1957 Corvette Super Sport

[Don H.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport First Ride

How sweet it is!

[Leif A.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport First Ride

Sweet payoff, Rich, for another job well done!! Savor the moment!!

[Richard M.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

I won't be able to sleep tonight. Especially since after supper I had a coffee.

I just realized one of those photos looks familiar. The one with me in the car with the door open. I just recalled this one, which I found years ago but appears to be a capture someone did long ago from that video from the Coliseum in a previous post. Scary familiar.

Believe me, this wasn't staged. What are the odds of this? Even our heads are turned the same way. Very spooky. I'll have to do a B & W panorama now.



Here's the Panorama....

[Bruce B.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

Rich,

Great stuff. ENJOY.

Bruce B

[Dino L.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

Rich, did you notice the difference in the blue stripe in the 57 picture in the drip rail section fore and aft of hood?

[Richard M.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

Rich, did you notice the difference in the blue stripe in the 57 picture in the drip rail section fore and aft of hood?

Dino,

Yes, both John and I noticed that. The original stripe did not go into the gutter. He said he missed that.

John painted the car himself when he restored it 20 years ago using original type lacquers, white base and pearl. He told me how difficult it was to get the pearl on, making sure it went on in one direction only when applying it. I never knew that. I've learned much from him about paint and is on my paint hero list, among much other Corvette knowledge. He has been doing Corvettes for over 53 years and is a absolute wealth of information. It was by chance we met years ago when I had a '62 project for sale. He saw my ad on ebay and he and a friend of his from LI/FL named Tom came by to look at it. We are all the best of friends now from that day on. Another Corvette friendship story.

The original '56 donor car was red, and the Styling Dept scuffed it and painted it white pearl back in the fall of that year. When John did it over, he decided to get it down to bare fiberglass before priming with original type primers. He did leave all of the "red" where it was before, like in the trunk and decklid telltale ares, etc.


Remember the Work Order(earlier post) that said the '56 #1589 Display car in the GM building was to have a new "overformed" decklid. Before the car was sent to Styling to become the Super Sport, the car was red, and the new decklid was painted red before reinstallation. This is why the areas under the hinges are red instead of bare glass like when painted at St Louis. John left the underside just like it was when he got it to preserve it's features.


Just yesterday we were talking about the paint. After he stripped it, he was thinking of priming then painting the car..... RED, before painting the white pearl. He said he then came to his senses and decided to do the white pearl right over the primer and not go crazy about it.

Rich

[Richard M.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

So, yesterday was the first ride but I must tell you about a issue we had that in fact may have saved a big problem, and a Main Harness.

THANKFULLY.....we had a 30 AMP fuse in the main feed. This is what it's designed to do in the case of a catastrophic electrical fault.....



This is what we discovered. If you recall in one of the videos after we got the engine running during break-in, we noticed the charging system was nonoperational. When we came off high RPM later, all of a sudden it was charging. We thought the generator brushes were dirty and it then cleaned itself and started working. Wrong. Yesterday on startup.....no charge. We shut down.

It was discovered with a ohm meter and some probing we had a very poor ground between the Voltage Regulator and the Generator, on the order of about 28 ohms. The ground lug on the VR was a loose connection. I cleaned it and tightened it then ran the engine and we were then charging. My Voltmeter was reading about 13.8 volts or so, so I thought we were all set. We then drove the car and all was good.

Keep in mind that before 1958, the generator harness is built in to the Main/Forward harness on the 56/57 cars. From 1958 to 1962, the Generator harness is a small separate 3 wire harness, Field wire, Armature wire, and ground shield. Earlier C1's had all three connections wrapped inside the Main/Forward harness.

Quick flashback story. In my '59 back in the 80's when I first got it, one night while driving I noticed the headlights were very bright. When I got home my generator harness was fried, along with a smell of a overcharged battery. Luckily for me and the car, it didn't burn up. My Voltage Regulator stuck "ON", and put the generator in full ON charge, which is about 17 or 18 volts. It fried my armature inside the generator as well. I had NO fuse protection when I got the car. After I fixed my generator and harness, I then installed a Fusible Link at the Main feed at the starter solenoid/battery cable.

Back to the Super Sport.....A while later on restart, something happened. I noticed the Ammeter was flickering + to center and back, then all of a sudden I saw it jump to peg 30A+, then drop to center. We lost all power to the electrical system but the engine was still running. Strange I thought. I put the lights on(lesson learned as you'll see later), and the dash lights were very bright. I shut them off. I then opened the door and both Courtesy lamps came on bright like a camera flash, then both went dead. I checked the Main 30A fuse holder. The fuse was blown.

So then I'm thinking the engine was running just off of the battery. No charging going on. But now I'm thinking the Main Red feed on the VR, which is fed from the A(Armature output) terminal from the full ON generator was now feeding the electrical system, even with the blown fuse to the Ammeter. We shut down.

With the engine running, the generator was on full output. IT was feeding the destination side of the Ammeter, therefore the electrical system is now still active and unprotected. This is now a new failure mode I had not covered in my Fuse Protection Theory on pre 1967 Corvettes. I need to think about this more, but I think we'll need to add protection directly at the VR Red Feed to cover this exact failure scenario. More to come on that later.

So after all of this, I immediately suspected the Voltage Regulator as the fault. I did a quick Generator Field to Ground check using a ohm meter and I read about 4.5 ohms. Seemed logical, no dead short. IIRC, if the Field is shorted to ground it will put the generator into max output mode. The VR is the trigger for the Field, so if it's not working right it can make the generator be stuck on.

We removed the voltage regulator and we called it a day. When I got home I opened it up. Sure enough, the contacts were corroded and looked very bad. It must have had a stuck on Field relay and never shut off. This is the worst scenario failure of a VR.

We have several VR's which I'll spot check and will hopefully get one working properly. I'll replace the cover with the chromed cover when we have a good one.

Close call averted. If you don't have Main fuse/fusible link protection in your pre-1967 Corvette, watch out.

Rich
edit PS Link to VR fault diagnosis HERE.

[Richard M.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

Charging system now working to spec with the rebuilt generator and good Regulator. However, we had yet another problem....brakes. The left front wheel cylinder was seized "off"(no brake). We pulled the drum/hub assembly(riveted drum) and found the wheel cylinder was nonoperational. We removed the cylinder and freed the stuck pistons, honed it, and rebuilt with a new kit. All better. We bled the brake system with fresh fluid and all good.

We then got a call. The Amelia Island Concours, scheduled for Sunday....was moved to Saturday. Sunday forecast 100% heavy rain so they decided to move it to Saturday. We thought we had a extra day to prepare, but nope, not this time.

We took it for another test drive and it's running great. We contacted our transporter and they're going to be able to get the car there today. We're heading up there this morning in a chase vehicle to meet the car there and hopefully all goes well at the concours. Can't wait. Of course I'll have a "few" photos and videos of the event and ill update when I can.

Thanks to everyone for all of your interest in my fun with the most precious Corvette I have ever played with.

Rich

[Richard M.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

Car arrived at 4 pm Friday....safe and sound.

We will get it on the field this morning after a short drive. Met lots of friends at the registration area. Place was mobbed yesterday and expect more today. Met up with Tom Hill (ex Bowling Green Sr Engineer) while scoping out the entrance route. He is such a pleasure to talk to.

Finding a last minute hotel room last night was exciting.

Today should be fun.

Rich

[Bruce B.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

Rich,
Great.
I know you are not busy so post some pics.......
ENJOY.
Bruce B

[Richard M.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

A very fine day. John and I got the car to the entry area by 6 AM after about a 1 1/2 mile pre-dawn ride. It ran fine, generator good charge, and all lights fine. We all had to wait till around 7 to get on the field. We drove in and Lance Miller was there with his video camera recording. He'll have it on his Facebook page soon. He also interviewed John and did a walk around with him.

The rest of the day was filled with many viewers stopping by. The car was quite a hit.

It was selected as one of several Significant Car Awards and was driven up to the grandstands to be recognized.

Later we got word it got another award, the HVA(Historical Vehicle Associaton) Heritage Award.

Will get more photos up later. Also a video of us driving it there en route in the early AM.

Exciting day.

Rich

[Patrick H.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

Lance had it up almost immediately. It was great to see that the car made it, and it looked like a beautiful day.

[Richard M.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

Patrick, Thanks. I had to login to my wife's account to see it.

Before you see it entering the field in Lance's video in daylight, here is the video I did while driving in. It was still before dawn so it's a bit dark.

Sure was fun. I did a earlier video but we had some traffic and John got a little expletive when this guy driving a Hudson was playing chicken with us.

Lance's FB link https://www.facebook.com/racelance
You may have to have a account to see the 2 videos. Will post direct links here.


Driving into the show field.

https://www.facebook.com/racelance/videos/10211984037819992/

yes we need to replace valve seals. We just plain ran out of time with the event reshedule. But most other cars there had "smokey-exhaust" too.

Lance's interview with John.

https://www.facebook.com/CorvettesatCarlisle/videos/10154499887803284/

More photos...... My camera broke but my wife Cathie took some to cover me. She spotted someone familiar looking at a car across from us and asked me who he was. Cool......We met Wayne Carini and mentioned the Super Sport and we walked over together to the car. John and I gave him the tour and he loved it and thanked John for bringing it.




Late in the day after the event was over, the HVA photographer came over to do a photo shoot for their website. The National Heritage Award trophy weighed a ton and we had to pad it really good for the ride home.

[Garry B.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

Great stuff Rich! Thanks for sharing.
Garry Barnes
18531

[Michael J.]

Re: 1957 Corvette Super Sport

That's great, great award for the car. I saw the 1935 Duesenberg SJ Phaeton (Walker body) and the Alfa Romeo 8C took Best in Show honors, great cars.