Gojamsgo

Hi everyone. I recently picked up my first Corvette. It's an 89 with 112k miles and an automatic transmission. I didn't want an auto, but I'm also not one to turn down a free car. I have looked a bit here and there for a C4 for less than $5k the past few years, most i found were in pretty poor shape, rattley and kinda beat. I was visiting my dad in Illinois and test drove an 86 with the 4+3 manual. I was a bit worried about the tranmission and deciced to pass. A couple days after I got home to Florida, my dad sent me pictures of this 1989. He got caught up in the frenzy at an auction and was the winning bidder. He paid what they typically go for and got it titled registered and insured. He drove it occasionally for a few months until I was able to go pick it up.


First impression. Battery dead from sitting, but It's a nice car, has nice paint, decent interior, and thankfully no rattles and the plastics are in really nice condition. It has aftermarket Hedman Headers, and exhaust, a Hypertech chip (i know, junk), and I think, based on the new looking gasket, the required 160 degree thermostat to go with the chip, and an aftermarket stereo system. Beyond that, it appears to be all stock.


First drive, pretty fun! not fast, but a good cruiser. But the engine light came on. Checked the codes and got 32, 33, 36. Looked them up, and decided to just monitor the codes. Did a couple Italian tune-ups and it seems ok. Also, the horn is super quiet.


I took it for a few hour drive down Route 66 and it did great.


Couple weeks go by and I head home to Florida. The car ran and drove great the entire trip and got about 25.5 mpg according the the guage.


The Florida state line is right around where the AC stopped working intermittently (figures). It worked sometimes, but not others before finally not working at all after being home a few weeks. Being home in hot Floirda is also where it has started to run hot sitting in regular traffic around town. And to top it off, the headlight have stopped flipping properly.


So, what I have is a nice looking, kinda fun, automatic (boring), no AC, hilariously quiet horn, occasional engine light, too hot, winking headlights, 1989 Corvette.


Oh, and I stink like exhaust after driving it.


Any insight or advise on these issues is greatly appreciated.

Gixxerman

Lot's of knowledgeable folks on here, fix her up and enjoy it.. looks like your having a blast.. exhaust fumes build character

dmaxx3500

first flush out the radiator,inside and out,and put in a new thermostat,,and have the a/c serviced,with fresh Freon,

make sure you wash out the fins on the a/c-rad from the outside-front and rear,,30 years of bugs will plug-up everything

and a tune-up and fresh fluids cant hurt

Citizenworld

Congrats! Just curious, what is an “Italian tune-up”? I hope it’s a great sarcastic joke that I can share with Claudio and Mario

DykstraMotorsports

I was wondering that also.

Gojamsgo

An Italian tune-up is the act of going out and stomping on the gas a few times full throttle to get things moving and flowing.

Citizenworld

AMAZING! That will usually fix 90% of problems in reality

95LT1ZF

Awesome. Welcome to the boards.

ghoastrider1

sounds like a nice trip anyway. back in the 60s , going out and stomping it was called "blowing the carbon out" and was fun to do if you didnt get caught by "the man".

Yukon Corleone

I give all my vehicles an “Italian Tune-Up” if they fail they swim with the fish

Yukon Corleone

I drove my 1990 Corvette today for the first time this year and I gave it several “Italian Tune-Ups” today and it performed flawlessly

65Z01

Congrats on your "new" '89 and welcome to the Forum.

I agree on flushing the cooling system and getting the A/C serviced. Also changing oil & filter would be a good idea. Add in a new air cleaner.

Those codes are about the MAF and/or its relays.
Winking headlights are cured with the plastic gear & bushing kit. There are on-line vids on how-to in this area.
Not sure about the weak horn, my '88 has the same issue. I think a new horn will handle that.

Gojamsgo

I did the headlight fix last week. It was frustrating to say the least. I also looked close at the AC compressor, it has a bunch of black melted goop coming out of the back of the pulley, told my brother about it and he said he thinks it's the clutch coil. New one is on the way. I bought a new 160 degree thermostat and was gonna test the old one, but when I looked at the thermostat housing today, I saw that they sure didn't make it easy to get to the nuts. Didnt have the right tools with me, so it'll wait for another day, one in which I am also ready to flush the rad.

Red86Z51

One critically important maintenance item that is either not known about or simply overlooked is to remove the upper radiator shroud and clean all of the accumulated debris sandwiched in between the A/C condenser and radiator. Since your car came from Illinois, you should expect to find lots of leaves in there. Don't be surprised if you find up to 25% of your radiator being blocked off at the bottom.

I use a shop vac with 2 wand extensions (fits between the two perfectly) to vacuum the big debris out, then finish off the job by blowing out the condenser, radiator, and entire surrounding area. The whole job should take you an hour start to finish.

Oh, and wear a dust mask...you're gonna need it!

hcbph

What he said. C4 radiators act like vacuum cleaners when it comes to collecting crap between the radiator and a/c condenser. I had a leftover shaft from a snowblower that has a 90 degree turn at the one end. It fits down there to break up and loosen some of the crap so you can vacuum it out (mine was hard and caked in), just don't hit the radiator or condenser with it. Once cleaned out I used an air chuck to blow through the radiator from the engine side then used a hose to flush it out. Mine had a lot of junk in there and though it didn't lower the engine temp a lot, knowing it's clean is a good feeling to me.

Gojamsgo

Thanks for that. I started taking apart the shroud and stopped because i thought i could see it from the bottom and see it was clean. Didnt think about stuff being stuck between the condenser and radiator.

Dug into the AC not working and the getting hot issues.

We (brother and I) replaced the compressor clutch coil only to have the new one fail within 5 miles.😒 ordered the entire clutch kit, maybe thatll fix it?

We then removed the thermostat to see if it is in fact the 160 degree one needed for the chip, it is, and its opening properly. We determined that the fan is not coming on, ordered a new fan motor.

When the clutch kit arrives, ill do both jobs, and check for debris around the radiator and condensor again.