Today was the third and final chapter of the RideTech 48-Hour Corvette build. Months of planning and scheduling, all leading down to these final hours of the build.
The day started promptly at 8:00AM again, with the crew weary, but excited to finish up the car. This crew has done an absolutely amazing job, working insane hours with a ton of pressure, all while being caught on film. Just standing on the side lines it’s astonishing to see and gives you an insane amount of respect for them.
Today was all about the details and wiring on the car. Most of the hard parts had been finished, but today is what really counted to finish off the whole car. Everywhere you looked there was a spaghetti of wires, from the stereo, to the dash, the engine and even underneath the car. Everything was being wired up, with at least a half a dozen guys working on it the entire time. The fear was that one wire might get missed, causing a big electrical gremlin to appear later on in the afternoon.
By lunch time the headlights and tail lights were on the car, and the front end was starting to come together. The Vintage Air system was having a vacuum drawn on it to check for leaks and RacePak was finishing up their sensors and data box. A sense of anxiousness was in the air, as everybody was dying to see the car finished and hear it run.
This build was one of those where the closer you got, the farther away it seemed. Progress was being made left and right which kept everybody excited, but at the same time there was still a ton of work left to do. By far the biggest obstacle was wiring. With all the different systems involved, it was almost impossible to finish all the wiring correctly.
With a hair over two hours to go the Magnaflow exhaust was completely hooked up and there was about five guys inside a two person car working on the wiring. By this point the front end valance, bumper and grill areas were finishing up as well. The rear of the car was finished, include the new Forgeline wheels.
Right around the two hour mark fuel was dumped into the tank for the first time. Shortly after, the battery was flipped on so systems could be tested and calibrated. At this point everybody was exhausted, running off pure adrenaline and the excitement of hearing 649 horsepower roar to life for the first time.
All that excitement quickly led to frustration. There was problems getting the car to fire. The starter would click over about once, then stop. Quickly pulling the spark plugs revealed that there was no issues there. The crew looked at the battery, and the wiring which all checked out. Finally, the starter was the culprit. A quick swap, and the motor roared to life for a few seconds. Holley quickly started working on the computer to get some form of a tune on it to make it run.
At that time, the 48 hours was up! While it was deemed a success in that the engine fired, the plan was to have the car running and driving at the end of the 48 hours. The game plan was to work for a few more hours, and start back up on the work at 10AM in the morning. There’s not a ton left, a few doors, hood and just a few extra wires to connect. We’d image this crew might even have it knocked out tonight.
After tomorrow, the plan is to take the car straight to Bowling Green and throw it on the track. Unfortunately for Lateral-G, we had a plane to catch and couldn’t be there for it.
And as always, check out the full gallery below!