There are a few parts that are hard/expensive to find for early C5's. EBCM and steering wheel sensor probably worst ones. But as I have said on several posts neither of those will keep the car from going down the road just fine.
The reason those early parts are had to find is they changed design of those parts for later C5s.

 

Otherwise, needed parts can usually be found in the used market.

 

It's 97-00 you're reading about; 99 is stopping a year short.

There's one thing you should realize. A LOT of the issues are blown heavily out of proportion in relation to operability of the car. Many pre-2001 owners are driving around with questionable EBCMs, stored DIC codes, etc, etc. There's not a lot that is going to outright strand the car or prevent it from moving sans maybe a completely failed SWPS (steering wheel position sensor), a completed failed EBCM (would be VERY rare to have happen), or say a damaged PCM (which is plausible due to it's location but unlikely).

And on the complete other side of the coin people driving pre-2001 cars have 150,000 miles on it and have never seen any issues that occur with those model year cars.

There are also C5-specific things that will hit regardless of year. Column lock issues being the most glaring, which pretty much affect every C5 sans very late '04 manual cars and 2001-2004 automatics. If you're looking for a manual you'll deal with column lock at some point if it hasn't been addressed.

If pre-2001 cars had so many issues to outright prevent many cars from being driven then their value would plummet.

 

r They're blown out of proportion, unless your car has the problem.

 

So besides the column lock issue, what issues with the 97-00 models renders them completely undrivable?

 

I've had plenty of issues with my '99. It's blown out of proportion as a whole. People get one DTC code and spend weeks chasing it because they can't claim their C5 is "problem free", when meanwhile the problem is too many sub 10,000 mile C5s exist at all

You know how owners are; how many people seem to think a flood car completely ruins it and blow rebuilt titles out of proportion?

 

Why is too many sub 10K mile C5s existing a problem? Id say that's a good thing for people looking to buy...

 

Not sure exactly what would make 97 - 00 completely undrivable that would not make any of the the C5 completely undrivable.

 

 

Being a new owner of '99 Coupe that I bought with a few needed fixes. The car was completely drivable with a steering wheel position sensor (SWPS) fault and a few other codes I've fixed like replacing a bad O2 sensor and the outside air temp sensor. And it's not that some of these parts aren't available because they aren't made anymore, there are plenty of used i.e. the SWPS I had to replace. They are for sale by some of the "parts recyclers" for about $500, but there are plenty of cars being parted out around the country and forum members on here that you can get one from at a much more reasonable price ($130).... I say got for it and enjoy a C5!

 

One thing I've noticed is that 'vette owners seem to know all the common problems - the community is huge. Any car design is going to have a laundry list of relatively common problems - let's say a few dozen - and any car may have five to ten of those. Because the problems are well known and talked about, it sounds like there are a lot of issues.

Usually it's fine.

Until there's a problem and it's an electronics box nobody makes anymore. Yes, for the 97-00, that does suck. At that point you basically have four choices: 1) hope you can just drive without it, 2) get it rebuilt, 3) get one used/salvage, and 4) try to convert to another box from a newer C5, if possible.

The good news is that they made somewhere around ~100k (plus or minus) 97-00 models. Whenever one ends up totaled into a guard rail, it gets bought by a salvage yard that specializes in (among other things) stripping out C5s and selling all the goodies. Thus, you can find used parts, for now, relatively easily.

Long-term it will be a serious issue. The 'vette community needs about a hundred electrical engineers with a ton of free time to figure out how to rebuild/replace/whatever all those little electronics modules that die from time to time. So far we're somewhere around 99 short.

If you plan to keep your car for ~10 years I don't see any issues if you're okay with buying used or rebuilt.

If you plan to keep it forever, well, buy yourself eighteen textbooks, an oscilloscope, a log analyzer, a multimeter, a soldering iron, and a fat budget for components from digikey and circuit boards from a fab.

Such is life with modern cars full of electronics gizmos where the OEM stops selling said gizmos.

 

For what it's worth, I did build a Head Light Door Control Module that has worked flawlessly now for over a year and I am certainly not and electronics engineer.

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...ol-module.html

 

My man.