Captain Obvious

Oh, and by the way... You jumpered pins 7 and 10. Shorted the AFM slider to +12 battery. That can't do good things to how it runs.

I'm not sure that high altitude mode was even ever included on all models. Are you sure that your ECU supports the altitude switch? Are you sticking that jumper wire in there and then trying to attach the connector to the ECU? It seems to me like that little jumper wire is going to get in the way and you will not be able to get the connector to seat correctly? All that said... Here's a pic looking into the harness on the car: And here's a pic looking into the ECU connector:

Cool. I have no experience with Corvette other than driving a few. Never worked on one and never knew the early(ish) ones used that style of rear wheel bearing. So basically the design is similar to the Z and they set bearing preload by adjusting different shims between the two inner races. Same concept as the Z, but the Z is a little easier to control because the races are not tapered and are easier to predict accurately. So... Here's what you do... You need to find two tapered roller bearings with ID = 1.2500 and OD = 2.750. Figure out how to put a grease seal on the outboard taper roller, and stuff them into a Z rear strut! Figuring out the spacer length between the two for preload would be easy. Or if you wanted to change the rear lug bolt circle, you could figure out a way to use Corvette stub axles in the Z strut. Hahaha!!

Yeah, that would have certainly made adjustment and replacement a lot easier. But it would have been unusual. I don't know of any rear wheel drive cars that used tapered rollers on the driven axle. Without two threaded features (instead of the just one in the original design), I'm having a hard time picturing a scheme that would work.

I'd be happy to send you my modified caliper for you to use, but by the time you pay for shipping two ways, it would probably be cheaper for you to just pick up a cheap one local and hack the jaws off. So in theory, previous side loading of the bearings shouldn't do anything to cause problems like what you're seeing. In theory none of the (four) races should ever move with respect to the surfaces they are in contact with. In other words, the outer races should never move inside the strut housing, and the inner races should never move with respect to the distance piece. All the movement of the assembly should be contained within the balls. The balls should spin, but all the races should stay stationary. That said, I have heard reports of a bearing partially seizing and spinning it's outer race. I've not had it happen to me or any cars I've done bearings on, but I've heard of some rare cases where the outboard balls got so gummed up that it spun the outboard bearing race in the strut assembly. If that happens, it will wallow out the hole. That issue should be pretty easy to spot. My advice... Take everything apart, clean all the mating surfaces thoroughly. Inspect all of the important surfaces under magnification and look for kicked up burrs, embedded chunks of whatever, and signs of previous improper assembly. I've seen burrs kicked up on the bores of the strut assembly from forcing a misaligned bearing down into the bore. That previous misaligned assembly caused subsequent bearings to go in a little cocked and not spin free. Bottom line... Clean. Inspect. Align. Don't just use more force to push the bearings into place and think they will straighten out as you push them in. Get the bearings started by hand, tap a little with a light tool. Make sure they are aligned properly, and then use perpendicular (normal) force to finish the install of each bearing. I use a caliper to make sure the bearings are aligned before I set them on the press. I install the outboard bearing into the hub first, then put the axle shaft into place. Then drop in the distance piece and put the inboard bearing into place. That's my order of assy, but ymmv.

Yeah, I'm thinking we're a little too far apart for you to bring the parts to my place. Haha!! So I'm not sure what you mean about getting exact measures, but if you're talking about measuring the strut housing and your current distance piece to confirm that they are the correctly paired together, then I've done that. I had to modify a tool to appease the the Z-Gods that day, but it was worth it. I cut the internal measuring jaws off a cheap dial caliper and that gave me the clearance to stick it into the bore on the strut housing to get a decent measurement of the distance between the bearing mounting faces. Went like this... Modified caliper with the jaws ground off: That allowed me to stick it inside the strut cavity and get a measurement to compare against the distance piece:

So what was the assembly process you used? The order of events? Did you press the outboard bearing onto the stub axle first, or did you press the outboard bearing into the strut housing first and then push the stub axle through it? And where are you located? You anywhere near Philadelphia?

Yes. But I'm thinking that maybe the outboard bearing wasn't fully seated properly against the face on the stub axle, or the inboard bearing was binding up on the axle shaft or the ID of the strut housing during assembly. In any event, its important to make sure everything is done properly along the way or the system doesn't work properly. As for the Brinelling, yes again. You really aren't ever supposed to put force through the balls into any bearing race during assembly. But there's really only one way to do an assembly process on the rear hubs that avoids putting force through the balls and it's complicated. I did it once, but probably not worth the gyrations. Most of the press fits in the rear bearing job are "loose press", and don't require huge amounts of force. I've convinced myself that even though you aren't supposed to put force through the balls, it's a low amount of force that it's "OK" to do it. This most recent time (couple days ago), I installed new Silver Mine 5-lug stub axles, and the bearings were loose enough that they were not even a press fit. The bearings just slipped onto the axles. A little disappointing since any play in that location could/would result in wheel run-out. Sure, it made assembly easier, and I didn't have to put any force through the balls, but it's at the expense of accuracy.

Oh, and get me now... I just went through rear wheel bearings a few days ago. I've done a bunch in the past, but it's currently fresh in my mind.

I suspect that the distance piece is fine and the issue all revolves around proper bearing seating and squareness. The bearing races are often a press fit on the stub axle, and if yours are like that, pushing one bearing in deeper might push the other out. Inside the housing, the inner races aren't even contacting the distance piece at all. It's just kinda floating in there. Can you describe the assembly process you went through. Steps you followed when you installed the new bearings?

Screenshot of the bots joining the forum. Saw something like this the other day too. Wow.

ARA is typically an aftermarket air conditioning system. As in ARA Manufacturing: But that shouldn't engage anything behind the driver's seat. In front of it maybe, but behind it??

Nice. Great start for a project. I'm not convinced on the original paint though. Hard to tell from 3000 miles away, but I'm thinking it's been resprayed.

Got it. Yeah, I'd pull the distributor unit off and spin the shaft and watch how it looks when you spin it. Take a look both with and without a rotor installed, and as Zed Head mentioned, also put the rotor and cap on and see if you can hear it making contact inside as you spin it.

Is the location (cylinder) that gets chewed up always in the same spot? I'm wondering if maybe the distributor shaft is bent. If you pull it, it would be easy to spin it by hand and watch to see if the air gap changes as you spin it. The air gap should be the same for all positions of the shaft, but if it's not, the shaft might be tweaked.