My boys and I are restoring my 1980 SA that was highly customized in 1988, back to its former glory. This car has a really cool story. Way before Foose and Kindig were drawing their customs before building, I designed and drew this car when I was 16. My family has been building corvettes since the early 60's and we were breaking the RX down to repaint and my uncle asked me what we should do it it. There was a rear bumper from a 1981 corvette laying next to the car and we held it up and said, "this would be cool." I was an art student and I drew it up and they built it.

It took 11 months and we rolled the sides, added an 81 corvette rear bumper, fiber glassed the center and put in FB side tail lights. We also tucked the front bumper back a few inches and rolled the ends to replace the rubber caps. The car was killer! After a few years of driving it I went to college and it has dome mechanical issues and we parked it in the barn. Honestly, in my 20s I neglected it and it started rusting away. We pulled it our last month, and damn! She cleaned up pretty well and didn't have near the rust I thought.

What I didn't realize was how freaking popular they have become! And, I can't find many parts. So I'm hopping in on here to find inspiration, parts and post pics of the process.

I've got one sat that drive like a beast, and another that builds LS drag cars so we're going to give it all we got over the next year or so and get her rebuilt. Staying true to the 12a, no LS swap here.

Here are the original Build pics from 1988-1989:

 

We pulled it ouf of the barn at the corvette shot in April of 2021 and moved it to my sons shop to start the rebuild. She was in pretty rough shape.

 

We've got her in the shop now and getting ready to start pulling the motor. Once I got under her and started looking around, she's actually not as bad as I thought. There is some rust on the bottom of the doors as you would expect, on the front cowl, and a good bit coming through where the fiberglass hits the metal. But overall, nothing too bad.

 

You can read below to see how this all came together, but here is a pic from the web of an 80-81 Corvette rear end and you can see how we fiberglassed that it. This was an old school process, all done with fiberglass and hand work. What do you think?

 

Not a big fan of the license plate area, but it is unique. What part of SC are you from?

 

Glad to see you started a build thread here! What's even better is that you and your sons are working on a car you worked on as a teenager. That's a very cool experience no doubt!

 

I'm in Greenville. You in SC?

 

howdy neighbor.

 

Has a strong 928 vibe going for it. Which is cool.

 

Thank you for explaining the body work. When I saw your introductory post I was dying to ask why your SA had FB tail lights and a Chevy rear roll pan (looks like the ones popular on 70's-80's Chevy PU's).

How do you like the the Baby Turbo mirrors? (I need new mirrors).

 

I liked them back in the 80's. Through my research now I've found that they are still the period current after market mirrors so if I get new ones I'll prob stay with them. In rebuilding the car, I'm going to leave some parts black this time around so I'd like to have the mirrors, hatch hinges, rear cabin vents, and front grill black.