Now that I have a frame, there isn't much I can do except admire it. So the adventure today was to get both the front and rear Corvette suspension. My previous research uncovered a place about 30 miles away in Mims, FL called Coastal Corvette. They have a website, and they also had ads on ebay for C4 Corvette suspension. They're also about $100 cheaper than everyone else at only $549 for either front or rear. So, with credit card in hand, I headed to Rte 1 in Mims, and found the place pretty easily, but the gate was closed and locked.

     I was bummed, so I looked up the website and called. The guy on the other end of the phone said that he was alone and working on the computer in the office as most of his business was either online or by phone, that I should have called, told him what I wanted, and set up an appointment. He asked where I was, and I told him I was at the locked gate and was looking to buy both a front and rear C4 Corvette suspension. I guess money talks, because he told me he'd be right out to unlock the gate. He turned out to be a really nice guy, very helpful, and I told him I needed both front and rear C4 Corvette suspension 85-87 for the front and 84-87 for the rear. Stock rear end gear for automatic Corvettes of that era have 2.59 or sometimes 2.73, but there was an optional high performance ratio of 3.07. So I asked if he had any of the 3.07 versions. He said sure, but none of them are marked so we would just have to rotate the rear end and count the pinion revolutions to determine the gear ratio.

     He led me to a spot in the yard that had more C4 Corvette front and rear suspensions than I could have imagined. There were well over 50 front and 50 rear complete disk to disk suspension assemblies lined up on the ground. I picked out a clean front suspension, and he pointed out that it was an 86-87 as it had an ABS wiring pigtail. So he grabbed a hammer and a crowbar since he had to tap the rear disks to free up the brakes and use the crowbar to rotate the disk one full revolution while I counted pinion revolutions. The 3.07 gear was not particularly popular, so it took us about 6 or 8 rear ends until we located a 3.07.   It's even posi-traction!

     These things are really heavy! He needed a fork truck to load them on the back of my truck. So we settled up and I headed home, but it quickly donned on me that they were just too heavy to lift out of my truck, even with Jody's help. So back to Harbor Freight to pick up a 2-ton shop crane. I'll need it when I go to install the engine, so I may as well get it now. It worked like a champ, and soon both suspension assemblies were sitting on the floor in the garage.

     First thing I needed to do was to remove the rear suspension lower shock mounts. Darrell at Rockabilly Fabrication told me that if I mailed them up to him he would do some sort of modification to them to use them with the coilovers. So I mailed them out tonight, and I should get them back next week.

     Tomorrow, the plan is to do some more disassembly on the front and rear suspension and do some trial fitting on the chassis. Assuming that everything fits, next week I can start the suspension teardown, rebuild, cleanup, and paint.