After selling the '61 and building a new garage beside the house, we found ourselves vetteless. While checking ads in the local Auto Trader we found this '69 Z28 all in pieces. We made an offer to purchase that was attractive to us and brought it home. Our idea was to build a fun car. The car had all the correct codes for a Z28 but the original motor was missing, fortunately all the other components were still there. We painted the car with eight coats of lacquer and clear, then reassembled everything to give it an original appearance. Since we didn't have the original engine we built a healthy 350 with 11:1 pistons and ported heads along with an original style intake and a set of Hooker headers.
The metalflake paint was stripped using razor blades as far as the seam in the fenders, then the fenders were removed and new ones installed. Finally we sprayed some primer and the car looked like it was taking shape, plenty of block sanding later we gave it six coats of red lacquer and four coats of clear lacquer. It sat for two weeks to let the paint cure and then we wet sanded and buffed the finish.
We'd discovered along the way that it was an original 427/400hp car and that GM Canada was able to provide us with documents to prove the options the car was originally shipped with. It had been Fathom Green with a black interior, since we thought we were going to be keeping it forever we decided to paint it red.
Next came a new leather interior, the UPS man was becoming a good friend, seems he was always dropping off shipments from Corvette parts suppliers..:-)
Lastly we installed new glass and all the trim, it was finally ready for a road test.....what a great drive....:-)
It wasn't long before we heard about a '66 that was for sale, it sounded very intriguing as it had a lot of options, and was definately worth investigation.....