Hi! I am Dan. I bucked common wisdom last week and was successful... As we have all heard, we are not supposed to buy a car sight unseen on eBay and travel 600 or so miles to "pick the car up and drive it home" but that's what I did. I have in my possession a new toy, but it now languishes in its garage as I try to get Grundy's to bind the insurance. I could take it out, but...
I think I got a steal, but that's no reason to start cutting corners. I have been waiting for manuals to arrive -- I started ordering them when I found that I had won the car on eBay. The car almost immediately displayed the SERVICE ENGINE SOON warning (well, about 60 miles out) so I pulled into a quiet area in a Wal-Mart parking lot and topped up the coolant and engine oil and got the light to go away.
Now that it's home, the warning is back, and I have been given the code that the MAF is unhappy. So that's the reason I am happy to leave it in the garage until that issue is dealt with. My plan is to jiggle the MAF electrical connection, maybe inspect it, inspect the MAF itself, but mostly deal with the suggestion that I replace the 2 relays related to the MAF. Then it will be a matter of replacing the cruise control servo -- apparently rodents chewed the rubber diaphragm and now it won't work.
I will have all winter to go through the coolant, fluids and rubber parts -- I will replace as much of the vacuum lines as I can find. Then it will be ready to drive. Grundy's wants me to only attend enthusiast events and I think I can live with that.
Before too long, though, I want to find out if what I am experiencing is the norm for C4 owners. I find that the car is pretty noisy with cockpit buzzes and snaps, and I see some stress cracks in the interior plastics. I plan to "weld" the plastic back in the cracked areas, and maybe place a "bead" of silicone sealant onto areas that mate up with attaching surfaces in hopes that this quiets the plastic noises. Does this sound reasonable?
Secondly, because the Doug Nash manual requires shifting into reverse a lot, it seems that the shifter has trouble kind of "locking" into the reverse gate and it seems to hang up and be difficult getting out. Is this normal? Anybody have ideas how I can better deal with that?
As this is the first Corvette I have driven, I am impressed with the comfort (it has the sport seats) and it seems reasonable to want to make it quieter. Are the insulating packages available worth the bother for quieting the interior?