Hey All,

I registered over there. Anyone else regularly visit? I noticed that the C4 section seems slightly dead. I have already been chastised by a moderator there for "accusatory tone." That was fun. Not a good way to get some interaction from people.

Paul

 

Two forums seems like a lot of work. I just do one per car till I get kicked out for being honest about that car.

 

LOL, yeah. Trust me, I am anchored here for sure. That last statement hits hard.

 

That didn't last long. Got banned already.

https://www.digitalcorvettes.com/thr...-vette.298400/

lol

 

Digital corvettes started up when a prior owner of this forum was having moderators ban people here left and right for any kind of spirited discussion

anything about ‘getting on it on the highway, racing with the wind, etc.’ would get your post locked down.

continued violations would get you banned including some of the spirited discussion.

people could name-call you, but if you defended yourself and THAT was the post somebody clickd ‘REPORT’ on, the moderators would generally ban that user without going thru the whole thread to see that many other users were making rules violations that started it.

so Digital Corvettes had a market for banned users due to bad moderating and management of this website when they were trying to make this website ‘ G rated family friendly’ so it could bring in as much $$ when they sold it arnd 2009

thankfully this website is better managed and moderated now then during that reign of terror

though i note some good users that got banned or fed up here (like tom400cfi) more recently

 

Boy, you nailed it. Spirited discussion is kind of the point to me. More info, more opinions, more the merrier. It is kind of ironic that it became the monster it was seeking to not become. Oh well. Love this place. Just thought it would be nice to have another resource for information but immediately ran into autowiz who blasted me right off the hop suggesting you don't need to spend more than $35K on a restomod a C4. Dude was suggesting built Dart blocks and all that jazz for an LS swap making 600whp with a supercharger. Just boggles the mind we can talk about it without being labeled "accusatory".

 

I looked at most of the more prominent (first page of google) C4 forums recently and they were all pretty dead save for here. And there is a pretty active sub on Reddit if you can stand it being on Reddit.
Forums ain't what they used to be twenty years ago, glad this one is still active. The younger folk that (we hope) are taking an interest in these cars didn't really grow up with forums or message
boards or mailing lists, Reddit is about as close as they get. There are some active groups on Facebook but that is a horrid format for anything other than fleeting casual discussion, been a real shame
so much info has moved there from forums where you could still find it in a useful manner years later.

 

100%.

I also think the photobucket catastrophe killed a lot of forums, if you remember that. It sucks because Facebook is a terrible format for research, Reddit is moderated horribly too.

I have had good luck using Grok AI to research automotive stuff because it can sift through all the facebook and reddit stuff much faster.

 

Ugh, photobucket ruined sooooo many valuable posts. I'm still running across them and grumbling about it.

 

Same, I went through and replaced everything I had on BMW forums and various motorcycle forums with Flickr stuff. It was a ton of work. But I had the time. If they had charged $50 a year, many forums would still be alive, but nooooo, they wanted $550 a year. ********.

 

I couldn't agree more with @wolf_walker's comments. My being brand new entering the car world as a C4 owner, i knew i knew less than little and had a lot to learn to give my '94 the care it would need for me to have a rewarding relationship with something so prior unknown to me. So I searched for, joined every internet medium I could to begin my learning. It wasn't too long before I recognized this Forum was where I could find and receive the help I needed. Inactivity on the other sites, interactions between members and quality of moderation brought me to unsubscribing to the other sites and solely depending on our Forum as my "go to" resource, exception being YouTube teaching videos. I've found that my reliance on this Forum serves me exceedingly well. That and the fellowship within the membership base is wonderfully awesome.

 

Yeah pretty much. I joined and then never went back.

 

I'll definitely say I actually really like this website. The moderators have been helpful and stay "unemotional" when addressing issues. With Corvettes (and I mean this as no offense to anyone), you kind of get three kinds of people. A few old timers who have been around and done everything. They're pretty knowledgeable, but they also view everything through their lens of... "I've failed before, and here's why you shouldn't do what I did." They may not say it that way, but when you don't do the things they suggest, they might get a little insulted... or maybe not insulted, but frustrated that you're not seeing it through their lens.

You then also have the people who buy an old Corvette... they can't even install a toilet valve without calling someone or watching a YouTube video, and they come on here and say... "I hear a noise, HELP!" They certainly aren't any less deserving of someone's help. And then you have people like me who like to do this kind of stuff and have experience in other areas (or with other cars) and more or less know how to work through problems. I find though that most of them are the non-toilet-tank people. As someone (me I mean) who likes to work through things, fully understand why something is the way it is... I sometimes get the old wizards on this site pissed off. But again, this forum seems to be pretty well managed. That said, I've never been banned from a forum before... but I've seen really shitfully-managed forums where I myself have left because it's just not fun.

Now, if we're talking Reddit... I've been banned from a few subforums. Not the Corvette one... but the Gen-X one. Yes... Gen-X is the bad-*** generation. But, that doesn't mean we don't have our losers. It's embarrassing when the Gen-X Reddit subreddit has nearly 3 times as many subreddit rules as the Millennial subreddit. For a generation that's supposed to be hard core and thick-skinned... clearly the 15 moderators of r/GenX are not. But... it's Reddit... so, haha... you get what you get.


I tried to read that thread... what exactly was the guy going on about? Was he saying that you shouldn't do something half-assed and you should spend more? I will say, you should seriously considering doing this work yourself. I didn't get your skill level so I hope this doesn't come off demeaning, but working on cars isn't too hard, you just need:

- No fear of breaking stuff... this is what prevents people from even getting into it. "What if I do something that makes it much worse?"
- A good set of tools
- A shop manual, or a subscription to Corvette Forum

The rest of it is just trial and error. But if you want a lot of power and you want to "know" the car... you really gotta do it yourself. At least things like installation. You can always buy a good motor from a reputable shop... machine work takes real skill and very expensive tools to get the precision you want. I would never attempt to bore my own cyls... unless I was just looking to slap together some junky motor for a car I was just going to **** around in.

 

So i know im getting a little off topic but one area here that is more heavily moderated/policed here now is the newer current gen forums

if you go on there and complain about a design feature flaw, it seems it will get promptly locked down

i suspect GM is making some kind of donation to
this site and any threads that could hurt their sales - they lock up

i may be flat wrong about this, but i had a post complaining about the center divider of buttons between driver and passenger and the thread got promptly locked

 

I could go on about GM forever... as a long-time fan... GM has gone down a very long and negative path since the bankruptcy. I'll try not to get too emotional about it, but it wasn't a bailout for GM, it was a bailout for the UAW (which was actually in financial dire straits). GM was actually more or less OK, but they saw the easiest way to save the UAW was to strongly encourage the auto companies into bankruptcy, and renegotiate the debt and essentially giving the equity to UAW. No one can tell me why the UAW was given ownership of 70% of Chrysler... who then promptly sold it to what is now Stellantis.

What upsets me even more was when the government converted their preferred shares to common stock. They did it late Friday night when no one was paying attention, and it was for the sole purpose of having vote-authority to wipe out the board of directors... all of whom were car / industry people. They were all replaced with union leaders and political donors. They weren't even union leaders related to cars, there were two teachers union presidents. The only person on the new board that had any car representation, was someone from Blue Bird or Thomas (can't remember which) that made school busses.

This new board of directors ruled with the intent to reshape General Motors into a green company. They eliminated half the brands. They looked for a buyer for Saab (which no one bought), but they outright cancelled most of the other brands... not because they had to, but because they either didn't want leveraged new competition against them, or the car company didn't fit the narrative for the new company they were building. They cancelled Pontiac... which had good sales and was actually making money, because it was viewed as a performance brand... not the future look they were going for. They kept Buick only because at the time, it was a good seller in China. It no longer is and you now have your choice of three to four eggs with Buick. A small egg, a slightly bigger egg, an even slightly bigger egg, and then a really big egg. I think they're all front wheel drive, and no one wants them.

Everyone in GM was devastated with the board when they cancelled Pontiac. The company nearly revolted... but people weren't willing to put their neck out... and it was gone. It wasn't until the board tried to kill the Corvette. They legitimately tried to do this... the entire GM engineering staff threatened to quit on the spot if they cancelled the Corvette... and to the dismay and significant disagreement of the government, the board reluctantly kept the Corvette program. The board shifted almost all their resources into the Volt... which was an utter and complete flop. People will buy something because it's a good product, not because you want them to buy it.

This same "brain trust" created the Cash for Clunker's program... hoping that it would jumpstart new GM's sales again. It failed horribly. The first wave of Cash for Clunkers... everyone bought Toyotas, Hondas, and Fords. The same "brain trust" again then fudged the EPA numbers for fuel efficiency of older vehicles, basically making it so that people with Fords wouldn't get the same amount as people trading in Chevy / GM products. But in the second wave... the same thing happened... people didn't go buy GM products... they traded in their GM cars and bought Toyotas and Hondas. It ended up being a cash boom for Japanese automakers at the time. Furthermore... they were so stupid, that they basically wiped out the ability for GM dealerships to get any service center work. The Government essentially crushed more than 3/4ths of a million running vehicles... nearly 2/3rds of them were GM vehicles. Man... don't even get me started. Ask me what I really think and I'll move it to another forum.

It's amazing we still have the Corvette, honestly... but GM is not doing well right now. It's not all their fault... the insurance lobby to the NTSHA is really the enemy of the car industry. Their goal isn't to save lives, it's to reduce payouts... which almost always comes at an extreme cost to you the consumer. That's why a baseline Chevy truck with almost no options, costs about $50 grand.

 

Yeah, I was just trying to be helpful and suggest an alternative to what autowiz proposed and I got a DM immediately from Norm over there telling me I was being "accusatory". When I pushed back to that, he told me I was being combative. Then I posted again and then I got the banhammer.

I totally agree with you. If you aren't turning some kind of wrenches on a C4, you are missing out and potentially throwing good money out the window. Honestly, I got the impression that autowiz is a protected soul over there. Apparently he has a business dealing with custom cars and doing builds for people. It was just crazy. It literally all started with me saying, "Good rule of thumb is double the cost of parts and that will be close to what labor costs." Oh well.

 

That is madness. I am glad I am in the part of this forum where we don't have to deal with that crap. In the world of guitars, the Corvette is like the Gibson Les Paul. It is iconic and it will sell, so they protect the ever loving fork out of everything related to that guitar. Gibson is notorious for suing the sh*t out of companies that even come close to looking like or functioning like the Les Paul. Ironically, the Corvette and the Les Paul are bought by the same people: Dentists, Lawyers and anyone else who has a money burning a hole in their pocket yet have no idea how to drive or play guitar. 9 of 10 Les Paul guitars play like garbage because they know they aren't going to get played and just have to look pretty. The garage queen of guitars.

 

Reading through the posts here and I've gotta say, this is a great thread.

I'm in my mid-20s so yes, I kind of missed the "prime" forum days, but the information on this site has been invaluable for me in regard to some of the things I've done on my C4. This forum is by far the best one surrounding the Corvette, and while I have been active on the C4 Facebook group, I usually point people to the forum here when they ask for help. I pretty much don't use Facebook as a whole anymore.

I'm not afraid to wrench on any of my stuff, whether it's my cars, sleds, bikes, small engines, etc. The way I see it is that if you're going to buy a C4, or just any car 30+ years old for that matter, you should expect to have to turn some wrenches from time to time. It's the nature of the game. I find it fun and sometimes therapeutic though!

 

It is therapeutic. I am an accountant by trade and I have an urge to work with my hands and this is my outlet. I agree, the C4 community here is great.

 

... and you are 100% correct in that assessment! That you were correct is why you were flagged as inconvenient. Haha...