Barrina T5 LED Garage Lights

You can never be too rich, too good-looking, or have too much light in your garage.

And for around $40 at least I can have one of the three.

When I bought my house about a year ago, I was fortunate that the three-car garage also came with bedrooms, bathrooms, a kitchen, and a living room attached to it. However, the garage lighting conditions were horrible.

The whole area was illuminated by four bulbs. Two of them in the garage door opener.

Painting 1975-1979 Corvette Rear Bumperettes

I originally started this article about a year ago, and somehow was buried under my growing library of C3 Corvette articles. But even though I wrote it a while ago, the information is still significant. Better late than never.

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Call me picky if you want, but for my taste, rubber bumper Corvette bumperettes—as they're referred to—look better with a satin black finish, instead of painted to match the body color.

I don't dislike bumperettes, but I certainly prefer the cleaner look of the 1974 rear bumper which did not have them.

Well, except for the fact that it is a two-piece that does not look as clean as the one-piece bumper covers introduced in '75.

It's always something.

As a side note, I read somewhere that Chevy had to go with the two-piece rear bumper for 1974 because, allegedly, they did not have the equipment necessary to make it a one-piece. Not sure if that's fact or fiction as a lot of other Corvette-related things you hear.

How Much Have I Spent on my 1976 Vette? So Far...

$32,939.81 (as of this writing).

And I started with a C3 Corvette in good, drivable condition!

That figure includes what I paid for my 1976 Corvette Stingray.

And yes, I am off by a few dollars because I probably failed to record a couple receipts. I have a binder full of them, but no one's perfect. And the total amount does not include "invisible" expenses such as insurance or license and registration fees.

The day I bought it. Friday, February 20, 2015

So by now, my guesstimate is that I've spent at least $34K. A tidy sum indeed.

The previous owner also spent quite a bit of cash having the car repainted and on a lot of repairs and maintenance. I have most of those receipts and that amount is not part of the number shown above.

Classic car restoration, maintenance, and ownership are not cheap!

Over the years I've owned many cars, including six C3 Corvettes, ranging from a 1968 model to my current 1976 Stingray to which this blog is dedicated.

I did not keep financial records for the previous five, but I know that—other than the fun factor of owning and driving a Corvette—I did not make a profit. Most likely, I lost money.

C3 Corvette Restoration on YouTube

Saying there are lots of Corvette-related YouTube videos is a gigantic understatement.

There probably aren't enough waking hours in the day to see but a small fraction of what's available out there. From C1 to C8 Corvettes, someone has made a video.

I've also published a few videos of my '76 Stingray, with one of them capturing over 12,000 views as of this writing. However, most of my videos are complementary to blog articles I write, so they tend to be part of a story rather than stand-alone videos.

Actually, a lot of them are unlisted and only accessible from this blog.

Above: 76vette YouTube Channel

Garage Organization: Storage Cases

Nuts, bolts, and washers are expensive, especially when you are talking about automotive-grade hardware.

Not to mention a real pain when you need one to finish a project (usually late at night), and you are unable to find the one you need in an ocean of nuts, bolts, washers, rivets, nails, wood screws, dirt, and those ubiquitous dead bugs that usually make such piles their final resting place.

There's no easy solution to the dilemma unless you develop some form of storage as in a hardware store. And if you are like me, chances are you wish you could afford to stock as well as organize your garage like that.