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Unread 12-22-2019, 11:38 PM   #2371
Rich Z
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The car is supposedly finished as of this past Friday, but was not able to pick it up because of the Christmas stuff going on, and I had some things to do that just couldn't wait.

Rained like hell today, so the road is a mess, which means we won't be picking it up on Monday, neither. So it won't be until Thursday till it will be coming back home. Tuesday is Christmas Eve, and Wednesday is Christmas, and quite honestly, neither Connie nor I want to be spending the time right now messing with the car. It's already sucked enough life out of us.
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Unread 12-23-2019, 08:41 PM   #2372
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Connie and I ran out to the post office today, and yeah, our road was pretty messy. The puddles of water weren't as big as when I saw them yesterday, but the crap the roads department put on the road just turns to mud when it rains heavily. So had we picked up the vette today, I would have been scraping mud out of the wheel wells for sure.

Supposed to be dry weather for the next several days, so the road should be dried up pretty well by Thursday.

If someone had told me when we dropped the car off at the shop that I wouldn't have it home till around Christmas (9 months later) I would have laughed at the thought, thinking they were insane to make that kind of prediction.
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Unread 12-27-2019, 01:30 PM   #2373
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Picked the car up on Thursday. The tech put it up on the lift there at the shop so I could inspect it, and everything looked pretty good. Saw some signs of oil leakage in the front of the engine, but I think it was from a past leak from the scavenge pump that blew back on the engine and some other areas up there. There were signs of the oil leak in the tail pipes, so I cleaned that up real good, figuring I could check that on the ride back home as a good indicator of whether there was still an issue in the turbo scavenge pump plumbing.

After a short drive, I checked the tailpipes, and there was no oil residue, so that was looking good. The drive home was uneventful, and actually a pretty pleasant drive. Car felt really peppy, and the clutch felt really good. No drive train noises, thank God.

I put the car up on the lift when I got home, and best I could tell there was no new oil leaks showing up anywhere. I cleaned up what old oil was on areas, figuring I'll just keep an eye on it to see if there actually is an oil leak somewhere. But everything looked pretty good, with nothing touching either half shaft at the differential.

So I was dusting off the exterior of the car, and wiping off fingerprints here and there when I was wiping down the area near the deck lid when I saw something skitter across the lid. Hmm... A piece of the decal on the deck lid had broken off. I sure as heck didn't hit it hard, so I looked closer. Heck, the remaining "leg" was severely cracked and just barely hanging on too. And closer inspection showed cracks and odd marks here and there. So I checked the front decal on the bumper fascia, and that too was pretty messed up.











Now what the heck? I went back through a bunch of old photos I took and even looked at some videos where one or both of those decals was visible. They sure didn't look like that before taking the car into this shop. Matter of fact, when I was trying my hand at wet sanding the paint, I actually used Q-tips to clean out the painted areas inbetween the openings in those decals. So I sure as heck would have noticed all those cracks then.

I'll post more picks in the next post, showing what looks to me as damage caused by a rotary buffer.
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Unread 12-27-2019, 01:39 PM   #2374
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I dunno, but it looks to me that the plastic of those decals got heated up pretty good by the friction from a rotary buffer. Not sure if the plastic just got heated up enough to start cracking, or else the pad on the buffer started snagging and catching on parts of the decal. You can actually see what looks like the plastic bubbling up from heat from the friction. At a couple of spots, I can't tell if the plastic got so hot that it melted and started to run, or perhaps whoever did this tried to fix some areas with some sort of adhesive.

Rotary buffers are notorious for burning paint if used by someone not experienced with them. I guess plastic decals are even more prone to damage from the heat of this type of buffer if the operator isn't real careful.

Well, damn......

I'm not even sure those decals are still available from GM any longer. I sent an email to the service manager of the shop with the above pics attached. I also attached pics I took earlier showing there was no damage to those decals prior to his shop working on the car. He is off on vacation till Monday, so I don't expect to hear back from him until then anyway.

But my guess is that they have someone there handling the detailing of their vehicles that really shouldn't be doing this kind of work. IMHO. Sure hope this guy isn't detailing their new vehicles before being sold to customers.
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Unread 01-05-2020, 08:41 PM   #2375
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Well, my conversation with the service manager didn't go all that well. He seemed to be implying that the damage didn't happen there at the shop, and when I replied with the facts (as I saw them anyway) and my observations of the details I photographed, he interpreted this as being an attack on his employees. Yeah, maybe my saying I didn't want the detail guy there to EVER come within 10 ft of my car again, could seem that way, I guess. Seems that nearly every shop that does damage to my car wants to put the blame on me, my car, or both. I suppose other customers that get their cars damaged at shops just bite their tongue and stay bent over, thanking the shop for the "service". Sorry, not my style.

In any event, he says he will order the decals and send them to me, which I am interpreting that he is not offering to do the work to replace them there, and would just as soon not have my car back in his shop. Like it was my fault that the car was there for 9 months. Which I certainly hope too, since every time now I have brought my car back home from them, I find something new that is now broken. But if I find something else major wrong that they did, I will change my opinion on that. Bad enough that around 7 months of that 1 year warranty on that triple disk clutch got pissed away while it sat in that shop.

With that in mind, I found more things that weren't as they were when the car went into that shop.

First off, the firewall in the engine bay got damaged when the tech pulled the engine. Looks like the banjo fitting at the end of the fuel rail caught it. Hope that didn't get damaged and a fuel leak crops up sometime in the future.






Not sure why the tech decided to pull the engine to replace the clutch, but in hindsight, I sure do wish that he hadn't. Caused me several problems that I would have had otherwise.

Then not really anything damaged or broken, just that I don't think the way the turbo oil supply lines were put back together was done the best way that they could have been.



So I rearranged that a bit. Wasn't really comfortable with that AN fitting hanging down at an angle to maybe catch on something or get hit by something while driving.



Easy matter to just loosen up the AN fitting and turn everything to fit where it needed to be. Also replaced the sheet metal screws that Chris Harwood put in those clamps with bolts and nuts to hold everything more securely. I guess I could have dressed it up better, since Harwood put it this way to mount that God awful external fuel pump he put up there. But maybe one day I'll work on it to make it look more aesthetically pleasing.

Then on the oil return side, the junction block was tilted out from the rear cradle quite a bit, likely from that loose bolt holding the clamp to the rear cradle, so I loosened the other clamp and pushed the junction so that it was laying flatter against the rear cradle.






Tightened the clamps and it appears to be holding better.

But I'm thinking I may look into trying to put some sort of bracket to hold the junction solidly against the frame rather than what it is now. Maybe vibration will cause those joints to leak with that tension being on the top part like it is now. If that were to happen, the scavenge pump would stop sucking oil out of the turbos, then I have a mess with the oil blowing out the tailpipes and up into the intercooler. If this were to go on for long enough, my crankcase would get drained of oil eventually.

But in any case, the car is back home in the garage and hopefully will stay out of ANY shop for a long while.

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Unread 01-07-2020, 06:22 PM   #2376
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Took the car out for a drive today, and turned out to be quite a pleasant ride. Seemed like the good old days. Clutch felt very nice, shifting was solid and firm feeling, no strange noises, and no oil dripping out of the tailpipes when I got back to the garage. Car feels really strong, but I didn't run it up into boost at all. Maybe next time I am out. This was mostly just to work the clutch a bit and break it in. Monster says that the triple disk clutch really doesn't need to be broke in, but heck, I would feel better doing that anyway. Not that I am going to be stressing it out at the track or anything.

Hopefully all this drivetrain nonsense is history now and I can just enjoy driving the car.

I did get the new decals yesterday, so at least the service manager at the shop came through with that. Debating on whether I want to put them on now, or wait to see if I decide to get the car repainted in the near future. But at least I have them in case GM stops carrying them. And I guess it depends on how often I find myself looking for the cracks in the current decals whenever I look at the car.

Also bought some brackets to see if I can get one of them to work to hold that scavenge pump return junction firmly up against the rear cradle. If not, I may have to fabricate something on my milling machine.
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Unread 01-09-2020, 09:18 PM   #2377
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Took the car out for another short drive today. Sure feels good to be behind the wheel of it again. And I'm beginning to really like that Monster triple disk clutch. I think I may have made the right choice in picking it out. Actually, I didn't really have much choice the last couple of times the issue came up about which clutch to use. But I think I know a heck of a lot more about this stuff than I did back then.
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Unread 01-19-2020, 03:55 PM   #2378
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The other day I was looking at the rear section of hose for the turbo oil return line, checking for any leaks, and figured I should maybe more securely mount that junction fitting against the frame so it doesn't vibrate and possibly loosen up one or more of the oil fittings into it.









Unfortunately I just can't get any of my drills between the rear cradle frame and the rear anti-sway bar to drill the holes to mount a bracket. But I found a Makita angle drill that should be able to do the job, and have one on order from Home Depot.

Now if I could just get FedEx to stop screwing around and deliver the thing, I could get this job done. It was supposed to be delivered on Friday, but for some reason the FedEx driver couldn't figure out where my address is. The guy must be dumb as a rock, which doesn't surprise me, because with past deliveries, he doesn't appear to be able to comprehend that Home Delivery means delivering to the home. NOT out there at the end of my driveway, sitting in plain view of the road. It's no wonder the shipping companies have such a problem with "porch pirates" when they are this incompetent at making deliveries.

I contacted FedEx about it, and their customer service is just as bad. At one point the girl claimed that the delivery was supposed to be via their Smart Post service. She sort of clammed up when I asked her if she was suggesting that the driver couldn't find the local post office.

So maybe on Monday I can get this done. If the driver can figure out where to deliver the package, of course.
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Unread 01-19-2020, 04:03 PM   #2379
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Another project I am going to be working on REAL SOON involves the exhaust system.

Somewhere along the line, my catalytic converters fell off of the car. But honestly, I'm just getting tired of the unburned fuel smell whenever the engine is running. Especially in the garage when I start it up. The smell just clings to my hair and clothes, and takes several days to get evacuated from within the garage. I have an air cleaner running in there 24/7 which likely helps quite a bit, but still, maybe some catalytic converters back in place will help with this.

So I bought a pair of high flow cats from LG Motorsports to go on my exhaust system. I'm still waiting on some high temperature tape to apply to the junctions, since I have been plagued with exhaust leaks whenever I messed with the exhaust in the past. I also bought a different style exhaust clamp to use to see if that helps.

Anyway, I found it rather interesting that I could see right through the elements in the cats by shining a flashlight in through the other end. I'm just hoping that it doesn't make the exhaust tone sound worse, because it does sound pretty darn good right now without the cats in place.







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Unread 01-25-2020, 04:12 PM   #2380
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I got the oil return line bracket painted up with POR-15 silver paint, and drilled and tapped two holes in the rear cradle frame to hold the bracket in place.



I decided to use allen wrench driven bolts to hold the bracket against the frame, and while I was at it I pulled out the two hex head bolts on the other two brackets and replaced them with the same style bolts. These will be a LOT easier to remove if I should need to work on those lines for any reason in the future.






This all should keep any of those connections from moving around from vibration and hopefully keep any future oil leaks from developing.

Might be a while before I can get to the exhaust, however. Banged my elbow against a sharp corner of a desk in my den, and my left arm is smarting pretty good from it. So I can't push or pull with that arm without causing pain. Hopefully it won't take too long before it is feeling better.
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