Stingray Corvette Build Day 1

With my friends moving to North Carolina in a couple of weeks, and a disassembled car that needs to make the drive from Colorado to NC there is only one thing that needs to be done.. LOTS OF FREAKING WORK! heh

I believe it’s a 1973 Corvette Stingray, the engine was built by my buddy who spent a few years building engines and doing other various things for Petty Enterprises. (NASCAR Team for those who don’t know.) Lots of tricks went into the engine, and the rest of the drive-line is fresh and finished. All that’s really left is aesthetics, besides the paint which just needs the final color sand and a good buff.

So the entire day was spent Installing Dyna-mat and Dave worked on the exhaust. The car used to have side pipes but he decided he wanted something quieter and didn’t burn passenger’s legs. He decided to use a pair of flow master mufflers and run it down the center. This was actually quite difficult as the car is not symmetrical. The drive-train is actually off-set by a couple of inches and as a result everything else is kind of off-set as well.

I don’t have too much extra detail as the entire day was spent doing just those two things. I did take a video with a few quick shots of the work as things progressed. Although I didn’t start shooting until the majority of the mat was done on the interior.

I was surprised at the difference of the panels after the application. I have used Dynamat on steel body cars before with great success, but this is the first fiberglass car I have tried it on. The fiberglass that Stringrays are made of is traditionally thin, and strong for Its thickness. They also flex a little bit and as a result of this and their hardness they transmit sounds really well. Once added in you could tell that higher frequency sounds were filtered out when tapping on the outside of the panel with your knuckle..

The inside of the rear wheel wells are all that is left for the Dynamat, then I can start installing the new carpet kit, which will take a full day in itself most likely. The exhaust got pretty far along today, and should be pretty much finished by the end of tomorrow. I will try and keep updates on the website every day or every other day as the project progresses. Here are some other pictures I took from today: