Alex, glad you like the little van and Colin, thanks for your wishes for the van's rebuild.
About the 58 - it's a little O/T but here goes! Sorry, we’re not real big on taking photos!
The story is pretty short – November 1995. We'd both just finished fulltime uni (surviving on $12k/year with a mortgage) and, had just got graduate level jobs so, for a long time and even then, we couldn't even contemplate playing cars.
As much as we think so much alike it was weird cos we’d never mentioned that we both loved early vettes - I think we just "knew". John had seen it in the paper for a month and only mentioned it when a mate was around. All hell broke loose – he almost got divorced there and then! It was a basket case at a price we thought we could borrow and still survive. We didn’t want a perfect example cos we knew we would only chop it up! So took a very big gamble.
Progress has been slow because of no money, heavy work schedules or more recently, family. In really doesn’t matter how long it took to get to here except it would've been nice for dad to have seen it finished but.......
Like all of our cars, this will be driven. We would have liked to have it at the 2009 Melbourne Hot Rod Show – in the car park of course – but unless we can get Trevor to pull his finger out with the body and paint I don’t think that will happen.
So not too many more photos but I will give you a run down if anyone is interested!
While it’s a 58 (that was actually built late November 57) it will look more like a 59 as we're cleaning up the body a lot by removing the bonnet and boot badges, cowl vent, rear and front bumperettes , plain bonnet (not having the washboard louvres) and no boot straps. So body wise it will be as clean as possible with most vertical lines removed so it gives it a lower wider stance from front and rear. The height you see it at is what it will be (and it’s legal – bags are for groceries!). Wheels are 17x7 and 17x8 Billet Specialty Legacies and, amongst some other custom fiberglass work we’ve done we had to put mini-tubs in it to take the 8's cos the factory sports wheel option was, wait for it, 5.5's.
Impressive huh! And that was definitely the maximum you could fit in there without modifying the chassis too much!
John did the left to right conversion, all the chassis mods and he’ll start building the motor in the next couple of months – after the van is done. It’s got a HT front end, Commodore rack and pinion and 4 link rear end with Watts linkage and Bilstein coilovers. He hand built the extractors and exhaust system from mandrel bends. It has a 9” with Moser 31 spline axles and 3.5 gears. It’ll run a Turbo 700R behind the 383 with Airflow Research Heads, Hilborn Injection converted to EFI (all under the standard bonnet) and a Crane Roller Cam. Motor will be dressed up with 60’s Cal Custom 9 fin rocker covers. It will be running air cos we’ve got a hard top for it! (my mother's day present from the cat one year!) The aim is to get a 60’s street/race car look to the engine bay – no anodizing or braided hoses at all! Most of the dress up bits will be beadblasted and not highly polished. We should get about 450bhp out of it – just right for cruisin!
Interior is black leather with VK commodore seats that, after a lot of work, look very original “corvette” now! The rest of the interior and trim (not that there’s much trim in one of these) will also have a very original feel to it and, to most people that don’t know early vettes, they will think it is a very nice stocky with shiny wheels. A lot of hard work has been done in an effort to make this thing look factory! Hopefully no mods will look out of place – we’ve done heaps of research and had lots of “talk time” about it.
Colour = RX8 yellow with an extremely crisp white cove. Ya gotta have ‘em two tone! And, we have the number plate “RED-058” just to upset all those people who keep telling us that we have to paint it red! My comment is always the same to them “You wanna pay for the paint job and we’ll do it any colour you want!” We chose the wheels because they are reminiscent of the Halibrands that were around in the 60’s but we will, at a later stage, get some nice whitewalls and hubbies so the majority of the general public will think it’s a stocky!
So yep, I have 3 of my favourite cars – my FE, a little van and a 58! The only other cars I'd really like are a Cobra Daytona Coupe, a D Type and a 33 Lo HiBoy – I can dream can’t I?
And no, no more surprises in our garage unless I can "barn find" a Cobra Daytona Coupe somewhere and then sell my soul to get it!
Kathi
F4+ =
^^=
