have no idea how close I am to calling Hagerty and having someone else fix this


and while we're talking bonus, my starter isn't working either (bad solenoid).... that and the antifreeze leaks.... ugh....

[SuperBuickGuy]

and here's an "oh wow" wreck of a Porsche

It's interesting, most wrecks don't occur where the Porsche hit, most happen in the canyon - 3A and 3B are the 180 corners, and 3A claims a bunch, but there's a runout there that reconnects with the track (rough, but survivable)... the bend is 4, the 5A and 5B - those claim the most. Last year, 1.5 million dollars worth of cars were claimed there.
Where this guy hit (turn 1) - which is the drag strip - is the fastest part of the course

[SuperBuickGuy]

here's a video of the track - the not the same instructor, but I got the same instruction

[SuperBuickGuy]

Why they are teaching you to trail brake in the rain is beyond me.

In the rain, the car needs one input at a time. And frankly, they should be teaching you the classic style to begin with (get your braking done before turn-in) before going to a discussion of trail braking.

Lot's of ego involved here. Most instructors are more about telling, than observing and teaching. At the same time, it takes titanium cojones (or a death wish) to get in someone else's car and run at speed in the rain.

actually, they never ran at speed in the rain with the students. They instructed at 1/3rd speed, then set the people out on the track for their full speed by themselves. The result of that was a wreck.... with that said, I don't think, had they given full-speed instruction, that the wreck wouldn't have occurred... the kid was not smooth at all, and no matter how much instruction he got, the grey matter between the ears needs to say "slow down" when the conditions dictate. He wasn't. A friend of mine was driving my car when he wrecked, but the prior full-speed session he had spun out on the track....

so maybe they could have solved it if they had been watching... dunno, but at this point, it'd still be a 90% brick-between-the-ears, and 10% he should have gotten chewed out

As for the one-input-at-a-time. That is what they were teaching, the problem was they were not saying "input with your left foot to brake" rather they said to input one at a time - which means you'd lift off the accelerator and apply brake with your right foot.....

that said, I learned a lot - the criticism is minor stuff compared to how many good things I did learn.

[Bob Holmes]

Why they are teaching you to trail brake in the rain is beyond me.

In the rain, the car needs one input at a time. And frankly, they should be teaching you the classic style to begin with (get your braking done before turn-in) before going to a discussion of trail braking.

Lot's of ego involved here. Most instructors are more about telling, than observing and teaching. At the same time, it takes titanium cojones (or a death wish) to get in someone else's car and run at speed in the rain.

[SuperBuickGuy]

I forgot to mention one thing.


It doesn't leak water into the cabin - and heaven knows there was a full water test on it at speed

[SuperBuickGuy]

I like running in the rain. It separates those that can from those that can't.

The driving school kept apologizing and saying that you need to come run in the dry - but I agree, if you can run fast in rain or on snow, you can run fast in dry....

I liked the driving school people, but there were a couple things that left me shaking my head.
1) the apology for rain - we live in the PNW, it rains, get over it.
2) they would NEVER agree with a student, and always talked over/down to them... even when the instructor was wrong because he didn't fully comprehend the english language. An example, ever try to explain trail braking without actually explaining that trail braking is one foot on the brake and one on the throttle? They kept using words like "we're looking for smooth transitions" or "weight the front end".... the worst was between corners 3A and 3B - two 180* corner separated by maybe 50 feet. if you hard brake into 3A, trail brake into 3B, you could fly those corners. I got "instructed" that I kept doing 3B wrong because I wasn't hard enough on the brake. As these corners are downhill, the natural tendency was to coast between the corners - thus if you hit the brakes hard in 3B, you'd come to a complete stop.... had they simply said, hard brake into 3A, trail brake into 3B then set the front end by hitting the brakes hard at the cone.... much less confusion would have taken place.
So after that set of laps, we're debriefing, and it was then I realized that they forgot to mention "trail brake between the two".... probably because they naturally do it.... so I said why not trail - then I got talked over by one of the instructors...

nice job of talking he did.... talked me out of instruction by them

[SuperBuickGuy]

Aw man! So back to the taillights working? Is this a cliffhanger?

so the one thing that Corvette did today was provide taillights for my trailer. The trailer lights didn't work, so I turned on the marker lights on the Corvette (signals and brake lights worked on the trailer).

[Bob Holmes]

I like running in the rain. It separates those that can from those that can't.