454Big - It's done now!

[groovyjay]

Hallo alles!

Frank here are few shots of the finished car as promised awhile back.















And here's plenty more:

https://www.vettefinders.com/79registry/.../index.htm

How's your bad Big Block coming alogn? Last I saw was a pic of a finished red frame with the engine in place.

Vielen danke!

[Frank the Judge]

Cool Wheels!!!

and - how does the Vintage Air work in a C3???

[groovyjay]

Thanks I like yours too. Are those 17"? HOw wide were you able to tuck under that C2? What size tires are you running? I have a 75 vette also, that I will propably sells to buy a 65 coupe and start working on that next winter, just starting to gather information of what can be done to a C2. Yours is beautiful

[V-POWER C5]

Hey Groovyjay

A nice car and great beauty whells


Klaus

[Frank the Judge]

Are those 17"?

Nop, those are 18 inchers American Racing Torq Thrust II. Front is 8 inch wide, back is 10 inch wide.
The tires are Yokohamas AVS 225/40/18 and 255/35/18 which equals with the same diameter as original.
But it is not a joke to put these wheels under a C2. Usually you are not able to run wheels wider than 8 inch without sporting fender flares. I did that with a reconstruction of the frame and off-set trailing arms and thousands of other mods.
In accompaniment with the lowering of approx 4 inches is has the right stance and the space between wheels and frame/body is less than 3 Millimeters.

Greetings

EDIT: The backspacing is front 4 inch, back 6 inch

[groovyjay]

Danke Klaus

Frank, I'm using 20" all around, 8" fronts with 4" backspacing, 255/30/20 Pirellis and at the back I have 10" wide wheels, with 5.25" backspacing and 285/30/20 tires. I'm using offset trailing arms, and I have a good 10mm frame clearance just above the trailing arm pocket. Is this where you had to modify your frame? Did you cut a piece out and made a dnt to the frame to give extra room for the wheels? Do you think I could use 18"x8" TT IIs all around with 245 tires and 4" backspacing? Thank you so much for the info!

BTW, the Vintage AIr works like a charm, no way a stock A/C could work so well!

[Frank the Judge]

Dear Groovyjay,
it might be difficult to use 245er all around. The back should not be the problem but at the front you probably have some clearence problems while steering (contact to frame).

The modification at the rear frame was above the frame pockets, actually the whole complete bow over the wheel. I cutted this sequence out at the very outside of the frame and rewelded it 1 cm further to the inner. The remaining overwhelming edge was grinded down. Literally the boxed frame was made a little smaller to clear the wheel.

20 inchers might not fit on the C2 because of the different body compared to the C3. The C3 has got rounded fender weels compared to the squared of the C2. The only solution to cure that is to install fender flares. But in my opionion this does not look that good as the original. So 18 inch is the biggest available size to get the same diameter as the original tires. The other solution would be just to glue some rubber on the AR TT II since the smallest ratio on rubbers available in these tire sizes is 35 .

Of course it is technically possible to mount 285 tires on a 10 inch wheel but this does not fit under the body.

Greetings

PS: I think I have to visit my friend Pauli Penti in Helsinki in order to check your Corvette and talk about C2 mods as well

[groovyjay]

Vielen Danke Frank, The overal diameter on my stock wheel (15"x8" with 255/60/15) was 27" and with the 20" wheels I have now it's 26.7", so according to that it might be possible to run 20"x8" on C2, but I think I'll stick to 18" just to be safe. And if you are coming to meet Pauli any time soon, just let me know and we'll hook up!

[Frank the Judge]

Hi Groovyjay,
the overall diameter of the original C2 wheel/tire combination is 63,5 cm (equals a little less tha 25 inch).
greez

[hape]

w o w ..... hoffe mir steigt jetzt nicht irgendeiner auf´s dach , aber bisher waren die
kunststoff C3 ja nicht sooooo mein ding.... , aber was man da so sieht, nehm ich selbst das zurück !!!!!! - und die felgen kommen auf dem "gerät" richtig gut !
- Kompliment ! - das hat was !