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According to the build sheet glued to the
gas tank, this Stingray was delivered to a dealership in Jacksonville,
FL
in 1976. I bought the car in December 2004 and have been
working on its restoration ever since. The early stages of the
project can be found in Part 1. Below, I describe some of the
more recent work.
 While the fuel lines were out, I
decided to replace the floor pans. Over the
years, the leaking T-top panels had allowed water to pool on the floor, and the floor pans rusted completely through in
several places. A previous owner tried to solve the problem by
laying fiberglass across the whole floor. While these patches
allowed the car to be driven, the floor was very uneven and all the
mounting points for the seats and seatbelts were messed up, making it
impossible to install them correctly. The right solution was to
completely remove the wreckage of the old floor pans and weld in brand
new ones. A cut-off wheel on my angle grinder made the basic
cuts, but the remaining fiberglass patches had to be  yanked up with pliers and brute
force. A very
tiring and dirty job. Once it was finished, though, the extent of
rust damage to the floor was clear. A car just like Fred
Flintstone's! All the corroded metal was
cut away and the new floor pans were fit, then MIG-welded in.
This was my chance to learn welding, and Santa brought me a small
welder which worked beautifully. Finally, the floor was fixed
correctly and the seats and seat belts could be mounted as Chevrolet
had originally designed!
 A few other minor, but annoying issues were also fixed
around this
time. Someone decided that it was too difficult to remove the
door locks correctly, so they simply ripped them out of the fiberglass
panels. This meant that you unlocked the car by sticking your
finger through the hole and pushing down the lock rod.
Convenient, but not too secure! The damage was repaired by
fabricating and bonding thin metal plates on the insides of both door
panels to hold the lock mechanisms, then filling the gaps with body
putty. The factory alarm system was also fixed. It's pretty
much useless, but that was the state of the art in 1976! I also
installed the correct air intake system and valve covers. The car
originally came with chrome shielding around the distributor and plug
wires, but these had been lost sometime along the way. A very
generous fellow Corvette owner gave me a complete set and these pretty
much completed the engine compartment work, bringing it very close to
its condition when it left the St. Louis factory over 30 years ago.
 Many interior components also needed serious
restoration. Every
gear in the speedometer was stripped and the gauge face was badly
rusted. A complete rebuild solved both problems (the only job I
didn't do myself). The tachometer circuit board was fried by
running the car without the coil ground strap. Fortunately, a new
board was all that was needed. The faces of the other gauges were
badly rusted; a fellow Corvette owner wanted aftermarket gauges in his
car and generously donated his old, fully functional set. The
metal parts of the dash were stripped, polished and re-painted.
Finally, a pair of replacement seats were purchased. All of these
pieces now adorn our guest bedroom, waiting to be re-installed in the
car.
The next phase was to deal with the leaking automatic transmission and
rear suspension. The transmission problems were typical on cars
of this age and required only some new seals. On the other hand, ominous noises from the rear end suggested bad universal
joints and rear wheel bearings. This meant removing the entire
rear suspension for a rebuild.  Corvettes
have six u-joints, and at least half of mine were bad. Both rear
bearings were also junk. End play in Corvette rear bearings must
be set within very tight tolerances using precision-ground shims.
Doing the job required several tools that I fabricated on the lathe and
mill, and it was a real learning
experience. I also added the emergency brakes back to the car
since a previous
owner decided they were too much trouble and removed all the pieces and
tossed them in the trash! When everything was painted and put
back together, it worked perfectly. Nearly all the underside was
painted black with a few silver parts for contrast. Just for fun,
though, I decided to paint both half-shafts bright red to add a bit of
color.
 Toward the end of 2006,
two events slowed work on the
rebuilding project. The first was the birth of our first son,
Christopher Jon, on Halloween. He is growing every day and will
soon be talking. When only two months old, he
was already
helping supervise Dad's work in the garage. Here, Christopher is
giving me the "high five" on the rebuilt differential, telling me that
it was ready to go back on the car.
The other addition
was an 89 Corvette convertible, bought just before Christmas. We
weren't really looking for a second Corvette, but this was just too
nice to pass up. The
89 is known as a C4 style Corvette and has many "modern car" features
like fuel injection and rack-and-pinion steering. Unlike the 76,
the convertible has needed very little work beyond normal upkeep.
Cruising the back roads with the top down while listening to the
satellite radio is a blast! The only problem is that I have to
share the
convertible - my wife also enjoys driving it!
The next major projects for the 76 are rebuilding the steering and
front suspension and welding in a new windshield frame to replace the
sections damaged by the leaking T-tops. Once these tasks are
completed, the major mechanical work will be finished, and it will be
time to finish the interior structure and reinstall the dash, seats,
carpets, etc. to bring the car back to life.
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Stewart Research Group
