Finally picked mine up this weekend. It's an '18 GS 2LT, black interior, w/PDR+Nav optioned in, and transparent roof. This is both my first Corvette and my first domestic vehicle.

My buddy and I traveled out in his C7 Z06, which cracked a wheel 120 miles into a 500 mile trip. Put some fix-a-flat in there and drove the rest of the 380 miles and the 500 miles back, stopping to fill it up exactly four times.

The red stripes are going to go. The wheels too, though I'm not sure if I'm going to wait for them to crack before I replace them. Beyond that I think I'll lift the idle to reduce the shaking, remove the skip shift, and work to de-rattle the interior. Might do an intake for some induction noise, not sure. The NPP exhaust is pretty good.

It needs a couple things -- the front large air dam needs to be replaced, the front lower lip has some marring on it, the driver rear quarter window's seal is scratched up, and the fluids need to be replaced (though, new car, this is a given...).

Pretty excited to see how ownership pans out. Amazon is already showing me recommendations for new balance shoes and white crew socks, so that's neat.

 

Congrats! Looks great! Admiral blue is always a winner!

 

Thanks! It was either Admiral Blue or Long Beach Red, and clearly Admiral Blue won. Zero regrets there.

 

Congrats on the first Vette! I may be not far behind you.

 

Congratulations on your new Corvette!

 

Why? These things usually happen at the worst time. You have just seen how it works with your buddy's car. Take them off while they are still good and sell them while they are intact.

That doesn't sound good. I wonder what could be wrong that you have to raise the idle to reduce shaking. Sounds odd.

Why does it need to do work to make it not rattle? Hope you didn't pay too much for it.

 

Welcome to Corvette ownership - great looking car you found.

 

sharp looking! congrats. let the mods begin!

 

Car looks great! Congratulations!

Changing wheels? If it was me, it would be 'go chrome or go home'.

 

Welcome to the club! Can't go wrong with Admiral Blue

 

Welcome to the club!

Congratulations.

 

Yeah, been going back and forth on replace them now vs replace them later. I have all winter to think about it and find a nice set of summer wheels.

Shaking at idle is normal. There are several threads about it, most people chalk it up to "there's a big engine up there" but it's really just the idle being too low. With modern EFI, cam phasing, and electric throttle bodies, there's little reason for the LT1 or LT4 to shake as much as it does, yet all three C7s I've driven do it. My buddy's LS3 did it too. Bumping the idle up ~50rpm on the C7 supposedly fixes it. My buddy's LS3 needed about 100rpm to smooth out. I'll be futzing with it sooner or later anyways to remove the skip shift -- it has the solenoid bypass, but the DIC message is annoying.

There's a buzz and a rattle here and there that comes and goes with temperatures and RPMs -- the rear top latch bounces a little over hard bumps, and somewhere in the front center of the dash buzzes at certain RPMs but only sometimes. Nothing catastrophic by any means, I'm really just nitpicking.

 

Mine seems pretty smooth at idle and I don't know about bumping up the RPM without going into the ECU program.

 

My last V8 idled smooth as glass. My last ~500hp engine idled mostly smooth. Hell, my ~350hp turbo 4 from the late 80s idled smooth. A Packard eight can have a quarter balanced on it. It has nothing to do with power or displacement, yet it's largely considered normal and due to the power and displacement of the LT1/LT4. People chalk it up to "big engine" or "it's making a lot of power" in some threads. Other threads are more of the same rhetoric.

I'll have to sit in more C7s and find out if all the ones I've been in so far are broken

I have a 2-way shop tablet and an HPTuners MPVI setup, so adjusting the idle is trivial.

 

IMHO, I like the red stripes as they complement both GS and Z06 logos. I am also waiting to see if I crack or bend a wheel before spending that kind of money to replace mine.
Beautiful car. Enjoy it!