Nice car, and good price!

I have seen a couple for about $8000 usd - both similar mileage to yours. One was a beautiful silver FRC and the other a 2000 Z51. But never one for $5k. Even if there are issues you got such a cheap price you have wiggle room to fix things...

 

Sharp! Enjoy!!

 

Yeah, that's what I figured. I'm pretty good at fixing stuff and I have the time/space to work on cars so for me a cheap Vette is just fine.

Already enjoying it

Last night I gave it a bit of a shakedown, and man is this car quick. 345hp doesn't sound like *that* much, especially since my BMW wagon has 300hp, but power to weight makes all the difference. The Vette weighs a solid 700 pounds less than my wagon, so it's a heck of a lot faster.

The rear end loves to get slippery, which makes it a lot of fun. It [allegedly] does great burnouts too, with all of that lovely low end torque. Let's just say that my neighborhood may have smelled like rubber last night.

I also got the Vette registered/titled/plated, which cost a whopping $75 at a third-party DMV office. Gotta love Arizona. My insurance is pretty cheap too.

This morning I decided to check the tire pressures and realized they were waaaay too high at 36-37psi cold. The door sticker says it should be 30psi cold, so I lowered the pressures to 30 all around. The car rides a lot smoother now, with no perceptible loss in handling prowess.

My commute to work was one of the most fun commutes I've had in a while! Now I can't wait to drive it home, haha.

 

I've been driving the Vette every day for the past week, it's surprisingly comfortable. Lots of power makes for effortless driving. Even with driving pretty aggressively I've managed a calculated 18mpg at my last fillup, that's better than my BMW daily driver!

The trunk space has been great as well. I went grocery shopping in the Vette and everything fit with room to spare. Yesterday I bought a new hydraulic jack and threw it in the back of the Vette, still tons of room left. I love it.

I've also signed up for an autocross on November 5th, so now it's time to go through the car to make sure it's in tip-top shape mechanically.

 

Welcome Danny, I remember you from the BMW world.

Change all filters and fluids if you have no history on them, the typical name brands are fine. Plugs and wires are a good idea as well at that mileage.

If the car doesn't have it already, but sure to buy the LCM5 module and install it to prevent being stranded. Cheap and easy insurance against problems.
http://www.complianceparts.com/lmc5ataglance.html

Knowing you like to modify stuff, once you get the car up to speed with maintenance, you'll start looking into speed parts. Look up the following as best "bang for your buck" mods:

-Zip tie Mod
-Long tube headers
-Mail order tune
-3.42 diff from a 6 speed car

Those items should cost under 1,500 and return a big improvement in performance.

 

Looks like you nailed it on that deal! Leaves you a lot of room, price wise, for getting a bunch of stuff done. Good luck to you, C5's are great fun!

 

Welcome to the forum. I was your age when I bought my first C5 Z06. Many others before and a C6 since then but I actually bought back the C5 that I sold as it is still my favorite to this day. Congratulations to you sir.

 

Wow, what a price. Congrats!

 

Yep, all fluids and filters will be changed. I always like to baseline a car when I first buy it. Any recommendation on plugs? I've always used NGK's on all of my BMW's but I'm not sure if that's applicable for the LS1 engine.

I'll have to check and see if I have an LCM5 installed, but if not then I'll order one. I've heard a lot of horror stories about people's columns locking up while driving, I definitely don't want that.

Re: the zip tie mod— holy crap! How have I not heard of this before? I did see that a lot of the guys doing that mod were doing it with the Z06, would that still work with my base model intake?

Long tube headers were definitely on my mind, as they're a lot more affordable on the Vettes than on any BMW (it's like $4k for BMW V8 headers).

A 3.42 diff is a good idea as well.

Thanks! I've been having a lot of fun already, should be even more fun once I fix the minor issues and start doing some mods.

Must be something special about these cars, eh? I've talked to a few people and it seems like a lot of people still love the C5, even after owning a C6.

I'm glad I'm not the only one in my age group that's into these cars, there are way more of us than I thought!

 

Wire link below. No reason to go with a "performance" wire.


Plugs:
Many differing opinions here (kind of like which oil to use), but the OEM application plug made by any of the big names such as NGK will be fine.

You can do the Zip Tie mod with any intake. Also look up "Flip Tie Mod" if you're not concerned about water.

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...-write-up.html

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...k-flip-tie.pdf

 

Thanks for the tips! New plug wires and plugs are now on my list of things to do.

I'll start with doing the regular Zip Tie mod since it's not as invasive as the Flip Tie mod. We don't get much rain here in Arizona, but when we do, it's usually some crazy thunderstorm that floods all the roads. None of the roads here have sewer drains, and they're all completely flat, so water builds up very quickly when it rains. And I do intend to drive this car in any weather, it's not a garage queen.

 

Good plan - I actually did the same thing when I bought my car. Ran the zip tie mod from the day after I bought the car for about a year, then swapped over to the flip tie.

 

I've been daily driving the Corvette for the past few weeks, it's been pretty solid so far! I rolled over 187,000 miles not too long ago. The fuel economy has been surprisingly great— I've averaged 18mpg in city driving and 22mpg on mountainous highway drives up north.

As you might expect from a Corvette, mine is very photogenic.



Parked next to my boss' Porsche 911S. I should be able to outrun it pretty soon after some mods



One day I got a text from my friend, he was stranded in Sedona because his BMW 540i wagon lost a brake caliper bolt on one of the front wheels. It's like an hour and a half from my house to Sedona, so I packed up my jack, some tools, some parts, and headed North. The drive up the mountains was very easy— the LS1 has tons of torque even in stock form. Aside from some wind noise from the deteriorated window seals, the ride was quite comfortable. With a cassette deck adapter I was able to listen to music the whole time as well.

I arrived in Sedona, helped my friend fix his car, and then my other friend took some pictures. It ended up being a pretty good time for everybody

I love that my full size jack fit in the Corvette so easily, along with everything else I needed. I had 3 people in the car at some point that day, which was pretty interesting.



My friend's a pretty good photographer, she somehow managed to make the bad side of my car look really good (the passenger side has a poorly matched vinyl wrap to cover the mismatching body panels that were installed).



My friend also got a cool rolling shot of the Vette from behind.



The week after that, I went to the weekly car show with the Vette, and parked next to a cool resto-modded C3 with an LS7 in it. One day I'll buy a C3 as well.



At some point I took off the mudflaps because a) they were falling apart and b) I think the car looks much cleaner without them.



More recently, I got bored of how the stock exhaust sounded, so out came the Sawzall:





I had no reservations about cutting the mufflers off, since these are just the regular stock C5 ones and not the cool Z06 titanium ones. With a fresh Sawzall blade it took like 10 minutes to cut both mufflers off, and I only injured myself slightly so I consider that a win.

The result? LOUD. It sounds more like an oldschool muscle car than a Corvette now, which I'm really digging. The drone is obnoxious between 1k-2k RPM, but I'm 25 so it doesn't bother me too much. At full throttle it sounds amazing and is loud enough to scare people.

I'll probably get an eBay catback exhaust at some point in the near future to tone it down a bit. For under $400 you can't really go wrong! Plus I've been reading some track rules and apparently a lot of autocross organizations don't allow the complete lack of a muffler. It's technically illegal to not have a muffler in Phoenix but I've never been bothered about it.

Lastly, I discovered that I have a 3.42 diff ratio after I did my muffler delete. I guess somebody swapped it at some point, no wonder the diff looks so clean. Having a 3.42 versus the stock 2.73 makes a pretty big difference. That makes my good gas mileage even more impressive, though "good" is relative, I suppose. My X5 got 13mpg and my 540it gets 16mpg, so 18mpg+ is good in my book.

 

The corvette looks nice man, definitely a good deal.

Glad to to see more young people enjoying these cars

 

awesome picture

 

]I hate to break it to you, but that's not a stock C5 exhaust system. Actually looks like a Z06 ti.

 

Thanks! I've been telling everybody to buy a Corvette, they're such good values for how much performance you get.

Thanks! My friend took that picture, I love it too. Sedona is such an amazing place to take pictures.

I highly doubt that. It might just be the way the pics made the tips look... they're the standard oval C5 tips. The exhaust itself didn't look special either, nor did it sound all that great. It was very very quiet, like I could hear the transmission more than I could hear the exhaust haha

 

That's awesome, man! This reminds me so much of my first corvette. I bought a red on red 87 when I was 25. Higher miles but still a kick *** car. I had so much fun with that car and I know you are about to have an immense experience. Congrats!!

 

I bought my first Corvette when I was 25, couldn't afford the insurance until then. Mine was a 77 which I purchased in 1980 white exterior with red interior.

 

Really nice looking car for 5k. To answer a few of your questions, I like NAPA gold air filters. I used to use fram extra guard, but NAPA have more pleats so I think they flow better. I use 5w30 oil. Usually Mobil 1 high mileage.

My C5 gets tons of compliments from old and young people. The young people are especially surprised at the relatively low entry price. They think all Corvettes cost a lot or something. Maybe when they're new, but not an older one.

This is my second Corvette. My first car was actually a C3. ('76 L48 auto) Love the C3's looks but the C5 is just a much better car to drive, and much faster.

Have fun !