My 64 Corvette Pro Tour build, Long view of how car eveolved into what it is today.

[Poorhousenext]

Been awhile since I had anything to update on car due to a problem we ran into that require car to be removed form frame to fiX. That's taken longer than expected too.

While waiting, decided it was time to figure out what to do about either going with GM LS Engine covers, to cover the stock valve covers with coils on top, or replacing stock valve covers with taller ones that require coils to be relocated.

GM covers left a lot to be desired, as my alternator is mounted on opposite side, so that left corner of drivers side valve cover and coil exposed. Also that's what most use.

I looked at relocating coils and using aftermarket taller valve covers. But just so tired of trying to hide things, so as usual for me in trying to make car different from the crowd, I decide on a set of valve covers from Katech Performance and use their coil mounting system rather than hide them. Their mounting system just moves coil off valve covers and put them above them.

With anything other than engine covers, I still needed to deal with exposed fuel rails and injector wiring that needed to be hidden from sight. My decision to go with the Katech valve covers made the coils a focus point on engine instead of hiding them. Some may like that, some may not, but it's different from what you most often see with LS engine installs.

I actually started out trying to cover the coils, but that hid the valve covers, so decided to leave them exposed, and just make a set of fuel rail covers instead of engine covers to hide injector and coil wiring.

To see what I was dealing with, I started out with a big piece of cardboard and whittled it down to come up with base coverage size needed. Next had to convey my idea to shop of what I was looking for. That lead to shop's idea to trim and fit an old valve cover area so we had a hard surface to work with. Using valve covers, cardboard and masking tape we came up with a base mold we could layup a part we could work with using bondo to shape it, and then make a mold to make final parts off of.

Worked out that we only needed one mold to make left and right hand parts, even after shop added in the contours around and in between the coils, so they did not look straight and plain. Parts are same except for tab on right hand one use to cover MAP sensor wiring plug.

To me at least, it looks like something GM might have done on a Concept Car.

Started with this as base.






Next came using the old valve as hard surface to tie things together.




Add the cardboard to valve cover with masking tape. Paint it black to see if it might work, and then produce fiberglass piece of it to work with to come up with final shape, pickup some stainless Corvette lettering to see how that might add a little pop to covers. Then using bondo come up with final fuel rail cover shape to make a part mold off off. You can see we are trying to make the Fuel Rail covers mounting points look like the ones on the Valve Covers to try and tie the two together.











Made a mold, pulled parts off it. Cleaned up the shape on them.
To try and make mounting points look like those on the valve covers, we pulled molds off the valve covers mount points to make 4 pieces to resemble the anodized washers molded in to them.

















So now I have 8 ugly coils sticking out, but the fuel rails, injector and coil wiring are hid.






PS: Looks a little better in person than in the pictures. Should help when we get letters stuck on.