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WOW! Honest description of the car....too bad it was neglected like that. I guess I'm spoiled being from the West, but that frame looks like it came up from the Titanic, to me. Lots of rust under that car, no doubt from all the garbage collecting moisture under it all those decades......Or else, it was just a normal Ohio car driven year-round before it was entombed.
WOW! Honest description of the car....too bad it was neglected like that. I guess I'm spoiled being from the West, but that frame looks like it came up from the Titanic, to me. Lots of rust under that car, no doubt from all the garbage collecting moisture under it all those decades......Or else, it was just a normal Ohio car driven year-round before it was entombed.
He claims that frame is rust free. Wonder what his definition of rust is?
He claims that frame is rust free. Wonder what his definition of rust is?
Being from the rust belt originally and owning many Corvettes in the past that could easily be surface rust and would warrant a closer look and the car MAY be better than the first look.
You can't really verify these rare old cars, all you can do is look for evidence of deception. Finding a '63 air cleaner canister on a '65 is a bigger red flag than almost anything you'll see. I'm not saying someone didn't innocently replace the '65 canister with a '63, at some time before the car was stored in 1970, but its not very likely, and tells you to proceed with caution; as does the "HG".
The car may be genuine, but it also will be an immense amount of work, so your "heart" doesn't belong in the equation...
You can't really verify these rare old cars, all you can do is look for evidence of deception. Finding a '63 air cleaner canister on a '65 is a bigger red flag than almost anything you'll see. I'm not saying someone didn't innocently replace the '65 canister with a '63, at some time before the car was stored in 1970, but its not very likely, and tells you to proceed with caution; as does the "HG".
The car may be genuine, but it also will be an immense amount of work, so your "heart" doesn't belong in the equation...
I agree the canister is suspicious, but IF the car was stored in the garage in 1970, what was the real value to faking a 375hp car back then? I could see someone adding an FI unit, actually in 1970 they were probably taking them off more than putting them back on, but even if they added it, would they go thru the trouble of restamping the block? Or maybe if it is a "fake" it was just an engine change.
Of course, we’re all assuming that pile of garbage actually was undisturbed from 1970 until now, and that the car was actually in there, and that nobody touched that car in between...
Oddly, the article says it was put away in the late '60s, the ad says 1970, there's a repair receipt for 1972, and the Ohio plates are typical of 1976-80.
Last edited by Vettrocious; 03-08-2020 at 11:57 AM.
the machine assembly stamping, ie, the distance and misalignment of the G relative to the H is extremely suspicious. mike
I was thinking the same thing Mike.
But Chevrolet did not have a single character suffix code that started with 'H' in the mid 60's.
My point is that someone did not / could not have started with an engine code of FII09H, and then added a G to the end of it.
We know that in 1965 the gang holder for the engine code stamp held all 7 characters, so FII09HG should be a continuous, smooth stamp.
So, the engine is one of two things:
1. A complete restamp, where the entire engine pad was resurfaced, brooch marks added, and then restamped, but badly done because of the spacing between the H and the G.
2. A factory anomaly, where for some reason the engine assembler could not get or did not have available (at that day and time) an HG gang holder. So, he removed the last character from another gang holder, then stamped FII09H, and came back and stamped the 'G' separately and individually. I am totally at a loss to theorize as to why this would have happened.
Here is a case where we really need to see another HG engine code stamp (on a different engine) dated II09.
I do find it interesting that the VIN is also stamped on the FI unit. I think that lends a bit more credence to this being an original car. And yes, I know that VINs were stamped on some late 1964 and hopefully all 1965 FI cars.
Bottom Line: The spacing anomaly between the H and the G needs a solid explanation. This is almost definitely a case for Al Grenning. What are the chances that Al Grenning already has an HG stamp dated II09 in his collection?
Last but not least, congratulation to Mike McCagh on his upcoming induction (this September) into the National Corvette Museum Hall of Fame. Well deserved and totally representative of a man that I think defines the phrase "Corvette Enthusiast".
03-03-2020, 03:43 AM
