Beth is out of town for a week, which makes me very sad and lonely. She's off doing something extremely noble. She's volunteered with the Culinary Corps to go to New Orleans and cook for victims of the Katrina disaster and aid workers. She'll be gone for a week, so I decided this would be a great opportunity to bury myself in my car. If you want the troubled history, follow this link http://www.mydadscorvette.com.

Because Corvette Repair has been doing such a stellar job of the chassis work, I need to gain some ground on the body in order for them to re-mount it on top of the chassis. Before this can be done, I need to clean and paint the engine compartment. Why, you may ask? Well, I've been doing this whole thing backwards - Because I originally took the body off the car in Arizona and took the chassis apart there, I had to rebuild the chassis first. The preferable way would have been to complete the body restoration work (all but the paint) BEFORE lifting it off the chassis, but no-one told me that. Oh, well.

So now that the chassis is nearly finished. The engine and transmission are mounted, the suspension and wheels are rebuilt, the fuel lines and brake lines are in place, the chassis is ready for its body. As you can see by the pictures the body has a long way to go before its ready.

The shop has been doing the bulk of the mechanical work, while I really haven't been doing much of anything but paying the bills an shlepping parts to Long Island every other week.

I put on my grubbiest clothes and headed over to the garage that I'm renting on Sackett Street in Brooklyn. It's about 6 blocks from our apartment which is pretty great in that I can walk there without any problem.

On Saturday, I wanted to clear out all the remaining hardware inthe engine compartment so that I could clean it and paint it before taking it to the shop because once the body is restored to the chassis with the engine in place it will be really difficult to pain the engine compartment without messing up the engine. This is what I was able to do:

Removed the radiator mounts and support. I thought I had done this years ago, but I guess not.

Removed the electrical wiring - who knew that there was so much?

Removed the headlight assemblies - The 1963-67 corvettes have these really great headlights, that I guess most later corvettes had, where the lights are hidden while off, and then they rotate around 180º when you turn them on to reveal the lamps. I'm sure it's been a problem for many owners of this car, in that when they break in the off position, you're kind of screwed. But I like them just the same.

Removed the heater blower motor box - sounds fancy, but it's really just a piece of plastic that contains the heater blower, which takes heat from the engine and pumps it into the cabin.

I decided I would tackle the interior tomorrow. Most of the remaining pieces in the engine compartment link directly into the interior of the car. Things like the steering column which connects to the steering wheel, the windshield washer motor and the rest of the heater assembly would have to wait.