Hey guys, I'm in the market for a 96 LT4 in the distant (~6 months) future, its been my dream car since I was a kid. I've got a few questions about them so that I can find that perfect car for me. Are there any sort of special maintenance issues with the LT4 car in general or are they more or less on par with the LT1s in maintainability?

Also I'm trying to figure out what price range I have to shoot for to make this happen. I'm just looking for mechanical soundness. If the paint is chipped somewhere on the bumper or there's a tear on the passenger seat, I'm ok with that, that can be fixed later on.

One more thing, I have never seen an LT4 in my area, and they don't seem to come on eBay or Autotrader or what not very often, how hard is an LT4 to find? I'm located in NC, and I'm willing to drive pretty far to get this thing when the time comes. Ohio's game, although I saw one available in Colorado, and that's pushing it.

Thanks for your help, guys.

 

According to a couple of sources, there were 6,359 LT4s produced in 1996, so the odds are you should be able to find one fairly easily. All of the '96 LT4s had a manual transmission, conversly in 1996 all of the LT1s had an automatic transmission. So, when you're doing a search if you specify "manual transmission" in a '96 Vette, all of the cars listed will likely be an LT4 and frankly, there are a lot of them in AutoTrader and on eBay.

As to reliability, I drove a '96 CE LT4 from late 1996 until March, 2006 when sold her and bought my first C6. I put about 50k miles on the car in that 9.5years. Over the years I replaced the battery (maybe twice), the tires (once IIRC), changed out the exhaust (that was vanity not necessity ), replaced the shocks (once), replaced the radiator and the water pump. Oh...and replaced the drivers visor when the little ear went limp. When I sold the car, I got about $5k less than I had paid for the car. So, it was probably one of the cheapest rides that I've ever owned.

I like my current ride, but I'm thinking that I want my C4 back...I miss her. My only problem is figuring out whether I want to replace the LT4 or maybe try an LT5 as a C4 replacemnet. Hmmmmm...

If you buy a well maintained car, I don't think that you'd ever notice the difference between owning an LT1 and an LT4 based on the maintenace records.

Good luck with your search.

 

Where are you at in NC? This is my LT4 CE. They are great.

 

WOW, that's a beautiful car. Almost my color, too (white seems to be what I always get, I really don't care if its orange and green, though). Precisely what I've salivated over since I had that poster in my room as a kid. I got Corvette fever from my Dad, so while other kids wanted Lambos and Ferraris and Porsches, I wanted the Ferrari/Porsche/Lambo-KILLER! Which of course was the ZR-1 for ages, but those things need to be in museums or something, too scary to actually drive them, at least for me. The LT4, however, is pretty stinkin close enough for me. I'm in the west of NC, BigDR, about a half hour out of Asheville.

Thanks for the info, Another Don. I had heard the 6000 number, but I didn't know that all the manuals were LT4, that is AWESOME news. I'm a manual guy through and through, just can't get into automatics no matter how uncomfortable traffic might be in a stick-shift. From the looks of it, I'm staring at 9500-13500 or so to find a decent example with mediocre miles (60-80k). That sound right to you guys?