I've mentioned this before, but the Automobile Manufacturers' Association (name later changed to the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Assc.) specifications are available from the GM Heritage Web site in downloadable pdf files. These are the same documents that GM formerly mailed at no charge to interested parties.
Corvette model years 1953 to 2006, inclusive, are available to download, and I'm in the process of getting them all.
Early years are a few hundred kilobytes, but they get bigger as the years go by and more information was saved and resurrected. This biggest file so far is 1992 - over 20 MB.
Additional information is available in most of these files - GM actually calls them "vehicle information kits", but the quantity and quality vary from year to year, so you might want to download a couple of model years each side of your year car since some data was not reported for some years or may just be missing for your year.
My primary interest is researching spark advance maps for my seminar in San Diego. Boy, I got some 'splained to do!
Another interesting tidbit I picked up in my first skimming is that babbit main and rod bearings were used through '57. The first use of Morraine 400 aluminum bearings doesn't appear until '58, and they may not have been used in all engines. Babbit is soft and helps prevent journal damage because harmful particles tend to embed in the bearing material, but babbit has poor fatigue resistance, so they can actually "wear out" as the material begins to disintegrate from cyclic loading. Aluminum has poor embedability, but high fatigue resistance, so with good oil filtration, they will last virtually forever.
I doubt if you could even buy babbit bearings for an old 283 nowadays, but that's a good thing.
The Web page to start the downloads of your choice is as follows, but you can also just google GM Heritage and find it that way. Double left click on the file you want to download, click okay to the license box, and the download should start.
Duke
Corvette model years 1953 to 2006, inclusive, are available to download, and I'm in the process of getting them all.
Early years are a few hundred kilobytes, but they get bigger as the years go by and more information was saved and resurrected. This biggest file so far is 1992 - over 20 MB.
Additional information is available in most of these files - GM actually calls them "vehicle information kits", but the quantity and quality vary from year to year, so you might want to download a couple of model years each side of your year car since some data was not reported for some years or may just be missing for your year.
My primary interest is researching spark advance maps for my seminar in San Diego. Boy, I got some 'splained to do!
Another interesting tidbit I picked up in my first skimming is that babbit main and rod bearings were used through '57. The first use of Morraine 400 aluminum bearings doesn't appear until '58, and they may not have been used in all engines. Babbit is soft and helps prevent journal damage because harmful particles tend to embed in the bearing material, but babbit has poor fatigue resistance, so they can actually "wear out" as the material begins to disintegrate from cyclic loading. Aluminum has poor embedability, but high fatigue resistance, so with good oil filtration, they will last virtually forever.
I doubt if you could even buy babbit bearings for an old 283 nowadays, but that's a good thing.
The Web page to start the downloads of your choice is as follows, but you can also just google GM Heritage and find it that way. Double left click on the file you want to download, click okay to the license box, and the download should start.
Duke
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