Hello everyone, my name is Wade. First, I would like to thank all that have shared their knowledge and experience over the years. I have used this site as a resource for many years and I am very grateful. I have owned a 85 convertible, 95, two 96s and one 2001 C5. Two were purchased new. The Vette I have now is a ’96 that I purchased 7 years ago with 31K miles on it. It now has 56k miles now. I have driven the C4s combined over 300,000 miles. So, I have experience in normal failures due to normal wear when these cars were less than 5 years old. My current 96 Vette is now 27 plus years old. A whole new set of problems and maintenance questions arise simply due to age. While this car runs great and has been very reliable it is now to the point that I need to replace parts that MIGHT fail due to age if I want to drive this car like I would a new one. I come from an aviation background where critical components are replaced when they have been in service for a certain number of flight hours…or even in some cases just reached a certain number of years on the aircraft. So, I will be asking your advice and offering mine on which components should be changed when they have lived 25+ on the car. Looking forward to talking with you all.

 

Welcome!

 

Welcome to the Forum, moving you here to this section, folks here can help answer your questions

 

Welcome - your neighbor it sounds (at least 1/2 the time) if you mean Monterey, CA!

 

Welcome!

 

Thank You!!!

 

Welcome!

I can't argue with your desire for preventative maintenance. I WILL offer a word of caution. In some cases, Vette owners have experienced quality issues even with brand new parts. It's not at all unheard of for something right off the shelf to not work, to fail in a relatively short time, or to physically not fit right. I have a C-2 as well as my C-4, and in that forum it's quite common to be told to either look for NOS parts through eBay or other such sources, or to repair your original rather than buying a new one even though the replacement is supposed to be "correct".

Obviously this will have to be addressed on a piece-by-piece basis when you get into the process. Just want to give you a heads up ahead of time.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yes I am aware. In ’94 I bought a new Vette, Competition Yellow…Just loved that car even though it ran really hot until I put in a thermostat into an existing plugged engine port and direct wired it to the fans. As a side note my ’96 engine block no longer had that port in it. I put 170,000 on it in 3 years as my commute was over 100 miles a day. It started missing badly at an idle and the dealership said it was the optispark. They quoted $1,800 to fix it (in 1997). I bought an optispark from them for $800. Struggled putting it in myself. How hard could it be? I had worked on my cars when I was younger when all I could afford was really just junk. In 1997 there was no Youtube. The mechanic pointed down to optispark and that’s it. Got it in and the engine was still running badly. But at least different badly. It looked liked the new opti was bad. How could this be. But this thing was $800 and I thought I was going to have trouble exchanging it. I paid the Chevy dealership $70 to test it, and they agreed it was bad. Pulled it off, exchanged for the new one, it ran great. But now after taking the water pump off twice it started leaking. Pulled the pump off the 3rd time and changed it out. The car ran great for the next 15K miles until I sold it. So began my saga maintaining the car myself.

Sorry for the rambling. Your advice to try to buy New Old Stock is great. I have found two parts on an Ebay parts guy. Got a ACDeco Idle control sensor (says made in Poland) and AcDelco knock sensors( part number itched on it). I am having a headache trying to figure the best brand of part to get when I cannot find NOS. Standard, Delphi (Delphi was the spinoff of GM parts) or even ACDelco parts made now. Some say many are Standard relabeled. Any of your thoughts on brand for the sensors would be appreciated.

 

welcome