Made some more progress today.......
My wife helped me final bleed the brakes first thing (remembering when my Mom helped my Dad do this when I was too young to help). I also installed the upper ball joint rivet bolts. The first set I ordered the rivet top wasn't wide enough to seat properly with enough contact area on the ball joint so I bought some from the Corvette vendors and I think they are much better. Not sure why this is a big deal to me other than I like the more correct look of the rivet top. Also final adjusted the front drums and installed the anti-vibration springs around the drums - they come off much easier then they go back on. Thoroughly washed and dried both sides of the wheels and tires prior to re-installing. I left the hubcaps off in case I needed to take the wheels off again for some reason - plus I'm scared to death to put them on and risk damaging them.
I had about an hour left before I needed to call it quits for the day and figured oh what the hell let's get it on the ground and go for a test drive. So I started it up and burped the radiator and topped off the anti-freeze and once it was warmed up I backed it out of the garage and tested the brakes on the way down the driveway......so far so good. Our roads are still heavily salted from some winter weather last week so I kept the drive short and just ran around the block in our subdivision. Never got out of second gear and made a few hard stops to make sure I didn't have any major issues. Luckily all went well and other than a few minor things (oil filter canister gasket leak and lower radiator hose leak at the clamp) I think we're good. It doesn't pull or make any odd noises when braking at the relatively low speeds I tested at, it has a rock solid pedal, and I was actually surprised how well it stopped. (It will never be confused with a modern Corvette........
) When the roads get cleaned off better I will extend the trip to outside my subdivision and test at higher speeds.
Getting close now............
https://youtu.be/-4DujKMXeZ8]
https://youtu.be/5SSpEuwc8LU