[1]If you’ve ever wondered just how difficult it is to take apart a 1968 Corvette Stingray convertible, take a gander at this video. What starts off as a running vehicle is taken apart so quickly you don’t have to wonder anymore how chop shops manage to make a car disappear in a matter of hours. One of the things that speeds up the process is the time-lapse video, of course, but our mechanic seems to have a good working knowledge of what parts need to be removed in what order to get this ’68 Stingray down to a pile of parts in no time whatsoever. Although the video doesn’t take the car down to a shell, the fact that it’s titled Part One leads us to believe that there will be more videos to follow, and of course we’ll bring them to you as they appear.
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There is a definite step-by-step process that needs to be followed as some parts need to be removed before others can come out, but the thought process we’ve always used when disassembling a car apart for a restoration or modification session is “if someone else built it, we can take it apart.” The other key is to have plastic bags and a couple of Sharpies to track all of the hard-to-find fasteners you won’t want to be looking for three years later after your project comes back from the paint shop.
Although we likely couldn’t strip a 97,000-mile Stingray interior in the two minutes allotted for the video, it’s nice to see someone else busting the knuckles for a change. Having all of the proper tools at hand always helps in the process, and firsthand knowledge of the car subject to teardown only speeds up the task. The car itself appears to be a relatively well-kept example of the breed, and we can only imagine what’s in store for the rebuild of this machine.