Matt's 1963 SPECVETTE Corvette Exterior walk around

I'm Jeff from Heartland Customs in Purcell, Oklahoma, presenting to you another one of our delivery videos. I know you like these kinds of informal

walk

through videos where we can really show you all the little details that make our builds what they're intended for. You guys who are looking for your own custom build, these are also really cool because you can see what some of these options that are on our build list really look like and how they work, and decide if you want them on your car or not. so, I feel like these are pretty good videos for everyone, and I know we enjoy them too, we put a lot of heart and soul into each of these car builds and we like to show off our hard work, so this is from Matt.

1963

stage one uh spec vet bill this is a split window coupe probably the rarest

corvette

ever made so this is a really beautiful car and we are very happy with the way it turned out this will be the

exterior

video so just I will focus on an

exterior

ride and what makes these cars what they are.

I think the first thing that obviously catches your attention about this car is the color. I'm going to

walk

around here and show you this. color, this is called pearl maroon, we partnered with our friends at Paint House in Texas and you know, they have this color, they have a bunch of different shades that we use on a few different builds when you really want it. That dark red color you can really see how it slumps here in the light and I mean, it has candy apple tones, it has dark maroon tones, look how it slumps in those curves, of course, the C2

corvette

.

I'm not sure there are many cars that have better lines and you know when you come across these sharp body lines like this one, our paint and body department is so famous for doing it, it really shows off this color very, very well. So the color of the car on this one is dark pearl brown. It's in our paint house color line, that's an option here. We can also do custom colors if we don't see something in the paint house book that catches your eye. Beautiful color, it is a two stage color, which is very important.

Some of you remember the candy paint jobs and things that had 12 coats of red over a silver or gold metallic base coat and then clear, and that's a beautiful color. I've done them in the past and then if you ever have to repair a panel, scratch something, get a little ding on the fender, good luck, you're practically repainting your entire car and that's just not feasible, you know that today, so people I don't want you to want that look and now we can get it with the help of our friends at Painthouse Texas so this is just a two stage color this is color and clear this is not multi stage this is not three layers, nothing, nothing.

So, that's going to make it difficult to repair so that we can still get those beautiful candy colors and not have to worry about the insanity of repainting an entire car because, you know, a fender was busted, so the next thing we're going to do We're going to get started. to walk around, we'll start here at the front, something that really makes our vehicle stand out and high end builders are really famous for doing this and what really brings a car together is the alignment of the panels and the gaps. You can see here that the headlight buckets have 3 16 spaces, the hood about 3 16 inches, each space fits 3 16 inches around this car.

As we walk, you can see the door gasping. the doors themselves, everything is ajar perfectly, if you have a camaro or chevelle or something like that, it will be the same way you have trunks, doors, hoods and all these things that we have to do and it really makes a car, you know , a hundred point car. There are so many of them out there that it's tons of money invested in building a car and they don't get the gaps in the panel alignment right. You know, you can look at this one. down the side of this car and the door gaps disappear because the fender lines up perfectly with the door the back of the door lines up perfectly with the side panel the front fenders flow perfectly into the hood the headlight buckets were on the car when we block the whole car, the hood is there, the doors are there, so everything flows perfectly because everything was blocked as one piece and not as one long block, you know, on a stand or something, and then Screw it in and tighten it as close as factory. will let anyone who has remade a classic Corvette know that they weren't the best cars built, they were basically a race car made to go on the street, so fit and finish maybe wasn't the most important thing in

1963

for for General Motors to concentrate. and so, you know, these cars have to line up all the panels and the doors line up perfectly and actually seal and not leak.

These things leaked when they were new in '63, so to fix all that stuff and get all the panels lined up and everything perfect on them is quite a feat, so it's a lot of work, we do it on every car, you know, what makes a difference in these things, so we take the time to do that, you know, another thing is these veterinary spec builds. um you know you're talking about thousands of hours to build one of these cars to the level that we build them and they're all built to a fixed price so you know, all the rest is time and materials and God knows when the bleeding. stop before your car is finished and your bank account is empty these cars the first day when you specify them and specify the options you want then you know exactly what will be needed and if you have ever seen our cars in person or seen our videos on youtube or our website or instagram facebook etc. so you know that every car that leaves here is built to this level, so whether it takes 2,000 hours or 4,000 hours, you pay the same price and I always know that they will leave here, you know, as close to perfection that we can do, so that's really good to know, so let's walk around the car again, you know, down here, you can see the park lights.

There they originally had amber lenses, we can make amber lenses. I think it looks better on a red car if you use clear lenses and then when they shine their LEDs and illuminate the amber color, the amber lenses clash with the red paint. We have that option that we can change it depending on the color of the car, which will look better. Here you see the 18-inch wheels with our trademark Spec Vet logo in the center and wrapped in Michelin Pilot supersport tires. like the new corvettes and you've got big 14-inch bear brakes, six-piston calipers all the way around, 14-inch zinc-coated drilled and slotted rotors, the best of the best, and this is a stage one car, guys this is our base car right here and it has all the products we want to make sure even our base model has pretty much everything you could want 63 they didn't actually have side pipes they didn't come out until I think 65 this customer wanted to have the spec pipes sides, you specify that that was the look he wanted, so we built a full two and a half inch stainless steel exhaust under this car, everything is TIG welded, it has vibration bellows, everything is hung on rubber mounts, so it's super quiet. super smooth, no noise, it actually has a loud, quiet exhaust, so it has a button hidden under the gauge cluster that presses and opens these side pipes that are basically straight tubes coming out of the engine.

He is very loud when he wants to be heard. walking into a car show or you know someone pulls up next to you at a stoplight and revs the engine, opens them up and lets them know you mean business, but you can also control that volume by pressing that button, close that throttle at any increment which he wants and then it comes back through a nice tassel muffler, they're all stainless steel mufflers, um, and it has a hidden rear exit, so obviously we don't want to have a rear exhaust and show two exhaust systems for him can make noise or silence in the exhaust and anywhere in between, so it is truly a volume controlled exhaust.

We even built the side tubes and everything, so we made the tips, the stainless steel polished them and cut them so they actually fit in the opening much better than the originals did, so we make all that stuff from scratch, so ours It's making things prettier than they were original, but keeping the original look as much as possible. I'll show you this in the video inside. when I have the keys in my hand but the mirrors are classic looking and they actually have the red LED turn signal, red arrows built into the mirror and I'll show you that in the next video, those are Those are nice little safety features underneath here on this car, stage one, it's got some good meets there, I think these are 285 tires, so I've got enough rubber for the 430 horsepower ls3 that's on this car and then of course, you know.

Once we've done the super nice rim on these the wheel offset gives you a really nice rim about two and a half inches on the wheel it looks about right the wheels don't have a positive offset you know a lot The guys are using the modern Corvette C6 C7 control arms and stuff, and you get that positive offset wheel and you don't have that lip and in my opinion the lip really makes a difference if you want a more custom look. We can make the track even narrower and give the steering wheel a deep rim, so we have those options too.

Electric antenna here. The original cars have a kind of big, tall whip antenna. It is not the most attractive thing with current technology. Well, if you want the antenna, we have a nice mini electric antenna that works fantastically. A lot of the guys now know that everything will integrate with your cell phone, so a lot of these cars were shaving the antenna completely and then the stereo. The system that is in the car seems correct from the factory, but pair Bluetooth with your phone when you get in the car and then you have applications to listen to your am fm radio, Pandora Spotify, all of that is integrated and that eliminates the antenna completely, in fact I prefer giving it a little bit of a cleaner look back here, LED taillights.

I'll show you in the next video, but the super nice red LEDs, nice and bright, make it a lot safer and then we have LEDs on our label holder down there, you might see something here, that camera holder that we printed on 3D and that goes there. It actually replaces the original tag light and has two LEDs that illuminate your tag. Look, we can focus here and then the camera there. it's mounted and what it's for, I'll show you in the inside video too, but what it's for is our full video screen rearview mirror that you've probably seen them in, like the new climbs and stuff like that, so the big deal with these cars the split window was only in 1963 and in 64 they got rid of the split window due to the rear visibility problem.

You know someone is on a motorcycle behind you, you could back over them and never see them, so rear visibility was terrible at 64. the split window is gone which is what makes these cars so iconic, it's a deal of only a year, so we fixed that basically now in 2020 we have the technology that they didn't have in 1963, so we 3D printed the camera housing down there on the bottom and then we used the new modern screen video mirror complete uh gentex and now when you look in the rear view mirror you're looking at the back of the car and the split window isn't there I think you may have seen The technology like in the new Chevy trucks where you can basically look through of your travel trailer that you're towing and seeing behind it, it's exactly the same thing and we've integrated it all into this car that we have now guys that are building. 67 that didn't have the split window, but they still like that option because it gives them a really nice rear view of the car and then you flip the little switch on the bottom of the mirror and it turns back into a regular mirror. you have the best of both worlds so I think that's it, you know, on the outside of this car, there's a lot more to see on the inside and then of course we'll do a video of the engine bay and it's just a kind of a sample of that, I'm sure I'm missing something here, but you know, all the stainless steel is shipped, every little dent is pulled out and polished three times, to where it looks like we've shipped it. and it had everything chrome but it's not bumpers, all you know is perfect chrome, basically every piece of this car is the original body, but you already know the emblems and the door handles, and you even like the interior of our cars if you remove a door panel. the original bolts, screws, rods and things like that are no longer there, we have replaced every little piece so you basically get a perfect new car, even in thepanels and things that you can't see when you take those things off, every nut, bolt and screw on this car has been replaced and updated to current specifications, so please visit our website www.heartlandcustoms.us, you can email us there, We have a contact form if you are interested.

When building one of these cars, stop by and watch the interior video. This car has some really interesting things and I'll see you in the next video.