Making an LS9 Look Like a 1963 Fuel-Injected Corvette
A customer is building a 1958 Corvette with an LS9 in it, modern engine, plenty of power. He wanted it to look like a 1963 fuel-injected car.
Two parts needed to match — the Kong intercooler lid and the valve covers.
The new lid is shares all of the important characteristics as the original Kong Intercooler lid, such as the bolt pattern, height, etc. We took off some of the mounting bosses that the original lid had, as they were not needed, and continued to create our rib design on the face of the lid, followed by the famous Corvette crossed flags emblem. As seen below the new lid is overlaid onto the original lid to show the similarities in important features, and the differences in the overall design.
The valve covers were a similar problem. He'd bought aftermarket two-piece covers that were built tall to hide the coils. He relocated his coils, which meant the top half could come down. We scanned those covers plus a set of original seven-rib Corvette cover to get the logo and the fin spacing, then designed a new top — seven fins, Corvette logo, lower than what he started with. The bottom piece keeps the air ports and the oil fill cap, and hides the four bolts in the middle of the LS covers.
All of it printed on the Bambu X1 Carbon first and went out for test fitting. That caught what printing is supposed to catch. The covers came down another quarter inch, and we added an o-ring between the top and bottom pieces so it isn't metal on metal.
What we run: a Creality Sermoon P1 scanner at 0.02 mm accuracy, Fusion 360 for modeling, a Bambu Lab X1 Carbon for printing in PLA, ABS and PAHT-CF, and Haas CNC in house
Scanning is $185/hour, CAD design $95/hour, printing $15/hour, CNC project dependent, $250 minimum. Turnaround depends on the job.
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