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a worn out 1990 Charcoal Grey Metallic ZF6 Z51 FX3 car with 217,526 miles on it.
THIS TRIP MAY NOT GO AS SMOOTH.
Follow along as a potentially disastrous journey unfolds. I know for certain that @Tom400CFI lives along my route home to Canada .....so ....maybe keep your phone charged. :-)
I found a cheap 1990 C4 that I *thought* was a bonafide z51 car, (aka, non fx3 with the downgraded fe1 springs, but the bonafide z51 stiffy fe7 springs)....but it turns out that the seller just happened to cut off the right hand side of the picture of the rpo sticker....and i didn't catch it. it was definitely not intentional, and I know i can find what i need and who knows may end up with coilovers anyway. Besides I learned that the corvette challenge r9g cars were sold with the stiff fe7 springs with fx3. that is where i will start.
Always liked the Charcoal Grey Metallic cars. Rare, and most have been repainted. @DMITTZ has a beauty charcoal grey metallic 88 car and i've seen a couple gorgeous ZR1's in that color too. Its not my favorite color, but the longer I am part of the C4 community the more I appreciate original (rare) colors and if i see a rare color for a good price, i'll buy it, even if it is completely missing the clear coat! Like the one I bought! Here are some photos of this 1990 vette. Don't worry, this car will be gutted, caged, repainted with a racing livery (with CGM as the base color), and may even have an engine transplant (cough cough LT5) for the next phase of its life. As you gaze upon this roach, just think, what the myriad of things that may fail during the 17hr drive home, through the Rockies, could be. I've included the rpo sticker. See how I glanced at the RPO sticker, saw the FE7, no FX3, and thought i had scored a true FE7 z51 car, for peanuts. Unfortunately, this car, because of the FX3, will actually have the FE1 springs but we already covered that.
Name wise, I was thinking something like the Coonvette because it looks like a Racoon tore it up inside and its kind of a coon-ish color.
OK, now that you have seen the condition of this relic, bonus points for anyone who can tell me if those are bonafide A-mold rims!
I really did not like the idea of paying 7k for a nice example of a zf6 speed car and gutting it to turn it into a racecar. At the end of the day, most of the wear items will be replaced anyway, to prep the car for competition. So why start with a nice example. But I did want to start with a z51 90,91 or 89 mn6.
Now I am a dad with 4 kids and a business so as much as I do have an extreme sense of adventure .....I still sent the car in for a major inspection to a shop in Grand Junction CO. The focus was on the ZF6 and the engine, both came out with a perfectly clean bill of health.
Fluids were all checked, including diff, and with those items out of the way, here is a list of deficiencies:
- headlights sometimes roll up and sometimes don't. (will manually rotate and leave them up)
- there is a short somewhere that drains the battery (guessing seat motors or headlight motors, both will be unplugged!)
- tires do have some signs of a wee bit of dry rot
- brake master supposedly has some weeping
unbelievably that is all. but we all know that will barely scratch the surface. and fair enough, the tires and the weeping brake master may actually be meaningful. That said, I have a set of racing tires and rims here at home and I don't want to buy tires if i don't need them. and I also have a brand new mc. So lets roll with it and see what happens.
We can take an educated guess and try to predict what all else is going to be fubar on this car, based on pics and our collective experience. I'll start:
- wobbly steering wheel
- intake manifold bolts likely need to be snugged i'll be it eats a bit of coolant
- what are the chances the blower motor works? or hasn't been claimed by a family of small furry rodents.
- i can totally see a loose rear wheel bearing, or a u-joint on the precipice of grenading.
- heatercore must be leaking.
- at 217k miles (holy crap that is 350,000klm what am i getting myself into?) it *must* burn some oil.
what other things am i missing ?
more to follow, including:
the intended pathing home
the surprisingly tight area this car stayed in for the past 30 years
its accident history!
a potential co-pilot on the journey!
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Last edited by VikingTrad3r; 12-01-2020 at 09:51 PM.
So, while tensions were high, the car ran flawlessly for the 1200 miles home. its a classic case of a c4 that has been baked in the sun. cooked. i do not believe this car has spent a single day inside covered storage. The inside is baked and cooked in the outside is missing paint right down to the fibreglass in multiple areas. But under the hood is a different story, it’s remarkably clean and the valve covers Are still slightly gray. They have not fully turned brown yet. There Are definitely issues remnant from sitting for the last 15 years. I will not be surprised if we ran on seven cylinders coming home. In which case whichever cylinder is not firing is probably hooped. But that’s OK, we don’t need this engine.
The border crossing was, interesting, that’s all I’m going to say about it here. By the time we made it home we were very tired but we also had a feeling like we had conquered a major challenge. I cannot explain why I wanted to do this. I didn’t have to. and certainly my copilot vettelife did not need to come with me. We share a passion for these cars, and we both share a passion for wrenching on them and tinkering. Part of the draw for me of doing this is that it looked like a ridiculous audacious goal. Nobody in their right mind would fly down and pick up a car that looks like this and attempt to drive it after they’ve been sitting for 15 years.
I don’t know why it gave us a sense of satisfaction but it sure did! Thanks for letting us share the journey with you here in this thread. I will follow up with another post with a fairly detailed video link of just how roached out this car is.
Unless you were being facetious, and you really think a coon was in there, make sure you get the interior really cleaned, don't breath or touch your face. Coons carry a parasite that blinds people by destroying the optic nerve. A neighbor of my parents live trapped a coon, had rubber gloves on, but forgot and touched his face. He was irreversibly blind within a week. The city killed as many coons as they could find.
Make sure your shots are all updated, especially tetanus! With the mileage and condition make sure the cooing fan works, Idler pulleys, A/c compressor not seized. I'd be worried driving that car 1 hr. How long has it been sitting? I wouldn't worry about ujoints, they usually just grind and not explode!
18hrs to liftoff. intended pathway home and carfax and geolocation of car
@ Drcook, I had no idea Coons carried a parasite so deadly to humans. There were NO COONS inside the vette. When i finally saw the interior of this car, (I did not bother to ask the seller for interior pictures until i had sent him a deposit, because its all being gutted as a racecar anyway) I imagined a coon trying to claw its way out. Thanks for looking out for our safety Drcook! I never knew such a cute looking animal could be so deadly!
Departure:
Flight lifts off from YYC airport 6:30am, brief 28min stopover in Denver, arriving into Grand Junction for 12:30pm. Packed bag last night, ready to roll. Just like in the ZR-1 cross continent journey, we'll be travelling light.
So here is the intended pathway home.
plan is to take the 1142 mile pathing west to the I15, then north. Planned first stop is in SLC area.
zoomed in on the first leg to SLC. I think we could make it here tomorrow night if all goes well.
Second leg of journey is right up the I15 to the border. As a geologist its an amazing drive. Basalt lava fields, extinct volcanos just north of Idaho Falls. The lethal Monida Pass (which, for the record, shows above freezing temps during the journey)
The idea of a brief sidetrack on the way home, to arches national park, or yellowstone for photo ops has been toyed with but that may be pushing the luck.
History of the car:
- The carfax shows no accidents or damage.
- 1 outstanding recall, seatbelt retractors from october 1, 1991.
- several check-ins along the way with
- multiple emissions passes
- check it out, this car has lived its whole life in Colorado, here are the 7 places it has resided. It spent one year in Carbondale close to Aspen.
- the service records look to all have been done at chevrolet dealerships.
that is one tight ownership history!
As far as accident history, NONE. This is a clean title car. For a racecar it doesn't matter all that much, but I am very pleased that I will be starting with a straight car. Albeit a dirty one!
Stay tuned! More to come including:
- A fellow CF member co-pilot!
- Liftoff!
- The bad day kit (tools and parts from a Grand Junction autozone location)
Last edited by VikingTrad3r; 12-02-2020 at 12:52 PM.
Hey guys Vettlife here, I'll be flying down with Vikingtrad3r and the two of us will be driving the car back. As a prior GM tech very familiar with these cars, having owned a couple of them including a previous 90 model, we'll be driving this Brienne of effin Tarth hound the 1,200mile journey into Canada. This trip poses some unique challenges due to current Covid restrictions so we couldn't trailer it requiring us to fly in empty handed. We'll be wrestling this 217,000mile burn scarred "mountain" slayer back just the two of us. No tools or even chicken to satisfy the insatiable appetite of this foul beast but what we find along the way. Were both seasoned veterans when it comes to the C4 so this may likely prove the biggest challenge yet.
Stay tuned, we'll know more when we pick the car up tomorrow to go over it for the trip.
this would be a tough one to recover from without a spare.
tuning in! I was able to get a fuel pump from autozone here in the Midwest, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to as well. Good luck and safe travels!
I'm very excited to follow another one of your fantastic purchase and road trip home threads, thanks for sharing with us.
Great to see you were able to finally get your 1990 Vette. Can't wait to hear about your Journey home. Best of luck and safe travels!
Oh if you have any time left, i'd pick up a few spare fuses and spare upper and lower rad hoses. If a belt snaps it could take one of them out and ruin the day. In a pinch I have personally had sucess with duct tape to patched a cut coolant hose.
our route takes us to pheonix, then to final destination of grand junction.
through security, the bag did get pulled to the side and they pulled out my airpump delete pulley. they were fine with it after i explained what it was.
Last edited by VikingTrad3r; 12-03-2020 at 11:35 AM.
12-01-2020, 08:40 PM
VikingTrad3r's perilous fly'n'drive journey to pick up a worn out future racecar
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