One persons opinion:

[Jim W.]

Re: One persons opinion:

Couldn't disagree more Mike. What it would do is ensure only the rich could afford to restore a car that is worthy of being judged. Would you also judge a Dussenburg that had a hand made replacement a "repro" because the part was not available or the guy was "too lazy to look for it"?

Personally I think its great there are fanatics in the world that must keep a car "exactly as it was when it came off the production floor", I am also grateful to those fanatics that introduce new technology to over come outdated or lousy workmanship. I am also grateful to those that just drive the things in any condition as long as they make it down the road.

Perhaps judging should be split into two groups. One, for the rich that can afford to pay a kazillion dollars to restore "exactly with original parts" and then a "second class" for the peons that have to buy repro's?

The judges could then divide the cars "repros" from "Originals" and have the others pay to look upon the privileged?
Maybe even physically brand all peon cars with "Repro" branding irons? Only allow them to approach 100% originals if under the supervision of the "original police"?

Gee this is sounding really good to me too !!!

Dennis, I'm a guy who worked hard all my life. I took 12 years to restore my 1979 L-48 barn find into a second flight award. In the judging process, I had a set of Good-years on my car. But they weren't the correct 'Model' tire. Now the judges deducted a 100 points. They could of deducted 250 points, But the fact is that I had the correct tire, but the correct model isn't around and even if it was do you want to drive around on 25 year old tires? Now that model hasn't been produced in 17 years. There's no possible way I'm going to get the correct tire. and this "Line of Reality" for NCRS is going become more and more evident with each passing year. Where are you suppose to find many, many of the electrical moduals and parts for all of the C4 judging. These parts, If still being produced are going to come from China, Mexico Taiwan the list goes on and on. I tried to get a USA made oil pressure sending unit for my 1979 coupe 12 years ago and they were impossible to find a USA made replacement.

As NCRS is going to grow we need young people to take an interest in this kind of playing detective in finding original, by the numbers parts to pass a judging. I slogged through a mud pond in pouring rain to get a Alternator that had the correct serial number to fit my L-48. I saved the carburetor and starter. But what is our future ? this Organization is only going to be assessable to a mass of folks like myself who aren't Jay Leno who can spend what I make in a year for a single part for one of his prizes. NCRS is only oing to last if we can attract young folks who right now are more interested in a particular cell phone more than learning about an old car that was built forty years before he was a glimmer in his fathers eyes.

I can't even afford to buy a C2 to restore, Even a basket case is going to cost $75 thousand to even be considered. That kind of up front money is not something young folks are going to decide to spend on an old junky car. But there's no one who is actively attracting new members, so this group is in the end going only exist for the rich who have unlimited time and money to do this kind of work. You get a 63 SWC, If you can find one and it's going to cost close to $175 grand to restore it. That's not something the middle class folks are going to be able to attain. So in the end, many of us are going to be able to be members, but in reality we're only spectators in this hobby. And that's the reality that as judges you have to decide you only want to judge the possession of a millionaire. . . ? Or . . .

[John D.]

Re: One persons opinion:

Had to look...thought I was on the Corvette Forum for a second............

[Dennis B.]

Re: One persons opinion:

Dennis, I'm a guy who worked hard all my life. I took 12 years to restore my 1979 L-48 barn find into a second flight award. In the judging process, I had a set of Good-years on my car. But they weren't the correct 'Model' tire. Now the judges deducted a 100 points. They could of deducted 250 points, But the fact is that I had the correct tire, but the correct model isn't around and even if it was do you want to drive around on 25 year old tires? Now that model hasn't been produced in 17 years. There's no possible way I'm going to get the correct tire. and this "Line of Reality" for NCRS is going become more and more evident with each passing year. Where are you suppose to find many, many of the electrical moduals and parts for all of the C4 judging. These parts, If still being produced are going to come from China, Mexico Taiwan the list goes on and on. I tried to get a USA made oil pressure sending unit for my 1979 coupe 12 years ago and they were impossible to find a USA made replacement.

As NCRS is going to grow we need young people to take an interest in this kind of playing detective in finding original, by the numbers parts to pass a judging. I slogged through a mud pond in pouring rain to get a Alternator that had the correct serial number to fit my L-48. I saved the carburetor and starter. But what is our future ? this Organization is only going to be assessable to a mass of folks like myself who aren't Jay Leno who can spend what I make in a year for a single part for one of his prizes. NCRS is only oing to last if we can attract young folks who right now are more interested in a particular cell phone more than learning about an old car that was built forty years before he was a glimmer in his fathers eyes.

I can't even afford to buy a C2 to restore, Even a basket case is going to cost $75 thousand to even be considered. That kind of up front money is not something young folks are going to decide to spend on an old junky car. But there's no one who is actively attracting new members, so this group is in the end going only exist for the rich who have unlimited time and money to do this kind of work. You get a 63 SWC, If you can find one and it's going to cost close to $175 grand to restore it. That's not something the middle class folks are going to be able to attain. So in the end, many of us are going to be able to be members, but in reality we're only spectators in this hobby. And that's the reality that as judges you have to decide you only want to judge the possession of a millionaire. . . ? Or . . .

I hope you took the last line of my comment as being sarcastic, because it was intended to be.
We need Repro's the more available the more people will spend the time restoring old cars to some level of road worthiness. I find that most people that buy a Vette, immediately improve it. When they sell it, the next person improves it. Without repro's many cars would be lost.
I am "improving" my car "for me".
To show you how ridiculous this is getting, people are having their Trim Tags stolen because someone needs a Trim Tag that will say the car came with air? There are people out there that are making phoney Trim tags with the specific intent of fooling judges, so what has this done to the "Top Flight" category or process already?
How many Vettes are out there that are restamps, altered trim tags or in some cases trim tags and Vin's?
If you find a crunched up vette with the perfect trim tag and vin, just transfer both to your pieced together vette that has none.
We have created a criminal industry that purposely sets out to deceive with the specific intent of gaining money. As mentioned in a previous post. There are 4 types of cars
The ones that have been hit, and repaired properly
The ones that have been ht and not repaired properly
The ones that have been hit and say they have never been hit because they have been repaired properly.
Then there is a very very very few that have actually not been hit.

Is a car that has been fiberglass hit and repaired properly, a "repro"?
The fender is no longer factory, so it must be a repro?
Just because someone can afford, and spend 25 years finding the right parts does not mean their car is 100% original. Thousands claim there car has never been hit. Maybe I lived in the wrong place but in the 60s drinking and driving was compulsory. Speeding with attempts to break the sound barrier was a mandatory Saturday night function! Yet thousands are not "hit"

The people that will be insulted by that are the ones that want $175,000 for a car that could have been hit. Personally I prefer to find a little bit of fiberglass here and there because it tells me if the hit was bad or not. People that spend allot of time covering up a hit likely are doing it because they intend on deceiving the buyer by claiming a no hit car.


Restoring a corvette should have your personal touch, to identify who you are. If you never had a chance to own a Crown Victoria with a Continental kit and you decide the 65 Vette needs one, then have a good time Just make it so someone else can remove it

er perhaps that was going to far :rofl

[Dennis B.]

Re: One persons opinion:

Agree 100% with Joe. Like Joe, I have had an original and NOS parts collection for around 35 years. Only difference between Joe's and my collection, is the size of the collection. From what I can tell reading Joe's comments over the last five or six years or so, .......my collection is probably sized around 2% ot 5% of Joe's.

The available supply of both original used and NOS parts is shrinking quickly. It has diminished significantly in the past 7 to 10 years. While parts supplies are dwindling, prices continue to skyrocket, ........even in this depressed economy.
As a matter of fact, good original used parts, as well as NOS parts, .......are in the very small minority of items still seen with strong prices on eBay.

I think to save this entire judging thing for extinction in the future, you have to establish recognized producers of knockoffs/repros as a NCRS acceptable replacement. So companies that wish there product to be judged at the highest level of authenticity would need the NCRS approval stamp. This would generate more income for NCRS and would once and for all separate those that want to be in an exclusive club, and those that want to restore cars.

Manufacturers would then have the flexibility to build two levels of exactness. One for the road, and one for show. Of course that would likely spur another industry of forged "show parts" that were actually initially built for the road

I can buy a set of 63 knock offs, but would never do it, not because I don't like them or I cannot afford them its because I believe they are inherently unsafe. So would always choose to buy a bolt on repro.

Does a person have to endanger his life to get Top Flight? Should judges allow 3 point harnesses in all old cars even if not built with them? I would hate for someone to be killed because they wanted to get an extra 10 points. That is what I find distasteful about judging. It literally encourages people to put there life at risk to achieve a specific point level.
This is fine for collectors that do not drive the car and have it sitting in a garage and it never sees the light of day. But, why would we judge people to be non authentic when they are trying to save their own lives?
It seems totally senseless to me, but then again, I am sure there will be a 1000 answers to the contrary so its, as the topic suggests "just an opinion".

[Mark D.]

Re: One persons opinion:

That is what I find distasteful about judging.

You've been a member of NCRS for two weeks, how many times have you been judged?

[Michael W.]

Re: One persons opinion:

Maybe the best solution would be having a standardized judging system where each component is first evaluated from maybe five different axis of similarity compared to an original piece. The greater the deviance, the greater the point deductions could be. This would mean that a genuine production line piece would take no deduct at all, and conversly an aftermarket piece that has no similarities or seomthing grafted on from a f*rd would take a complete deduct, or any variation in between. The component could then be evaluated for it's physical condition to take deterioration into account. A rust free piece would score better than a corroded part in other words, all other things being equal.

Waddya say guys- should we petition HQ to look into something like this?

[Patrick H.]

Re: One persons opinion:

Maybe the best solution would be having a standardized judging system where each component is first evaluated from maybe five different axis of similarity compared to an original piece. The greater the deviance, the greater the point deductions could be. This would mean that a genuine production line piece would take no deduct at all, and conversly an aftermarket piece that has no similarities or seomthing grafted on from a f*rd would take a complete deduct, or any variation in between. The component could then be evaluated for it's physical condition to take deterioration into account. A rust free piece would score better than a corroded part in other words, all other things being equal.

Waddya say guys- should we petition HQ to look into something like this?

Wow!
What an idea!

[Dennis B.]

Re: One persons opinion:

You've been a member of NCRS for two weeks, how many times have you been judged?

I also dislike people that take a point out of context, to make an entirely different point.

Here is the original

Should judges allow 3 point harnesses in all old cars even if not built with them? I would hate for someone to be killed because they wanted to get an extra 10 points. That is what I find distasteful about judging. It literally encourages people to put there life at risk to achieve a specific point level.

[Patrick H.]

Re: One persons opinion:

I also dislike people that take a point out of context, to make an entirely different point.

Here is the original

Should judges allow 3 point harnesses in all old cars even if not built with them? I would hate for someone to be killed because they wanted to get an extra 10 points. That is what I find distasteful about judging. It literally encourages people to put there life at risk to achieve a specific point level.

10 points won't keep you from doing anything to your car, much less achieving Top Flight. Non-working light bulbs are 25 points; a hole in your fiberglass for an extra seatbelt hole is probably 2 points.

Therefore, whether an owner wants to add safer seatbelts is entirely up to them and has nothing to do with judging. If the owner's motive is to score the absolute highest number of points and is not concerned about 2 vs. 3 point safety belts then the choice is theirs.

The judges allow anything the owner wants to do. However, there may be a point deduction in their evaluation. The owner has to decide for themselves the risk/reward calculation. It is, after all, a free country.

[Paul J.]

Re: One persons opinion:

I think to save this entire judging thing for extinction in the future, you have to establish recognized producers of knockoffs/repros as a NCRS acceptable replacement. So companies that wish there product to be judged at the highest level of authenticity would need the NCRS approval stamp. This would generate more income for NCRS and would once and for all separate those that want to be in an exclusive club, and those that want to restore cars.

Manufacturers would then have the flexibility to build two levels of exactness. One for the road, and one for show. Of course that would likely spur another industry of forged "show parts" that were actually initially built for the road

Dennis, you're missing the reason for deficiencies in reproduction parts. It is simply too expensive to reproduce the tooling that was used on the originals. Reproducing some of the more expensive tooling would make reproduction parts that are far more expensive then the originals on the market today. I also wonder just many people care that much.

Unfortunately, the NCRS theory of judging is arrestive (I am not suggesting that it be changed). The perfect car, the very thing that we seek cannot be obtained. Many original parts cannot be restored to the way they were originally. Rechroming takes some of the sharpness out, nitrocellulos lacquer effectively no longer exists, etc. Even though I use nothing but original and NOS parts, I believe that you are correct that high quality reproductions are the answer to getting to the "perfect car". However, these parts would be cost prohibitive.

I wonder if the details, physical characteristics, and production methods of the Corvette has been studied more than any other car.

Paul

[Tracy C.]

Re: One persons opinion:

Maybe the best solution would be having a standardized judging system where each component is first evaluated from maybe five different axis of similarity compared to an original piece. The greater the deviance, the greater the point deductions could be. This would mean that a genuine production line piece would take no deduct at all, and conversly an aftermarket piece that has no similarities or seomthing grafted on from a f*rd would take a complete deduct, or any variation in between. The component could then be evaluated for it's physical condition to take deterioration into account. A rust free piece would score better than a corroded part in other words, all other things being equal.

Waddya say guys- should we petition HQ to look into something like this?

I was hoping someone would state the obvious....

thanks Mike.

tc

[Donald O.]

Re: One persons opinion:

You have probably been judging 'reproduction' cars for 25 years or more, about the time GM stopped providing service parts.

Make it right - every single fastener!

Does your car then still have the air in the tires it left the factory with? What about the original engine oil? Or the original antifreeze or windshield solvent? There was gasoline from the factory too. And no, my 67 has none of those original things nor do I intend to look for them, anywhere, at any price.

Then again, once an original part has been restored, it is no longer original.

Just my $.02

DonO

[Vinnie P.]

Re: One persons opinion:

I"ve been hanging on to this article waiting for the right time to publish it in an upcoming issue...however, I think now is as good a time as any...besides only 3-4% of the membership participates here so about 15,000 members will have to wait to enjoy it...

Boy, it really galls my threads when these ignoramuses go off about how the Corvette crowd is over-restoring cars! I say, restored means exactly





Some folks think using the correct fasteners is good enough. Ha! I made sure to cross-thread the left rear upper transmission crossmember bolt, just as the (sometimes inebriated) factory worker was known to. I removed the third from the right lower grille attachment screw, which a previous owner had erroneously installed, in spite of the well-documented fact that none of these were installed at the factory until after 3:43 p.m. on October 17, 1966.





Some folks get a new set of tires that LOOK like the originals and call that good enough. Not me. I got THE ORIGINAL tires out of a landfill, ground them up, and restored them. I was able to find about 91.7% of the rubber, which had worn off, by vacuuming the roadside dust over the roads the car had traveled, and separating the correct molecules from the other debris with a Mass Spectrographic Double-Diathermic Isopropa-diaphanometer molecular identifier [MSDDID]. NOT cheap, let me tell you. But correct is correct. Some folks put on new valve stems and caps and away they go. We purists know that it IS important to align the seam line on the valve cap to the correct angle, just as it left the factory (indexed valve caps).


Changing the oil is considered routine by some restorers. They throw out the old, slap in some new, maybe even an improved oil, and a new filter. Not a real purist. I have the original oil broken down and re-refined. The old additives are removed, restructured, and re-added. I even recover as many molecules of the burned or dripped oil as possible and add them back in. Of course, the filter must be dismantled, which ruins the case, so it has to be melted and reformed into a filter. Re-using the original paint, of course.


true originality.

[Dennis B.]

Re: One persons opinion:

10 points won't keep you from doing anything to your car, much less achieving Top Flight. Non-working light bulbs are 25 points; a hole in your fiberglass for an extra seatbelt hole is probably 2 points.

Therefore, whether an owner wants to add safer seatbelts is entirely up to them and has nothing to do with judging. If the owner's motive is to score the absolute highest number of points and is not concerned about 2 vs. 3 point safety belts then the choice is theirs.

The judges allow anything the owner wants to do. However, there may be a point deduction in their evaluation. The owner has to decide for themselves the risk/reward calculation. It is, after all, a free country.

Agree
The 10 points was a guess, I have no idea what the penalty would be. The point is, when it comes to safety should there be a penalty? I realize that coiuld be carried to far and air bags would be the next "non penalty request" so there has to be a cutoff.
(Remembering this discussion all started with NOS vs Repro, where Repro is seen by the originator of the discussion as "not as good", so should be scored accordingly.)

63s never had shoulder harnesses. 67s did. So in the case of a 63 they would lose points. In the case of a 67 they would not. When a person tries there hardest to go 100% there should be an exclusion on seat belts. If NCRS were to say to all C1/C2 owners that a 3 point harness was not point deductible, then they would be doing a service to their members, not a dis-service to their cars.

hmmm not sure how we got focused specifically on the seat belts, but it must be a sensitive and logical argument ?? My intent was not to hijack the original topic.

[Patrick H.]

Re: One persons opinion:

Agree
The 10 points was a guess, I have no idea what the penalty would be. The point is, when it comes to safety should there be a penalty? I realize that coiuld be carried to far and air bags would be the next "non penalty request" so there has to be a cutoff.
(Remembering this discussion all started with NOS vs Repro, where Repro is seen by the originator of the discussion as "not as good", so should be scored accordingly.)

63s never had shoulder harnesses. 67s did. So in the case of a 63 they would lose points. In the case of a 67 they would not. When a person tries there hardest to go 100% there should be an exclusion on seat belts. If NCRS were to say to all C1/C2 owners that a 3 point harness was not point deductible, then they would be doing a service to their members, not a dis-service to their cars.

hmmm not sure how we got focused specifically on the seat belts, but it must be a sensitive and logical argument ?? My intent was not to hijack the original topic.

We've had the same argument here about tires, hoses and other safety-related items, so its not just seat belts. I just continued on with your example.

I don't expect the Mona Lisa to be wearing modern clothes if she ever gets restored, so...