1989 Corvette C4 6 speed manual

I've been having more fun with the car the last week. I met up with a Facebook group for American car owners in the South Wales area last Sunday for a little drive out. It was great to have a proper geek out about marque/model specific issues. Blatting around the link roads and going through tunnels was super fun too. Although it's not a club and much more informal, it was much more rewarding than the Corvette club. After a year of membership I'm not going to renew. I found the Corvette UK forum to be pretty dead and racist comments dismissed as banter. I went to one Corvette meet and it was very disappointing. I was the youngest by about 20 years (and I'm 27 now, it's not like I'm still a student) and with about 15 people there, only 3 other Corvettes were present. Personally, if I'm going to a car club thing on a Sunday, I'm going to be a nerd about that car and want to share knowledge/stories about it with others. Not spend 3 hours having a Sunday lunch talking about anything but cars should the couples get bored? A bit of a rant but I found the 924 club attracted people of all ages, walks of life and the cars reflected that too. Perhaps that's what lead me to own 3 different ones over 5 years and still pay an interest even now. When you're trying to keep an old car on the road, especially if it's imported or unfamiliar, then having a local group you can swap advice and help with is great and really goes a long way to enjoying owning it in my opinion.

Loved this Buick





And the factory decals on this Camaro. Just like a vintage advert!



This Camaro was in great condition and we'd been through similar Tuned Port Injection woes.





Had a passenger ride in the yellow Mustang. Supercharged, heads, cam etc. Allegedly 800bhp. Felt very big compared to my car and nothing has touched the >400bhp 944 Turbo I went in once when it comes to performance.







Earlier that morning we were at the Queen's Square breakfast meet in Bristol, always worth the trip over for an eclectic mix of cars.







The past weekend both me & my girlfriend were off work so a little trip was in order with the forecast looking good and the car running sweetly. We went down to Cornwall, no squeaks or rattles, air con blowing (okay, wheezing) cold, returning 25mpg and making progress.


Looks tiny in St Ives car park:



On the road to Lands End. The new balljoints, polybushes and a proper alignment have made the car a pleasure to weave through B roads. We managed the trip seeing only a couple of caravans and one tractor! When the Corvette C4 was launched, it could pull 1G driving around a skidpan. It hasn't lost any of that mechanical grip now it's lowered and with the quick steering rack, it's great on twisty roads. You don't have to put lots of big inputs in and it goes where you point it.



At Lands End we saw a group of Germans doing an aircooled UK tour. They had 3 mint (mint, mint) Karmann Ghias and a late Beetle on Fuchs.



This is the closest my girlfriend has come to being home in New York for awhile, just 3147 miles if the sign is to be believed.



Saw this awesome over-land-cruiser in the car park too!



Meanwhile it looks much sleeker with the Corvette panel in place, I'm sure it helps economy too...



Found the ulitmate parking spot in Mousehole, no door dings here!



On the way home we were making good time when we came up to a new C63 AMG and played for a few miles. I hope the kid in the back goes on to buy some shonky old thing later. I still remember when a Detomaso Pantera overtook us when I was 6...

These are such cool cars, the profile of it looks great in that side on shot!

After I had the exhaust fitted it was time for MOT. It would've been a clean pass but for a brake pipe splitting! Luckily during the test. They thought the fluid looked a bit rubbish too so we replaced the master cylinder at the same time. I ordered this on a Friday from Rock Auto in the states. There's an option to prepay VAT so it goes straight through customs and you don't get stuck with extra handling charges either. It was shipped from New Jersey on Friday and delivered at the garage in Cardiff on Monday morning!! I doubt if you ordered a part from most places in the UK on a Friday that it would turn up the next working day, never mind from the US!

I made the most of a fading summer catching up with friends and cruising around. Funny to think our trio here cost broadly the same, but are all very different! I also went to Cars & Coffee in Cowbridge, which had a great turn out of all sorts.














So now with a few drives and a clean MOT, I broke it again...

A friend with a later LT1 model kept nagging me to go on the dyno and with the new exhaust, I was interested in what difference it made. The dyno was mainly a BMW specialist but the owner had a couple of Maserati's. I won't name them but this dyno was meant to be the most accurate in Wales “because he knows what power his cars have and it gives a reading that agrees with this”. The lambda equipment wasn't working either, so no way to tell air/fuel ratio. To compound problems, they hadn't put an automatic on the dyno before and there was no easy way to stop the LT1 kicking down. Nevertheless caught up in the excitement, I let them put my car on the rollers...







A short video:

streamable.com/aoii8

It made 250bhp/350ft at the wheels, which is the stock figure at the crank, so a decent improvement. Anyway, at the end of the last dyno run there was a misfire... It was ok again for a minute as I headed home but them it was back. I did the simple stuff first, changing all the ignition parts and found a burnt plug wire. New ones made no difference, so went through fuel pressure, compression test, sniffer test, throttle position sensor voltage etc. I couldn't find the problem. I got fed up and returned to it later and finally got to the bottom of it, thanks to daylight savings. I keep the car in a rented double garage between some terrace houses, so try not to be much of a nuisance out of hours. Anyway, with darker evenings, I started it up and noticed one of the leads was shorting against the header! D'oh! I have little heatproof socks to protect the leads but when I put new leads on, I didn't bother fitting them. I had the wires further away than before but fitted standard AC Delco ones rather than the fatter silicone ones I had previously. This was just enough to make the spark jump. Routing them very carefully and I'm back on the road! Phew! A good lesson in checking and rechecking the simple things and I feel a rich man after looking down the barrel of engine work...

The LT1 interior loses all the retro appeal of mine I think:





Whilst it was in a state of disrepair I was trawling the classifieds for another transaxle Porsche or even thinking of a modern one as a daily. Well I forgot how much fun this car was! Trying to get all that torque onto wet tarmac with nothing to help you is tremendous fun. You can hardly get it off the line and have to carefully squeeze the pedal in the lower gears. Likewise in the dry, when it bites there's instant go and it's equally entertaining to leave black lines every time you're at the front of the traffic lights.



My other good news is a wheel purchase. I bought the rare 3 piece split rims from Austria late last year. The anxiety is always that one will get damaged and be difficult to replace. So imagine my thrill when the seller contacted me a couple of weeks ago to say he'd found a NOS spare in his attic and offered to post it to me for 50 euros! It's 17x9 so can replace the front wheel that has some lacquer peeling and kerbing. I'm tempted to see if I can get some 18” barrels and make up some 18x11 rears then. It's hard to get tyres to suit a 17x10.5” rim here. Albeit a ZR1, this is what it could look like!







I was anticipating spending a bit of cash on the misfire and just got a healthy wedge of back pay from work so I've ordered a new aux belt, tensioner and pulleys since it's sounding a bit squeaky. Hopefully I'll have a few fun times over winter and then onto a decent summer, I'm thinking Le Mans classic...

Blimey those wheels look good.

I am with you on the dash, your version is a million times better, the newer one has lost all the character.

Great ride, interior like an 80s hi-fi. Is this your workshop? Very atmospheric

If you ever decide the templation to try something else I’d be interested in a chat. Love the car :cool:

Very nice car indeed

I see what you mean about the difference in the front end lines between your one and the later, smoother fronted one. It loses something in the restyle.
Out of interest, what has been done to the rear lights for amber indicators? I have seen kits for Yank tanks with replacement lights, but yours appear all red

Time for a little update.

Last year a mate of the mechanic who works on the car let me his double garage around the corner from my house for a mere £60 a month. To start with, this was great! But people would constantly park in front of it, blocking my car in or out. I put up new signs, left polite notes on windscreens etc but it was an ongoing nightmare. Picking my battles, I started looking for elsewhere to rent and found an ex-council lock-up with mulitple entrances behind big steel gates and I'd save £20 a month. So earlier this month I downsized. I even bought a shelf to put stuff on and some luxury foam mats! Thankfully the C4 is a small car so there's plenty of room for activities even in a single garage.





I was intrigued by the Canadian sticker on my car too and 2 years after buying it I ran a Carfax. This is a bit like an American HPI check. Well, it turns out my car was delivered new to Ontario, Canada! Thus confirming that no American knows what a proper gearbox is...



Earlier in the week I headed over to Yate for an American car meet-up. I went awhile ago and the standard & variety of cars makes it worth the trip. There were a couple of Dodge Vipers there, a GTS and an RT10. I lusted after these as a boy, playing "Viper Racing" on the PC and even getting a dealer brochure from my parents' friend in Ohio. I've still got it stashed somewhere. I'd love a Viper and imagine the experience would be similar to my manual C4. They share the same diff, atrocious interior quality, big torque and no traction control. A couple of other localish C4's went to Yate and I was chuffed to see how clean mine looked for 30 years & 107k miles. Had great fun driving home in the sunset too, what a summer 2018 was!

Love it, actually aged very well surprisingly.