With the pink slip in hand, Kurt towed the beastly beauty home and began a three-and-a-half-year restoration that would take him to swap meets far and wide, from Bloomington to Carlisle. "There wasn't anything particularly difficult to find, it was more a matter of finding the nicest quality parts available," Sikora said. Kurt did have some problems with the T-top gaskets, however. "I had some aftermarket gaskets, but they never fit right, so I had to pay a little extra to get the GM originals." But what's a little extra cash to assure your Vette doesn't turn into a fishbowl when it's caught out in the rain? With the last of GM's original stock produced installed, Kurt's tops were tight-a good thing since a bilge pump was not an available option on this version of a Corvette. With the insides protected, the interior was now something that could be worried about. But even that didn't take long to find as he discovered most of the carpet waiting for him in the bins of a swap meat, right next to some door panels, a dash, and some rather unique seats finished With Velour Inserts.
Moving onto the paint and body, some work was needed before the squirt job would be ready for the smear down. Farming out the work to someone more "able-bodied" gave Sikora a chance to contemplate the paint he wanted to slap on his baby. With Torch Red at the forefront, it was dumped for a custom mix of Jeep Grand Cherokee Sierra Pearl coat. When it came time to choose the engine, Kurt showed everyone that what he may not know about paint and body, he surely knows about engines. And what did our friend Kurt choose for his '69? Well the only thing he could choose if he wanted to make the same statement about high performance that Corvette did the same year his car was born was a ZL1. But Kurt wasn't happy with any old run-of-the-mill ZL1, so he had the block bored and stroked from a 427 to an incredible 496. Once the block was ready to race, the rest of the engine was made to follow. Callies crankshaft and rods were installed and connected to Wiseco 10.5:1 pistons before Comp pushrods were placed inside along with one of their cams rated at .652 lift and 262 degrees of duration. Topped off with JE rings and Federal-Mogul bearings residing under rectangular-port aluminum heads with 2.25-inch stainless steel valves on the intake and 1.88-inch on the exhaust, everything resides under GMPP valve covers and a Moroso breather.
After going as far as to match-port the heads, Sikora went a little further by modifying a Weiand tunnel ram intake manifold. With the unit cut down 1 1/2 inches to fit under the hood, 55-pound Siemens injectors and a 1,300-cfm throttle body from Arizona Speed and Marine were installed. Kurt's handiwork doesn't stop there! After custom-fabricating billet aluminum engine pulleys, Kurt now had the offset he needed to mount the alternator lower. And speaking of electrical, Kurt wouldn't be running this Shark anywhere without an MSD distributor, coil, and wire set. With the engine now taken care of, he had to find a place to send the spent gases to. With the help of Hooker, a set of their headers were matched up to a set of their side pipes.