36 vintage Corvettes to be given away...

Not photography related, but an interesting article about 36 vintage Corvettes to be given away next year.

https://www.nytimes.co​m …=3702655&imp_id​=680839722

Interesting. I wonder how the VW Bug snuck in. I wouldn't mind winning one & have the space for several of them but I strongly suspect most will need money spent to get them road worthy again. Sitting around for so many years takes a toll on several components but especially on the brake calipers which first appeared in the 65 model year (you could opt out of having them) & weren't replaced until the next generation of car came out in 1984. The design is flawed so if the caliper bore rusted (which they did) the seal had to move through the rust because it was on the piston) which both caused leakage & chewed the seal lip. I know all of this because restoring that era has been my day job for a long time. I retired from it at the end of 2017.

Wow, you restored cars for a living? How cool.

Its not as glorious as it sounds. Everyone sees the finished product but have no idea just how much dirty nasty work it took just to get the basic project under way. In the beginning I did a lot of early Camaros but eventually Corvettes became my main job. In the early years everything was documented on film & the car owner got the prints & the negatives so I don't have much to show from that era. Also of note when it comes to Corvettes many people can "fix" fiberglass at home so there are a lot of poorly repaired Corvettes with owners who don't know just how bad things are under the shiny paint. I've had to redo some pretty shoddy work which meant having to talk owners into expense they hadn't allowed for. Another problem I ran into regularly was the fact people think Corvettes are fiberglass & can't rust. The outside is fiberglass (or plastic) but starting in 63 a metal sub structure was added (commonly called a bird cage) & in 68 a lot more metal was added for safety etc. That metal rusts but you can't just start welding new parts on without setting the plastics on fire a lot of the time. Those flaws can be invisible to the owners / buyers but once I start looking for it I find it quickly & have to break some very expensive bad news to people.

This is the drivers side dash top area / windshield pillar of a shiny red car a buyer paid top dollar for thinking it was a great car.

Fascinating post, thanks for sharing.

Very interesting.
The White ant of metal.
There's an old addage "bog covers a lot of problems" just shows how real that is.
I imagine it's "how far do we go" once you've opened up the problem.
Heartbreaking to be an owner.

Fortunately I've been at it for a long time, first as a hobby while working at a GM dealership as a mechanic & then I decided to give it (and other performance work) a try full time from home. I knew most of the pitfalls about the rust issues of the years with concealed metal & always checked every car for it before letting it's owner start thinking they had a good one that just needed some refreshing. I taught prospective buyers what to look for, or got paid to do inspections for them but until you strip off the paint you still can't be sure about some of the nightmares bondo & paint have been hiding. The absolute worst surprise I got re bad bodywork was after stripping a 65 which had an obvious repair (body replaced center of wheels forward, which is a common repair) but in this case it had had a total of 3 consecutive attempts to get it right, all done WRONG. A real body shop had been doing the repairs using bondo to attach the fiberglass matting to the body & trying to fill the matting with bondo & then covered it with more bondo. They hadn't used any resin in the repair process. Needless to say it changed the price of the job once I found that out but the owner trusted me to do it & get it right.
I had one important rule & that was not to take on the jobs that were too far gone even though the owner didn't realize it. AND if my bill plus the value of their car when I started would be noticeably higher than the cars value I tried very hard to convince them not to proceed. Most followed that advice but some didn't & ended up with very nice cars that eventually appreciated past the total spent etc. Doing one up to immediately sell is seldom profitable. Long term ownership (of Corvettes in particular) can make a good restoration worth while & allow full recovery of money spent both for a restoration & good maintenance.

I missed saying I admired your work. Commendable.

I've a bodyworks mate who beats his own panels etc and I've made woodwork for old cars (and Oxen ) plus I had a BMW 3.0SI resprayed once, from bare metal, lead wiped etc.
If you're going to work on this stuff only one way to do it IMO.

Keep posting your restorations. Well it's Perfectly Frank's thread so not my call.