My trip from dads house in Gering NE to moms in Enid Ok was uneventful, lots of sunshine and open Kansas roads.After spending a great day with my mom on Thursday I was up at 4:30 am Friday to make the final 755 mile leg to Indianapolis.
About 60 miles west of St Louis it started to rain and it poured for the next 170 miles to Terre Haute, IN where the weather cleared up in time for me to sit at a construction zone for 40 minutes. After losing an hour to a time zone change I made it to the long term hotel in Indianapolis 11 minutes before they closed at 7pm.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Bug Guts, Fire, Smoke and Hail
I was recently offered a position with my previous employer in Indianapolis. I decided to take advantage of some time during the trip from Tucson to Indy to see my parents. My father lives in Gering NE and my Mother in Enid OK. Going to Gering first was the shortest route and would also be the longest part of the trip to Indy.
I packed up the corvette with items for my office and enough clothing to last two weeks between washes. According to Google Maps this part of the trip was 1089 miles or 17 hours 19 minutes, and because I have always been more of night person I decided I would sleep a few hours and leave at 3am putting me into Gering around 9pm.
Of course my nerves only allowed for an hour of sleep before I left, but according to plan I was on the road pulling out of Tucson at 3am straight up. There is something about 85 degree weather, an open road, a full tank of gas, 80's rock on the stereo, clean corvette, that makes a trip like this exciting for me. Then two hours into the trip the I hit the "smell of money". That is what my grandfather called a feedlot, the side effect of which was my first exciting moment of the trip, the bug guts. I knew it would eventually happen over the course of hundreds of miles, I just was not expecting it to happen all in one moment to the extent I had to pull over to clean the windshield to see.
My next stop and first fill-up was in Albuquerque, the mileage on the calculator coming out to 28.4 mpg and after a quick stop I was back on the road heading north. One of my big goals during this trip was to make it to Colorado Springs before 4pm, I wanted to stop by Under Pressure Performance and check out the corvette twin turbo kit they sell. At this point of the trip I was right on schedule, but that was to quickly change.
As I headed further north I came across signs set up in the median of the interstate talking about road closures and detours for towns I was unfamiliar with. Because the scroll speed of the signs was so slow I was unable to read the full message of them, so I decided to stop at the next one to read it completely. About 70 miles from the Colorado New Mexico border I found out that I25 was closed between Raton and Trinadad. With no other real options than to press forward I started listening to the local radio stations as I drove to Raton. Just before I got off at Raton I took the following picture.
About the same time the local Raton radio station was talking about the detour set up for the 25 miles of closed interstate. They recommended that you purchase gas in Raton because the detour was nearly 150 miles over roads under construction with stop and go traffic and no real refueling points. After paying the north of $4.00 a gallon gouge pricing in Raton, I did the math for that part of the drive and came up with 29.8 mpg.
I found out the radio station was just being nice about the detour. It was over 127 miles of driving South East before I could head north again in Boise City, Oklahoma most of which was chewed up single lane 30-40 mph stop and go roads.
This put me on two lane state roads for the rest of the trip with 65 mph speed limits and tons of traffic trying to get around the same section of interstate I was. I made fairly good time with the corvette making passing of the hundreds of 18 wheelers a safe simple task. Doing the math it looked like I might still be able to get into Gering that night around 10pm. With the trip to UPP being out I had the hour I had planned for it. Unfortunately I ran into two more road construction areas in Northern Colorado both of which were nearly 14 miles of single lane road in which a pace car would allow one then the other direction traffic to follow it at 25 miles an hour. The first site took me 35 minutes to get through the second one almost an hour.
I finally made it into Brush Colorado just before 9pm that evening and was getting onto roads I was slightly familiar with and decided to fill up and grab a burger while I was there. The mileage for the detour and back road drive came out to an impressive 31.5 mpg with an average speed of 67mph.
At this point the day was really starting to wear on me but I knew I was close to my dads home and caught my second wind. Driving north from that point I was entertained by the lightening show covering the entire northern horizon, it was too dark to see how bad the storm was and there are virtually no radio stations in that area that would report on weather in that area.
Driving forward I hit some areas where the ground was wet and then small sections of light rain, then about 10 miles south of Kimball NE I hit the heaviest hail storm I had ever been in. It happened nearly instantly and I had no real choice but to keep going north, It was coming down so hard I could only drive about 25 mph and the ground was completely white like it had just snowed. My only hope was to try and make it to where SR71 which I was on passed under I-80 to get out of the hail. As my luck had been running that day as I passed out of the storm the overpass for I-80 was just over a quarter mile ahead of me and by the time I got to it the ground around it was completely dry with no rain at all.
I found the following video that was taken of the same storm about 40 miles from where I was at.
I stopped at the mega truckstop in Kimball looking under their bright lights and expecting the worse for corvette, much to my surprise there wasn't a single thing wrong with it. It appears the cell I drove through was composed of very soft hail and while it sounded like someone was throwing rocks at my car it was more like millions of tiny snowballs which were not bouncing off the car, they were just breaking on impact.
The last 42 miles were uneventful and I arrived at my dads house right around midnight the additional "detour" took the trip from 1089 miles 17 hours 19 minutes to 1206 miles and 20 hours.
Hopefully the rest of the trip is not as "fun".
I packed up the corvette with items for my office and enough clothing to last two weeks between washes. According to Google Maps this part of the trip was 1089 miles or 17 hours 19 minutes, and because I have always been more of night person I decided I would sleep a few hours and leave at 3am putting me into Gering around 9pm.
Of course my nerves only allowed for an hour of sleep before I left, but according to plan I was on the road pulling out of Tucson at 3am straight up. There is something about 85 degree weather, an open road, a full tank of gas, 80's rock on the stereo, clean corvette, that makes a trip like this exciting for me. Then two hours into the trip the I hit the "smell of money". That is what my grandfather called a feedlot, the side effect of which was my first exciting moment of the trip, the bug guts. I knew it would eventually happen over the course of hundreds of miles, I just was not expecting it to happen all in one moment to the extent I had to pull over to clean the windshield to see.
My next stop and first fill-up was in Albuquerque, the mileage on the calculator coming out to 28.4 mpg and after a quick stop I was back on the road heading north. One of my big goals during this trip was to make it to Colorado Springs before 4pm, I wanted to stop by Under Pressure Performance and check out the corvette twin turbo kit they sell. At this point of the trip I was right on schedule, but that was to quickly change.
As I headed further north I came across signs set up in the median of the interstate talking about road closures and detours for towns I was unfamiliar with. Because the scroll speed of the signs was so slow I was unable to read the full message of them, so I decided to stop at the next one to read it completely. About 70 miles from the Colorado New Mexico border I found out that I25 was closed between Raton and Trinadad. With no other real options than to press forward I started listening to the local radio stations as I drove to Raton. Just before I got off at Raton I took the following picture.
About the same time the local Raton radio station was talking about the detour set up for the 25 miles of closed interstate. They recommended that you purchase gas in Raton because the detour was nearly 150 miles over roads under construction with stop and go traffic and no real refueling points. After paying the north of $4.00 a gallon gouge pricing in Raton, I did the math for that part of the drive and came up with 29.8 mpg.
I found out the radio station was just being nice about the detour. It was over 127 miles of driving South East before I could head north again in Boise City, Oklahoma most of which was chewed up single lane 30-40 mph stop and go roads.
This put me on two lane state roads for the rest of the trip with 65 mph speed limits and tons of traffic trying to get around the same section of interstate I was. I made fairly good time with the corvette making passing of the hundreds of 18 wheelers a safe simple task. Doing the math it looked like I might still be able to get into Gering that night around 10pm. With the trip to UPP being out I had the hour I had planned for it. Unfortunately I ran into two more road construction areas in Northern Colorado both of which were nearly 14 miles of single lane road in which a pace car would allow one then the other direction traffic to follow it at 25 miles an hour. The first site took me 35 minutes to get through the second one almost an hour.
I finally made it into Brush Colorado just before 9pm that evening and was getting onto roads I was slightly familiar with and decided to fill up and grab a burger while I was there. The mileage for the detour and back road drive came out to an impressive 31.5 mpg with an average speed of 67mph.
At this point the day was really starting to wear on me but I knew I was close to my dads home and caught my second wind. Driving north from that point I was entertained by the lightening show covering the entire northern horizon, it was too dark to see how bad the storm was and there are virtually no radio stations in that area that would report on weather in that area.
Driving forward I hit some areas where the ground was wet and then small sections of light rain, then about 10 miles south of Kimball NE I hit the heaviest hail storm I had ever been in. It happened nearly instantly and I had no real choice but to keep going north, It was coming down so hard I could only drive about 25 mph and the ground was completely white like it had just snowed. My only hope was to try and make it to where SR71 which I was on passed under I-80 to get out of the hail. As my luck had been running that day as I passed out of the storm the overpass for I-80 was just over a quarter mile ahead of me and by the time I got to it the ground around it was completely dry with no rain at all.
I found the following video that was taken of the same storm about 40 miles from where I was at.
I stopped at the mega truckstop in Kimball looking under their bright lights and expecting the worse for corvette, much to my surprise there wasn't a single thing wrong with it. It appears the cell I drove through was composed of very soft hail and while it sounded like someone was throwing rocks at my car it was more like millions of tiny snowballs which were not bouncing off the car, they were just breaking on impact.
The last 42 miles were uneventful and I arrived at my dads house right around midnight the additional "detour" took the trip from 1089 miles 17 hours 19 minutes to 1206 miles and 20 hours.
Hopefully the rest of the trip is not as "fun".
Sunday, May 29, 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, March 28, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
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
The first Goodyear I went to, they told me that runflat tires were not repairable
Monday, February 7, 2011
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......
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......
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