When I bought my corvette last year the original owner had smoked the marker lights, tail lights, fog lights and backup lights with a spray on tint. The tail lights and marker lights are not too bad, but to make the clear lenses dark he applied a good .010 of tint to them. This makes the light housings look like they are full of used motor oil when the lamps are on, and renders them completely useless.

I debated what I could do to make them work correctly and retain the blacked out look. A few weeks ago walking through a home improvement store I found what was called expanded mesh which is used for security type screen doors. It came in a 4'x8' sheet, is powder coated black and around .020 thick for $24.00.

I removed the fog lights and sanded the tint off with 320 on a DA, then began fitting the expanded mesh to the light housing. Keeping the mesh pattern parallel to the edges of the light made forming it much easier. After I got it formed to the housing I hit the lens with 500, 800, 1000 and then some mirror glaze.

I purchased some HID 55watt 4500K H10 units from DDM Tuning, I have a set of these in my truck as well as a set in Tania's car. I mounted the transformers to the top of the fog lamp housings.

This picture shows the mesh covered lens on the passenger side and the tinted one on the drivers side.

This is with both lights completed.

A view of what the mesh looks like installed. At all angles but head on it still has the blacked out appearance.

Because this took a lot less time than I thought it would I decided to try the expanded mesh on the fender vents as well. I am very happy with the outcome for a total of $75.00 + tax. There are companies that make lens covers and vent covers out of heavy gauge wire mesh that are very nice and very expensive, over $150.00 for each set. When I have some more time I plan to do the back up lights and something around the exhaust to tie it together.

Z06 Exhaust Modded

In February Matt and I installed Z06 mufflers on the corvette, the power gains from them are completely minimal, I did it for sound. After driving the car for a few months I was not totally happy with the sound, it was much quieter than I had expected and the tone was more that of a car equipped with header mufflers.

I had read on numerous corvette sites about a Z06 muffler mod and decided to give it a try. Matt and I pulled the mufflers back off the car and I cut them open to modify the loud side of the muffler. The mod is as simple as adding a sleeve to the perforated pipe on the bypass side.

I purchased an 18" piece of 3" diameter exhaust pipe from the local parts store. I then cut it in half and split it along its length on one side, this allowed me to slip it over the perforated pipe and weld it in place.

These pictures are from someone else that had done the mod, I did not take pictures when I did it.

I drove the car for another month with the exhaust modified and I very much like the sound now, it is a much higher pitch with a European exotic car sound to it. The only draw back to it was a slight drone at 1500-1700 rpm, which coincides with the cars 1650 rpm @ 80 mph. Its not a terribly loud drone and does not prevent normal conversation in the car but would probably be annoying over long distances.

To fix this it was time to install some controls for the exhaust.

There are companies that manufacture kits for doing what I needed for around $190.00 which I was not going to spend. After spending some time searching I found a Logisys 12V 15A Remote Control (RM02) relay for $17.99. This is the same relay used in the $190.00 kit.

I connected it to a EVS9 Duralast EGR Vacuum Solenoid for $15.99. This valve is normally closed which means the exhaust is open or loud until the remote is activated. To hook everything else up I had to purchase $8.00 of vacuum hose and an $8.99 brake line that I ran through the passenger side rocker panel.

Other than hooking up the vacuum line to the back of the intake manifold the installation was easy. My plan of having Matty reach between the firewall and intake to hook up the vacuum line failed miserably when I realized his hands are now as big as mine and he cannot reach into smaller spaces.


The mod works flawlessly and when the exhaust valves are closed it is nearly silent with the sewing machine sound from the rockers being far louder. This will make a potential trip I have planned much more pleasant.

Wheels 2

The centers of my wheels could not be powder coated due to them being plastic. The company that did the powder coating had paint on order that would match the color of the wheels, but I have been waiting on it for over a month. I did not like the look of the chrome plastic centers so I started looking for an alternative. I have always liked the look of carbon fiber but not the price associated with it. I found a company that made the centers for these wheels in carbon fiber for the cheap price of just over 600.00 dollars.

Plan two, DI-NOC a 3m vinyl covering that looks just like carbon fiber. I ordered a 1'x4' sheet off of Ebay last week for 24.00 and it is everything I read about it. It looks and feels just like carbon fiber, its also easy to work with and very forgiving when you make a mistake. It took me all of 20 minutes to cover the wheel centers with it.

The color matches the wheels perfectly.

I love the look it gives the wheels and the car, I plan to do some of the interior plastic trim with it as well.

Splash Guards

Yesterday I scored a set of factory splash guards. The cheapest I had seen these for was 90.00 plus shipping.

I bought these from a body man at the local GM dealership for 30.00, he was converting a C6 base to a Z06 body. The good thing about these is they fit great, are very hard to see and protect the wheel well / rocker areas very well.

Wheels

I got an offer a few weeks ago from an old friend to trade my factory "hairpin" wheels for some factory five spoke wheels. The hairpins look nice but are a pain to keep clean, especially in the center of the spokes. If I drove the car once every few weeks it probably would not be a big deal, but as a daily driver the brake dust builds up rather quickly. My plan was to just paint the wheels black when it came time to replace the tires but the deal I made for the five spoke wheels included having them powder coated black.

I was going to paint the center caps to match the semi gloss of the wheels but ordered some Di-Noc instead to give them a carbon fiber look.

The black wheels should be much easier to keep clean with the car being driven daily, I think they also give it much more of a competition look.

Z06 Exhaust

I have been looking for a different exhaust for the corvette, the factory exhaust is extremely quiet for the type of car it is. After researching numerous options and deciding that sound was not justification for paying 1,200.00 to 1,800.00 at this point in time I had basically given up, until I read about the NPP and Z06 multimode exhausts. The NPP is a factory option that has exhaust cutouts built into the mufflers, they are vacuum operated and controlled by throttle position and RPM through the ECU.

The option was 1,195.00 and added 6 horsepower to the base coupe 430, buying just the mufflers alone is over 1,200.00 new and 600.00 to 800.00 used. That eliminated NPP as an option, the Z06 multimode mufflers though came on all Z06's and sell from 250.00 to 400.00 used. They have a deeper tone and larger tips than the NPP's.

I found a set of Z06 mufflers for sale on a corvette forum and the seller was located in Phoenix. Tania and I drove up two weeks ago to pick them up. The tailpipes on the Z06 mufflers are 3" in diameter versus 2.5" for the stock pipes, so I had some adapters made which once everything was apart didn't come close to fitting.

Matty decided he wanted to help me and during the removal I got a call from work, by the time I was off the phone he had almost the entire stock exhaust off all the way to the downpipes.

Being late in the afternoon and seeing the adapters were not going to work, I cut the tailpipes off the factory mufflers and welded them to the Z06 mufflers. This actually worked fairly well since the Z06 mufflers reduce down to 2.5" at the inlet of the muffler.

Now all that is left is to hook up the vacuum lines to the exhaust cutouts. They default to open but this causes a bit of a drone at low RPM freeway speeds. I have found a remote control relay that I can use to control a vacuum solenoid, adding a small accumulator to the system will allow me to open and close the exhaust valves at will.

In the picture above you can just see the vacuum actuators and linkage that open the valves in the center exhaust tips. When they are closed the exhaust is very quiet.

The old exhaust not only was very quiet but very restrictive, note the small diameter of the pipe leading into the dual tips. The new Z06 exhaust has individual pipes going to each tip.

The sound of the Z06 exhaust is very similar to what flowmasters sound like and makes the car sound like it should have when it was new.

Runflat

Last week I decided to get a slow leak in my right rear tire fixed. It had been leaking since I bought the car and every three to four days I had to put air in it. Corvettes do not come with a spare, they use runflat tires which allow you to drive at legal speeds for up to 50 miles with a completely flat tire. I read a few things on Goodyears site about needing specialized training and equipment to work on these tires, there was also vague reference to the repairs being done by Goodyear for free.

The first Goodyear I went to, they told me that runflat tires were not repairable

Plate

Saturday Matty and I went to a local car show, it was the first time out with the Corvette and my new plates.

Normally I am not a big person on personalized plates but when my plates came as ANN593 they had a personalized look to them. The problem being the name ANN. I spoke with someone at the DMV and they explained they would not change them for me, so I decided to get a personalized plate.

The DMV required that I explain the meaning in 70 characters or less......

New Years Resolution

My new years resolution this year was to get a brand new corvette. The one I bought is a year old, oh well I never was good at following through with new years resolutions....

Truck Seats Pt 9

I hit the local u-pull this weekend, they had 3 88-98's and over 20 f-150's in the same year range. Needless to say the OBS's were pretty picked over. I found some lighting in one of them that I had been wanting to get. The interior and under hood accessory lighting.

Because of how it is integrated into the cab harness I cut off the sockets and made my own harness that lights the foot wells, ashtray, and glove box.

I also drove 175 miles to look at this 91 Stepside 82k mile "creampuff" that was for sale at a dealership for 4599.00.

The add had numerous pics and I was excited at the prospect of finding a bone stock, fully loaded, low mile OBS I could use as a daily driver so I could tear mine apart.

Once I got close to it red flags went up with a really bad Earl Scheib type paint job that was flaking off everywhere. That was just the start of a wonderful test drive which included the worn out front end taking the truck where ever it wanted along with the hood deciding to release on its own and the glove box door falling off into my Tania's lap. This was going to be a bit more work than I wanted for Matty's first car.

When we got back I tried to close the hood and the passenger side headlight fell out. The sales dude then promptly says "that's why we have it marked down to 3999.00". I left my number with an offer of 3k including tax and by the time I got home the add was removed from CL.