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I have never been part of any forum before.
Last night after having my brother move my C8 for me, when I went back into the car and parked it in my garage I was unable to exit the car.
I tried many different methods to get the door to open but failed. There was no electrical failure. After 15 tense minutes in the car- I had left my cell phone in my house-I reached across to the passenger door and pressed the door release button and it responded.
I then once again tried the drivers button and I felt that it did not move at all. I looked at it closely and I noticed that the button appeared to be slightly depressed and cocked to one side.
I am fortunate that I go nowhere without my Swiss Army knife. I opened up the knife blade and jimmied it into the button and twisted it and the button popped out. The immediate problem was solved.
However, this is a major design defect and flaw that would result in a tragic potentially fatal problem under many crisis situations that are too numerous to mention here.
I will be contacting the Corvette factory tomorrow morning with this report.
Thanks for posting. You are right, this could be a very serious problem if there is no alternate way of opening the door from the inside. This situation has come up on previous models and there is a way to open the door manually on those models. Does the C8 owner's manual have any info about a manual over ride? If so, owners should become familiar with it NOW, so they are prepared to open the door in an emergency situation.
try to remember that if you somehow drove into a body of water, try to remember that if somehow you got stuck on a railroad track, try to remember that in a crash and you had to exit a fire,etc etc etc
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There is a manually door release inside the car down in the driver floor board. Did you try that? While I'm sure GM will hear any reported issues, this post is pretty over the top alarmist for the electric door button to get jammed. Deadly defect lol.
I can't imagine they don't have way to open the door when power failure occurs, the C6 has handles on the floor board to open the door manually, the passenger side have the same handle.
So I would think GM would be smart enough to get egress out of the car.
What does your manual say, like most of us don't read it, till it's to late.
I raced professionally for 10 years and I can tell you that after a crash all you want to do is to exit as fast as you if bad things are happening-you are not thinking calmly about pulling up the manual release as if it was a standard action
I raced professionally for 10 years and I can tell you that after a crash all you want to do is to exit as fast as you if bad things are happening-you are not thinking calmly about pulling up the manual release as if it was a standard action
So as a racer for 10 years I assume you were knowledgeable about your car, in every aspect, correct?
You were not knowledgeable in this instance because you chose not to read the manual. Had you done so you could have easily used the manual handle as indicated and been out in 3 seconds.
Read the manual and learn your car. You can try to rationalize it all you want and try to justify it however you try but it's laughable that you try and use your racing experience and wanting to get out quickly after a crash to this. In the words on a man who doesn't know where he is "C'mon, man!"
Why did Corvette send out multiple reminders in the past to owners about the emergency release handle? C'mon yourself- mutual responsibility is what this about. Not learning all of the nuances of your vehicle.
The manufacturer has the responsibility to eliminate possible points of failure.
I raced professionally for 10 years and I can tell you that after a crash all you want to do is to exit as fast as you if bad things are happening-you are not thinking calmly about pulling up the manual release as if it was a standard action
I can tell you two weeks ago I open the hatch on my C6, drop by packages in, close the hatch, open the door, and get and closed the door, hit the start button, and car went completely dead, first I did was hit the release button to open the door, and nothing like you happened, second thing I did was pull the handle to exit the car. I live in S Florida, it 96 degrees outside and the car was hot inside, and hard to breath, but I new of the handle, never used, and it worked, and grabbed my jumper box, and jumped started the car. In these cars you never know when the battery will fail, that battery was 2 years 2 months old to the date, no less.
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Potential deadly defect found in the C8
