[VIDEO] TJ Hunt Goes To Work On Building His Widebody C8 Corvette

San Diego-based YouTuber T.J. Hunt apparently has the distinction of becoming the first shop to install a widebody kit on a new Stingray.

Or at least the first person to post such a video showing the installation of prototype 3D printed widebody pieces.

We first told you about Hunt back in February when he unveiled renderings of this widebody kit in the works from his company, Street Hunter Designs. Later, we heard how T.J. became one of the first people to fit an aftermarket exhaust from Magnaflow on their C8.

Now work has progressed on the widebody kit to the point that TJ’s team is ready to test-fit the pieces that have been 3D printed, and today we get to see a video of the car as the front lip and front and rear fender flares are attached with two-sided tape and a small amount of “special sauce,” as co-worker Oscar calls it, though not too much of that sauce since the car they’re working on belongs to a generous friend named Reed, who loaned his car to SHD as a guinea pig.

“You guys haven’t see much of this other than the renders we’ve posted,” T.J. explains. “We have 3D printed prototype pieces actually straight from the press. What’s awesome is that from our first experience with using 3D printed pieces, we have made a lot of improvements for structural rigidity, we’re better with our accuracy.”

T.J. says the reason for making the 3D parts in the first place is to ensure they fit the car the way they should, but more importantly “to just check and see if our design looks good in reality as it did on a digital render because that’s what is really important.”

Street Hunter Designs will be offering a front lip for the stock Corvette body as well as an expanded widebody kit with lots more parts to customize new Stingrays. The video shows both versions of the front lip, with the widebody naturally being a little wider than the stock version to match up with the front fender flares.

The testing goes so well that T.J. says he is “just blown away’ because the pieces fit so much better “off the bat” than they did on a Toyota Supra modified earlier that reportedly took five tries to reach a perfect fit. “That’s just… that’s awesome teamwork right there,” he says of SHD’s effort on the C8.

In the video, we get to see his friend Reed’s mid-engine Corvette in its “curlers and bathrobe phase” as the car is being test-fitted for the widebody conversion. The crew first used panel bonding to put the three pieces of the front lip together because the 3D printer couldn’t go that wide; actual production pieces will be one solid piece, T.J. says.

Hunt says they leaned toward a GT3 look when designing the kit, drawing inspiration from Corvette Racing’s C8.R of which they took lots of measurements and photos at the SEMA Show. The most noticeable parts of the kit include the large fender flares at the front and rear, as well as the big wing held up by brackets again inspired by the C8.R.

After being called away for a few days because of a family medical emergency, T.J. returns at the end of the video to say “the C8’s looking great.”

In fact, work is going so well that T.J. says the SHD widebody conversion will come out sooner than anticipated. It’s expected to sell for a little less than $10,000.

We know it’s hard to get a true feel for this widebody kit with the prototype pieces surrounded by ugly yellow masking tape, but laying that aside, what do you think about T.J.’s latest effort?

Source:
TJ Hunt

Related:
[VIDEO] StreetHunter USA Unveils Widebody Aftermarket Kit for the 2020 Corvette Stingray
[VIDEO] MagnaFlow Creates a Custom Exhaust for TJ Hunt’s 2020 Corvette
[VIDEO] 2020 Corvette Stingray Receives First Oil Change