Early Ideas
Ive always had a fascination with cars and fixing them up. Past cars. But I started getting to a point in my life where I wanted to take the next step beyond fixing one up. As a machinist my entire adulthood life, alot of the things and ideas other people have I could make myself. I bit off alot, probably more than I wanted to but I enjoyed it, and I got alot of satisfaction and self gratitude from it.
The motor
The motor was going to be a LS7, but after researching the cost it was just out of my budget at the time. So I thought no biggy Ill build a 427 with TPI (tuned port injection) on it. But oh my, It was worse, about $5000 by the time you get all the electronics and everything. And then I still needed to build a motor, so that was out. Then I thought Tri-power has always been somthing I thought was cool, but at swap meets for a used manifold only, I couldn't find one for less than $1800, and then I would still need carbs and linkage. So I then found a Highrise Dualquad and a pair of Edlbrocks with linkage for around a grand (shown in the picture). I new right then that was what I wanted to build. But what I didnt know was that was only gonna be a phase, and the motor would change a dozen times after that, meaning the original LS7 idea would have been cheper than what I now have. After the motor was finished sometime in 1994 I went back to working on the car. The motor in its early stages was pretty, but not very practical, as seen in the most recent pictures its much different exterior wise, however all the rods, pistons, crank, and head components are still the same. Today the motor is different starting with the oil pan, all the pulleys, alternator, manifold (including everything above the manifold), pretty much everything but the shortblock is different. Most of it was change because it just wouldnt fit or work or combine with the corvette body. The block of the motor was a 2 bolt main 454 block that I had found with blown lower end. It was perfect because, if the motor has to be line bored, might as well just buy some 4 bolt main caps drill & tap the block for it and vwa-la you have a 4 bolt main that is just as good as an original. The crank is just a forged HD chevy 396 crank thats been balanced and cross drilled. The rods are HD chevy 427 rods that have been balanced to ± 1 gram. The pistons are TRW L2268 dome pistons also balanced to ± 1 gram. The cam I chose for this motor is a Crowler 01349. It has .573 lift for the intake and .590 for the exhaust. In the head area of the motor I chose to go with crane gold anodized roller rockers. I useg GM pass 8872702 heads because of the closed chamber for high compression, and after the port work is done to these heads they actually produce more horsepower than the high horsepower heads. I had alot of work done to these heads including the valve area to accomadate the high lift cam. The header are Headman headers that I had Cerma-coated in the chrome look finish to reduce heat. The manifold is a Eldelbrock Tunnelram bottom and the top half for the dual quads is my own design. All the gaskets are copper. The (2) Holley 4780 dual feed double pumper carbeurators have had the choke assembly machined away for a BarryGrant type style. The linkage is also my own design. On the front of the motor theres alot of aluminum, starting with the Ron davis large core radiator. Behind that I have a aluminum Eldebroc High volume waterpump, and all aluminum pulleys.
The Car
 This car was in such bad shape when I got it that even the $1000 I paid for it was probably too much. Everything that could possibly rust, was rusted.
It was purchased without a motor or transmission. The car was crashed into a river bed where extensive under carriage damage was done, as seen below.
But that didn't matter! It all started in late 1993 I saw an add for a 1977 corvette that was in need of body work, and missing the motor. The asking price was $2500. I was kinda interested because at the time I wanted to build a 1970 LS7 copy. But I thought as I drove out there I could build a 1977 with the LS7 motor in it. When I arrived to view the car I was shocked. It was a hunk. And little to my surprise looking at it from the outside I could only see a portion of the cars extensive damage. But seeing what I saw was enough to allow me to relise this car was not worth anything near the $2500 asking price. So after wheeling and dealing I talked the party down to $1000 and they could keep the tranny.
Now I had to get it home. I called in a flatbed wrecker and as the car was be winched onto the flatbed it was obviously there was more damage to the rearend then I hadn't observed during the initial inspection.  It became apparent I was in for a huge project. I didnt care, I just bought a corvette, and I was on top of the world.
As the weeks went by I slowly took the car apart and the deeper I got into this car the more I realized that pretty much everything was going to have to be replace. The rust on this car was so bad almost every bolt broke off rather than unscrewed. The deeper I got the worse it got, until one day I got the car ready for the body removal. Once the body was off the car and it was a rolling chassis I could really access the damage. The rear end was wasted however the front end was in excellent shape, except for normal wear parts, balljoints, wheel bearings, etc. etc. As weeks became months, I finally had a reality of what it was gonna take to make this car into something. But what? How bout a 1977 LS7?
Turned out the block and pistons were $2500 without machine work. So then I thought Ill just build a show car. However Im gonna build one with some horsepower.
The Chasis restoration
As the months went by I started restoring the car. Everything I put into it was brand new. The only thing that I re-used from the original car was the frame, front suspension (although every bearing, bushing and bolt was replaced) rotars and brake calipers. And those were also rebuilt completly.
Finally I got to the point where the car was a rolling chasis. It was completely restored to the stock components, including the rearend (click on picture above to see rearend after restoration).
At that time it was Summer 1996 when my family started hanging out at the dragstrip. After a few races I decided that ive got this car that could be a really nice drag car, and it already has a fair amount of horsepower. After tons and tons of research I decided that Chris Alston's Chasis works had the components I like to turn this car into a drag car. So i ordered a generic kit that included coil over shocks, springs, and brackets, 2 round tube frame rails, cross member, and 4 link bars and brackets. Then came the hardest decision I ever made with a car. I took a sawzall and cut the car in half.
After a considerable time early fall 1996, I had the car back to where all 4 tires were on the ground. Only this time I had 16" wide slicks in the rear and 4" pizza cutters in the front.
The Body
The body of the car matched everything else, for starters it appeared to have had been repainted 4 times. I beleive the original color was white, then it was painted black, from there it went to silver and finally ended up that lovely purple, as seen above. I spent weeks with a special fiberglass paint stripper, getting the body back to the undercoat. After Id say probably 100 hours of stripping I had the body to a fiberglass, so i rattle canned primer over the entire body to protect it from???? Well not rust, we'll just say garage dust.
Before I was gonna put the body back on the car I wanted to put some kind of a spoiler on the rear. I wanted somthing I could mold to the car so as if it looked like it was factory and part of the original design of the body. So I purchased a Turbo style rear wing and molded it to the car, so that it does look as if its original. There is no seem lines at all and it contours as if its part of the body. Overall I was very happy with the looks of the spoiler and the way it turned out. After the spolier was finished I was doing a practice mount ofthe body when I realized I still had alot of work to do with the rear fender wells.
Because of the way the corvette fender wells curl under the body, I couldnt get the body on without cutting the fender wells up. I really didnt want to cut them because I didnt want to lose the corvette look.  But after many more hour of mods I came up with a way to cut them and still keep the corveete look.
As I finished all I wanted to do the body, it came time to remount it to the chasis. But things always come aprt alot easier than the go back together. For starters I didnt have any body mounts in the rear. So I went back to the chasis and had to fab body mounts to the new frame rails and cross member. After many more hours of mods and fab work I got the body mounted in a way I was happy with. After all that was done I didnt relise that the hood was part of the body, and there was alot of motor sticking above the hoodline. So I hacked on the hood for quite some time making it open and close where it would clear all of the components sticking out of it.
RestorationPutting the car back together was alot harder than taking it apart, On the other hand it was alot cleaner and alot more enjoyable, assembling all these new parts.  As shown earlier I had clearence problems everywhere, but as time went on I worked them all out.
I built a pretty cool body harness and installed a homemade railing system for a chain hoist as shown in the pic. This setup worked pretty well because it allowed me to keep raising and lowering the body onto the chassis, to find out where it was hitting. Finally I got the mounted where it cleared everything and I mounted it with the body mounts. Finally it started looking like a car. After hooking up everything I could to that point I needed to start the wiring process. Just like the rest of the car the stock wiring harness was wasted. But I was determined to get it to work. After months of trouble-shooting I finally gave up and decided the harness was beyond help.
ElectricalI tryed everything to get that harness to work but everytime I'd fix one short another would arise. So I did some research and decide Painless wiring had a really cool fuse box that I could use but I would still have to wire from scratch. After months and months of wiring taillights, brake lights, turn signals and all the exterior gadgets, I began thinking about interior work.  I bought Norskog Digital gauges, and stereo equiptment. I spent some time getting all that wired when I ran into another situation. I startd thinking about doors and all the wiring in them when I noticed that I counldn't use the original door mechanisms because of the roll cage. so after thinking about it for a while and researching I came up with a plan to go to fully remote entry. Spending another month with wiring and research I installed a 7 channel remote with some cool features. The car now has shaved door handles with solenoids to open the doors by remote.  The power windows up/down are also run from the remote include the hood.
The wiring schematic for this car is starting to get more complicated, It was a very simple setup at first with the 12 pole painless wiring fuse block, however with all the additions I've had to add many relays, fuses, and harness's to this setup. As the internal wiring was be completed it was becoming more apparent that I needed to start looking at some of the mechanics of the interior, such as Shifter console and controls.
Final paint
I decided since i had won an online car show with the rattlecan flame job that maybe if it was done with real paint I would be happy. So I finished the final bodywork prepped the car for paint and sent her down the road. 4 months later I got her back all black. The color looks great but I've never had a black car before and it gets dirty faster than I can wash it. My intensions from here are too paint the nose white as seen in the rattlecan pictures and work the flames back on it. But I'm starting to have 2nd thoughts about that idea. The flame job although very appealing looks too much like a hotwheel.
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