70thAnnvGuy

Hello Fellow Enthusiasts,
I need help! My 70th Anniversary Z51 overheated and shut down on a HPDE run at COTA last summer. I broke the car in properly. I had the car towed to Capital Chevrolet in Austin, TX. The car has 1753 miles on it. GM has been the most uncooperative, least forth coming, worst company i have every dealt with in my life. After months of virtually no communication from GM or Capital Chevy I was told verbally by the service manager that GM blocked my warranty and would not repair the vehicle due to customer negligence. As of today I have only been told because the car was Raced, driven hard. It was not Raced, not a timed event and not driven to the limits. I still have no real diagnosis of what actually happened to the car. The only thing they will tell me is that the engine has signs of excessive wear and metal flakes in the engine. They referenced tire and break wear. I have tried to get it resolved with the BBB Autoline and had a signed agreement that the car war going to be repaired. Nothing has happened and now BBB has come back and said they cannot do anything because the car has to be under Warranty and the BLOCK won't allow it. Something they should have known 90 days ago. I had to have the car towed to the Petrol Lounge to be stored last week. I am now at a total loss???? Capital Chevrolet says I need to replace the engine, the brakes and probably the transmission. How can a company treat a customer that pays 100k for a car like this? They could care less. How can they just BLOCK the warranty and not tell me Specifically what failed on the car? and why? and how is that customer negligence? I own a 911, 2 BMW's and a Mustang Bullitt currently. I all my years I have never had such a horrible experience. My dad has been the treasurer of his Corvette club back home for several years. I put 2 deposits down on a Z06 the first day possible. Any and all suggestions are appreciated. At this point I plan on hiring a Lemon Law attorney. Any referrals? I sincerely hope no one else has had this kind of experience.

Floridasky

First post on this forum with trouble. Hope things work out.

Midlifegoals

Let's see your Trips history on your MyChevrolet App. That should show that you didn't 'race' etc...shows your average speed and all sorts of goodies.

David.L

What codes did you receive from OnStar? Check you driving history on your MyChevorlet App as that will show your driving habits. (Chevy might have this already and could be used to deny your claim if they find the car has been neglected.)

70thAnnvGuy

Thanks, I didn't activate the My Chevy App, but I just did. Can't find trip list. I did use the performance data recorder on track though. I've got some data. Shows on driving on track at high speed yes. But also shows it's not a race or timed event. I'm sure GM looked at that.

70thAnnvGuy

Chevy should have been able to see i did not exceed 4000 RPM's the first 500 miles and did not take the car on the track till after 1500 miles. It failed at 1743.

Rocketmanwpb

You may have to retain counsel.

24RiptideBlue

Wow…. That sucks…. I don’t have any magic answers but a few thoughts come to mind…

First gm has the data of ever second of run time on your car. So they know how many times the gas pedal was matted, what the RPMs were, they know how many G’s the car pulled into every turn it made.

1,753 miles is nothing… which makes the situation all the worse but significant tire and brake wear at 1,753 miles is not your in favor.

What some people call high performance driving gm will call racing. As an older owner I can also say I won’t buy used performance cars anymore because of the insane abuse people put their cars through.

The intersection take overs that appear on line where people do crazy donuts smoke pouring from the tires destroys cars. If you tried that thirty years ago the rear end would fall out of the car. What modern cars can withstand is amazing but obviously something went horribly wrong.

I am no fan of gm and when you charge $100k for a high performance car and one goes wrong gm should step up and fix it. I think gm is in wrong here. But I have to add HPDE at 1,753 miles is pushing it to put it mildly. The car is barely broken in and if your tires are severely worn (we have no pictures to judge for ourselves) at such low miles I would conclude the car was driven very hard. Whether a street car should be able to handle that is open to debate.

Considering gm has your cars run data through spystar (Onstar) and they know that you will bitch loudly on social media if they fail to honor the warranty they must feel pretty confident that the car was abused/raced. Again what many people call a fun Friday night gm is going to call flagrant abuse or racing.

Do you ever watch Roadkill or any of the Motortrend car shows? They engine swap old cars and do lots of burnouts and donuts and the one thing you can absolutely count on is the cars they drive break and break a lot and catastrophically. They destroy engines, break transmission housings, seize rear ends…. You name it they break it.

What I would do, and I actually solved a problem with Ford using this method decades ago, is have someone, maybe a lawyer, put together a letter describing what happened and asking for help getting gm to honor the car’s warranty. Get the names of every member of the board of directors from gm website investor relations or the SEC government website and make separate letters with correct titles of every board member and send the letters certified mail to corporate Headquarters. If no one steps up to help your talking lawyers and lawsuits, maybe arbitration are your only path..

Good luck!!! I hope they step up….

TD20

The car is meant to be raced.. Chevy dealerships are just pieces of *****.

Vetteman Jack

Man, your situation is a shame. I hope that somehow you are able to convince GM that you were not racing/abusing the car (provided that is the case) and that they will reverse the warranty block and gt your car fixed.

24RiptideBlue

Sigh… no it isn’t. It’s meant to be driven as a sports car.

And it’s the factory that won’t pay for the repairs. Dealer are reimbursed by the factory for warranty work.

There isn’t a manufacturer in the world that will sell you a car that can be registered and driven on the street that will agree to… race it? Sure no problem. Enter any race you want and we’ll cover anything that breaks under warranty …. Never happen. Porsche won’t cover that and they sell actual race cars that cannot be registered and driven on the street and they don’t come with bumper to bumper warranty. They come with… spares… extra parts your likely to wear out but when you race it’s on the owner.

I’m sure we’re just talking terminology…. The car should be able to handle track days. They specify the equipment needed for doing a track day for Christ’s sake. But you can’t say…. Race…. That’s a whole different ballgame.

winders

I don't think @TD20 meant actual racing when he said "raced". A lot people talk about doing an HPDE or open track day as "racing" the car. Heck, people even call autocrossing racing and it is not.

The Z51 Stingray certainly is promoted by Chevy as being track ready and taking a C8 Z51 Stingray to the track should not void warranties...

Shokwav

are you comparing the junkyard trash heap builds from a tv show to a 1,700 mile c8? Yes those cars break. They are broken before those clowns even touch them. I’d even suggest the show wouldn’t be very popular if they didn’t run into problems and destroy the cars.
I have no personal data regarding the above mentioned vette and what its life was like before engine failure. But to say that after break in, running track events is equivalent to roadkill is crazy.

24RiptideBlue

I agree. But he did say…. Raced….and supposedly that’s the term the factory is using to void the warranty. Yes you should be able to drive it hard on a track. No you can’t really Race with it. It’s obviously a fine line but unfortunately one with a big dollar sign next to it.

The OP seems to be saying… Race… is defined by a timed competition, which it wasn’t. Sounds reasonable to me. gm apparently defines… Race…. As driving the car harder than they think you should resulting in significant engine and transmission damage.

Also agree gm actually specifies the equipment you need to buy (Z51) if you want to track the car. I’m in total agreement gm says you can track the car. Something that breaks during a track day post break in should be covered but something has gone very wrong, gm is digging its heels in and they have the data on how the car was driven. If the consumer had better protection the OP wouldn’t be in the situation 🤷‍♂️.

449er

The engine, brakes, & transmission need to be replaced? GM blocking the warranty says something happened here more than we know

LIE2ME

I wish the OP luck. I know none of us would want to go through this...

Ron_Attleboro_MA

Seems to have no recourse except to replace the engine and then get a lawyer to sue.
You could reach out to "Brandon", YouTube "Vette Tittans". He is always talking about suing GM.
Save the present engine, in-tack, until it is decided who will will do the analysis of what caused the failure.
( FYI: YouTube "Goonzquad" has a spare engine )

SRay23

All you guys criticizing the OP, consider these points:

https://www.chevrolet.com/content/da..._081722_v5.pdf

https://www.springmountainmotorsport...-owners-school

GregF

That first document is the one I’d put up as Exhibit A. If it’s a Z51 and you’ve followed all the directives then I’d be suing for performance.

TD20

Maybe a better word is tracked... lol

But these dealerships.. are just straight up lazy and want to deny warranty claims because guess what? They just dont want to deal with it. Vettes really need to be their own brand or just have them at cadillac dealerships. Chevy dealerships are just full of lazy people.