1963 Corvette Rear Spring and Steering Installation

In this post, we demenstrate and show the process taken to complete a 1963 Corvette Rear Spring and Steering Installation.

Here we have installed the rear spring pack, the steering linkage bar, and disassembled/cleaned the fuel tank cross member. We then installed the front fender skirt dust shields, test fitted the grill, and prepped the engine compartment for black out.

1963 Corvette Rear Spring and Steering Installation

In order to assemble the spring pack, there are a set of cups that are installed on each end of the springs.  This cup is held in be peening the top edge of the cup over.  To do this, we made this quick little tool shown above with the tapered end. We gave this a quick hit with the hammer and folded the edges of the cups over.

1963 Corvette Rear Spring and Steering Installation

Here is the spring pack installed.  You can also see the two cups at the end of the spring.

1963 Corvette Rear Spring and Steering Installation

Here is the plate that holds the pack in with all new hardware installed.

Here is the steering linkage. We installed new tie rod ends which you can see here in the photo above.

Here is the relay rod/center link installed along with the idler arm.

Here is the fuel tank cross member.  A reminder of what the frame use to look like.  We bead blasted the cross member and fuel tank straps, we will paint them at the same time we do the engine black out.

Here is one of the fender skirt dust shields.  These were installed before blackout of which when we removed the original ones they had bare fiberglass behind them.

The dust shields are stapled in from the factory.  We pushed new staples through the old holes and we were able to fold the ends of the staples over to have them look just like the originals using needle nose pliers.

Last, here is the grill.  We installed it to make sure that it fit before doing the engine black out.  After we smoothed out a few rough spots and masked the rest of the corvette, we were ready to black out.

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