old built up vette help

[catpack68]

i need to find out the year of this corvette i picked up earlier this year at a swap meet.i know its a 74-77 model,but which one? i also need to know who made it.AMT or MPC? here are three pics of it.i plan to restore it someday.

[RCS Motorsport]

It's an MPC 1974 Corvette.

[RCS Motorsport]

I take that back. It has a 74 type front bumper, at least the leading edge against the nose, but 75-77 bumper guards. A real oddball.

[SSNJim]

I'm thinking it's a 1975 because of the bumper guards and the "Corvette" script on the rear bumper. That one has the 75 and earlier style; the 76 and later is much narrower, with thicker letters.

Generally, the MPC cars had the year embossed into the license plate area. They also had a "working" front suspension, characterized by separate chrome lower A-arms, and real metal springs between them and the frame. The hood hinge doesn't look right to me for an MPC car, but that just be my memory. MPC had separate front inner fender panels, and the two pins on the hood were trapped between them and the body. The hood shouldn't raise that much at the front and still be attached. The wheels don't look MPC'ish to me, either.

I built a few MPC Corvettes in the 70's, but never an AMT. I'm voting AMT on this one. A photo of the chassis would help, I think.

[catpack68]

here are two pics of the engine and chassis.it looks like someone put on a single exhaust system on it.i've never seen a single exhaust on C3 vette

[pack rat]

Definitely AMT-'75 or '76

[SSNJim]

I'd say not MPC.

This thread has a good shot of a typical MPC chassis of that era; though it's a show car, it's the same chassis MPC used under most of their annual C3 kits. That example is missing the exhaust, which was not as thick as the one you have, and IIRC, it was an X type - two pipes into one catalytic converter, then to two tailpipes. Another thing I could be wrong about.

http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23252

Search for Astrovette if the link doesn't work. Some good pictures in both threads.