very builder in the customizing business has a knack. Whether they’re known or unknown, they’ll add their unique touch to set a car apart from the crowd. Somewhere along the way, identifiable styling cues will give away whose hand touched it.

In the example of Harold’s Hot Rod Shop, based in Enid, Oklahoma, all one must do is lift the hood and look for a shaved firewall where ordinarily a bulky factory air conditioner would be. For components like brakes, frames, or powertrain options, Harold’s Hot Rod Shop looks to a few select suppliers, but when it comes to air conditioning, Harold’s singular choice is always Vintage Air.

To equip a custom-installed air conditioning system, Harold’s begins at the engine with a Vintage Air Front Runner serpentine belt accessory drive. The Front Runner tucks all the ancillary components, including the power steering pump, alternator, and A/C compressor, tight and neatly adjacent to the engine.

For an experienced builder with a good eye for doing clean work, hiding the hoses running from the Front Runner’s A/C compressor into the rest of the system will be easy to make (hide) the A/C hoses nearly undetectable.

Both Vintage Air kits are installed and fully contained within the firewall’s interior side. The SureFit series and the Builder series Vintage Air climate-control systems do not require space on the firewall’s exterior side. Harold’s practice when installing Vintage Air is always to fill and shave the hole left in the firewall with a bulky factory air conditioning system.

For most vehicles, the firewall is always made of steel and requires metal fabrication and welding to complete this modification. However, our subject vehicle is a 1971 Corvette Stingray, and the firewall is made of fiberglass, so the process needed to fill and shave the firewall and prepare it for Vintage Air is entirely different.

Renowned for its concours-quality fit and finish, Harold’s has met with great success in building and having Corvettes featured in magazines. Harold’s last Corvette build was a 1961 that took First Place in its class at the 2019 Grand National Roadster Show. That said, owner Harold Clay has severe allergic reactions working with fiberglass and can’t get anywhere near it until it has primer sealing it.

Enter Max Heim, Harold’s Hot Rod Shop employee with an enviable large home shop and a bent for working with fiberglass. Before the highly brittle, battered, and broken 1971 Stingray body was transported to Heim, it was soda blasted at Harold’s shop through original factory paint and repainted down to the gelcoat. A word to the wise: Never use a liquid chemical paint remover to strip a Corvette body down to the bare gelcoat. A liquid chemical stripper permeates through the gelcoat into the fiberglass mat and will cause never-ending pimple problems from beneath the new paint.

It is not necessary for this Corvette because it is being built as a restomod street fighter with track abilities. Still, for exacting restorations where raw fiberglass should be exposed, there are tricks to making fiberglass repairs virtually undetectable by matching the color of St. Louis’ original fiberglass with resin tints.