'62 Frame Conversion - August 2002
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The car is complete now and we have driven it about 2000 miles, including a trip to Corvettes@Carlisle. Evertything seems to be working properly, but every time we get caught in a rain storm we find a new leak.
We did encounter a minor situation with the Vintage Air Short Pack air conditioning/heater evaporator unit. This unit is made with two outlets on the end that connect to the defroster ducts and three outlets on the top that connect to the heat/AC vents. When the AC is on, all the cold air is routed to the three heat/AC vents, no problem. When the heat or defrost mode is selected, all the heat is routed to the two defrost vents, the only difference being that in defrost mode, the air is "conditioned". Well, it seems to me that in heat mode the air should be routed to the heat/AC vents, but this is not the way this system was designed. When in heat/defrost mode a vacuum is supplied to the valve in the hot water supply line allowing water to flow through the heating coils in the evaporator. This same vacuum is also supplied to the diverter valve on the evaporator unit, forcing all the hot air to be routed to the defrost vents. The problem was solved by placing a small vacuum switch in the vacuum line to the diverter valve, so now I can have heat or conditioned heat sent to the defrost ducts or to the heat/AC vents.
View of completed engine compartment.
Completed interior.
In January, 2003, we drove the car down to Daytona. Here are some pictures on the speedway with the Corvette Forum group. We had snow on the ground the day we left for Daytona, the temperature was about 26 degrees and we had the heater on all the way. The car ran perfectly and we averaged around 25 mpg on the trip back.
Carlisle 2003
Carol's 62 received a Celebrity Choice award at Corvettes@Carlisle, 2003
Just finished rebuilding a hardtop.
Trying to put together a collage.
Carlisle Trip - August 2004
This years trip to Carlisle was not without incident. On Friday mourning we were on our way to the fairgrounds and had just turned off I-81 ontoWalnut Bottom Road and were making a slow turn onto College Street when we heard a loud "POP". We pulled over to the side of the road and looked around the car to see if something had fallen off. Everything looked OK except for the right front wheel which was "loose". We jacked up the front, removed the wheel, and discovered that the wheel hub/bearing carrier had come apart. When we put the car together, I had replaced the right side hub so it had only about 14,000 miles on it. I guess we were fortunate that it didn't happen at 70 mph on the Interstate. Luckily a Carlisle staff person (Andrew) came by and offered me a ride to the fairgrounds where I found a replacement hub. Andrew was nice enough to offer me a ride back to the car. On the ride back to the car Andrew asked me if I needed any help putting the new bearing on the car and I told him "No, my wife will have the old bearing off when we get there". I don't think he believed me, but she did have it ready to install the new bearing and we only lost about two hours getting to the fairgrounds. So here is a BIG "Thank You" to Andrew and the Carlisle staff.
Here is Carol putting the new hub in and some pictures of the broken one.
In 2005 we took the '62 to a Corvette event at Lowes Motor Speedway. There were about 90 Corvettes at this event and they were allowed to run, in groups of 10 cars, fast laps around the speedway. Here picture of Carol driving her '62 on the track. The picture is rather blurry because it was lifted from a video tape. She averaged 130 mph for several laps.
Vette Views Magazine article, November 2014