AngryCorvair said:In reply to conesare2seconds :
Yeah, a Scorpions cassette!
Pretty sure "Rock You Like a Hurricane" is on the banned list at radio stations for the next few weeks, so you gotta hear it on tape!
AngryCorvair said:In reply to conesare2seconds :
Yeah, a Scorpions cassette!
Pretty sure "Rock You Like a Hurricane" is on the banned list at radio stations for the next few weeks, so you gotta hear it on tape!
This thread is not helping my recent desire to buy a C4. Must not open Craigslist, must not open Craigslist....
But seriously, nice Vettes! The detail work on the ZR1 is great!
Do eet.
Here's our last audio project - the CD player in our factory Delco-Bose headunit is inop. The foibles of the GM Bose system are well documented, but we are not interested at this time in the semi-significant undertaking that is fitting an aftermarket entertainment system. Besides, our home brew exhaust is so loud at highway speeds it's impossible to enjoy music on longer drives anyway.
There are several outfits who will rebuild your Delco Bose amps, headunits and speakers.
Tonight we installed a still-working takeout headunit, then let it play for a half-hour or so to verify the CDM swap cured our problem (it did - yay!).
This is a very simple project. Needed tools are a 7mm nut driver or socket, a t15 torx driver, a small standard screwdriver, pliers, and a magnet you'll use to recover the fasteners you will definitely drop into the dash opening.
Keep in mind the interior of the car hasn't been detailed yet. The pics will for sure show plenty of dust that needs our attention. Total time from garage door up to finish is 45 minutes.
We will need to remove the shifter bezel to access the radio/climate control bezel.
Remove the cupholder inserts to access the first 7mm fastener. Use a cupholder insert to hold the fasteners you are removing.
Open the center storage compartment lid. Here is the first of two fasteners concealed beneath the carpet insert.
And here is the second. There is one on each side of the coin holder area.
Remove the four fasteners for the storage compartment lid/center armrest and lay it to the side, taking care of the wires for the storage compartment lamp.
Things will be easier if you remove the shift knob. Pry up the shift-pattern bezel and use pliers to pry up the shift knob retaining pin. The pin can be quite tight. Pull straight up. Unscrew the shift knob.
Lift the shift boot up, then pivot the bezel from the rear toward the passenger side of the car. You will not have to disconnect the lighter or power key electrical connections. [Sorry about the picture rotation. When I rotate this shot only in Photoberkit, it goes black. Anyway...]
Remove the two 7mm fasteners at the base of the ac/radio bezel. Next, use your small torx driver to remove the two fasteners for the climate control vent. Pull the vent out.
Remove one more 7mm fastener at the top of the ac/radio bezel and set the bezel to the side. Remove four 7mm fasteners which secure the headunit to the dash structure. Slide the headunit off its locating pins, pull it out gently and unfasten two wiring harnesses for the headunit.
Test fit the replacement headunit. Turn it on and find there is a Billy Joel CD already loaded. Use the CD to test CD functionality even though you aren't a Billy Joel fan, and utter thanks to the seller for thoughtfully including a CD so you didn't have to go back to the house for one.
Put things back together in reverse order and give yourself credit for a "W" on another small rehab project.
Now go find a cassette tape to test that too. 
A quick raid of the old cassette stash yielded late 80's & early 90s alt gold. The tape player is a go, working fine.
Soul Asylum, R.E.M., Dead Milkmen, Jason and the Scorchers and an outlier - George Jones and Merle Haggard. I regret nothing. 
As Weasel used to call them on WHFS, "Jason Ringenberg and all his Nashville Scorchers!"
'80s/'90s GM interiors are 7mm City! Ask any 3rd gen owner about their 7mm socket.
Just today after hanging sheetrock here in H'town I came upon a C4with DV(navy plates) red as yours on my way home and said self I always liked that body style . Your stallions are exquisite sir, who'da thought that elbow grease and determination would produce such results.....wonderful to see.
I have a soft spot for stray dogs and neglected things that still have life in them and just need a chance to shine again. This was a sound car that needed attention.
The Z came to live with me for less than $10k. There is a chance I will have to sell it before long, and while cleanliness is a virtue it will also help with a sale if it shows to its best advantage. Cleaning it up doesn't conceal its true condition as much as reveal it. It's just...clean now.
There is another fellow on the ZR-1 net who did even better than me. He picked up a black '90 with 185k or so that racked up its miles transiting between the east coast and a second home out west. It had way fewer needs than mine, was very well kept and went home with him for $6500. 
The seller bought it new and figured it would be hard to find a buyer for an high-mile ex-supercar the market no longer loves. He was just happy to find a good home for it.
Some old things were never that nice. Others epitomized an era, had forward-looking features, were overbuilt, were particularly beautiful, and so on. Lots of us here can appreciate things like that, especially when some work and determination brings them back. That's one of the things that makes a project thread special and cool.
I think the tail end of the c4 era with the square tail lights is one of my favorites
I was talking to a friend who autocrossed a C4 win an LS3 in it about C4's in general. We came to the conclusion that if ZR1's are sub $10k cars then regular C4's are always going to be stupid cheap. We also decided that I probably need one, but that's a different story.
Is the interior plastic as fragile as it looks? I have to admit that part of what I'm worried about with these cars is the ability to make them "nice" inside. I worry about the survivability/availability of interior pieces the most.
Jaynen said:I think the tail end of the c4 era with the square tail lights is one of my favorites
I used to feel the same way. The earlier C4s just looked outdated. Now I feel the opposite - early C4s look classic/vintage, while late C4s just don't seem to have aged as well...or maybe they just need to age a few more years.
Cones, was the PO(Tex) a gentlemen by the name of Denny Moody?
Unless the son's last name is different from the father's, this is a different car.
The interior of the C4 was updated significantly in '90 and further revised in '94. GM mounted a serious campaign in '94 to exorcise creaks and squeaks, the 84-89 cars being somewhat infamous for having rather pedestrian-grade plastics prone to doing what pedestrian plastics do.
The 1990 makeover was a big step up but the 1994 and 1995 changes in particular hushed the interior and made it feel nicer. Door panels were updated, most dash faceplates got a rubberized coating to prevent buzz, the dash pad went soft, and industrial hook-and-loop and new adhesives were used extensively to better secure panels throughout. The seats were resculpted to be more comfortable especially for larger frames and many trim pieces were mass-loaded to quell vibration
This car's shifter and AC/radio bezels had to be replaced. If the dulso coating is nicked it will start to peel and lift (see the pic of the AC vent coming out as an example). Someone had "refinished" these pieces with something, I never figured out what. It was textured and hard as a rock, it wouldn't strip or sand and looked unsightly. The shifter bezel is standard C4 and available repop for just over $100. Same with the AC/radio piece, with this caveat: the ZR-1 bezel is unique owing to the power key and is very hard to find, particularly for 94-95 cars. There were only a couple hundred cars sent down the line in those years and spares for this bezel with the correct finish are scarce. I passed on one at $700 and eventually located a NOS bezel for around $300. If mine hadn't been ruined I would have refinished it, sacrificing the silkscreen around the power key in the process. My backup plan was to buy a '90 bezel and coat it.
The C4 gets a lot of grief, mostly deserved, for the cheapish interior on early cars. Having owned 9 of them now I can say the later cars are really nice environments, especially the '94-96es. There is a *lot of weatherstrip on a C4 thanks to the targa roof. It is reproduced and affordable. Interior trim availability is very good. Most small pieces are still available new from Corvette specialists and nearly everything else can be sourced from a recycler thanks to large production numbers.
Ah, there were the big interior redesigns of the mid-'90s to accommodate passenger airbags. Cars with only a year or two left on the platform got all-new dashes. T-Birds and W-body GMs are like that.
Some notes on parts availability:
Early cars have interior trim that is prone to cracking around fasteners if overtightened. Most everything is available, check condition of takeoff pieces.
Seat upholstery is very available and ranges in price from affordable to moderately expensive depending on year and option. Replacement carpet is very available. Reproduction door panels can be a little expensive but available
Interior switches are available. Digital instrument clusters from 84-89 are available rebuilt, can be sent out to be rebuilt, or can be rebuilt at home, all affordably. Interior and exterior trim is mostly available. Chassis bits like bushings, wheel bearings and brakes are readily available
Oddball stuff and things that are harder to find:
Any ZR-1-specific body panels (rockers, doors, rear fenders, rear fascia, some body moldings) are thin on the ground. Expect to scratch around and buy them salvage. Just about every other ZR-1 part is available thanks to a robust owner community .
Hoods are NLA from GM and will have to be sourced from salvage or CL. If you need one plan to search out to 500 miles or so and pick it up yourself to save crating and shipping. Minor damage can be repaired with kitty hair but significant damage calls for a replacement.
Windshields are easy but rear hatch glass is harder to find and may need to be sourced from salvage.
If your 89-95 has FX3 selective ride control, actuators are NLA and will have to be sent out for rebuild. There is a specialist. Prices are, uh, bracing. You can delete the actuators if the fault light on the dash won't bother you. The FX3 shocks are available but expensive, running 250 or so per corner. If you buy a 96 with selective real-time damping, plan to convert to standard shocks. The technology works fine but the shocks are even more expensive than the FX3 variants.
Finally, some 89-96 cars have tire pressure monitors. The wheel hardware is NLA and can be damaged when dismounting tires. This is first-gen tech so each corner operates on a different frequency. It takes luck and patience to find the right one if needed.
AngryCorvair said:As Weasel used to call them on WHFS, "Jason Ringenberg and all his Nashville Scorchers!"
You can still catch him Fridays and Saturdays here - https://wtmd.org/radio/listen-wtmd/
There is a piece of trim in the door frame area called a door sill extension. It ties the "halo" area trim in the b-pillar to the door sill and is color-keyed to the interior. Ours was brittle after 23 years and cracked around the screw holes.
This piece is avaiable from the big Corvette vendors for around $70, unpainted. Add in primer and paint and the project seems sort of expensive for what you get, so we opened our web browser and got to clicking.
We went straight to car-part.com and poked around until we found a 94-96 salvage car with a decent red interior and gave the vendor a call. For about $20 plus shipping a pair of nice replacements was on its way.
Car-part is a network of salvage yards (sort of like LKQ) and open to the public. The UI isn't anything to write home about but most parts are graded and about half include photos. Each seller can decide whether to ship or not - your chances are pretty good for smaller items and less great for bulky ones. The resource is worth a try when you're willing to accept a takeoff part and offers a broader selection than any one yard anywhere.
We've written about interiors and how they improved over time. Here is an easy project that might banish a few creaks and (maybe, very lisghtly) cut down road noise. We added cotton batting to our door cards, which tightened up the fit nicely.
If you're a stickler for originality this may not be the project for you. Our door cards are tired and may get swapped in the future so we didn't mind breaking out the spray adhesive and sullying the out-of-sight-anyway backs.
Your tools for removing the cards are a crows-foot trim tool and a phillips screwdriver.
Start by removing the five retainers at the bottom edge of the panel. If you are like us and often remove interior trim at the pick-n-pull yard, the crow's foot will come to live in your tool bag.
Next, remove a screw in the center of the door handle bezel. Don't take your door pull cup off yet like we did, it will catch the bezel screws for you if you drop them.
Remove a screw hidden behind the door lock slide. To access it, pop the plastic cover off the slide. Our bezel is cracked in the lower left corner. Happily, we have a spare in our parts bin and will swap it in later on.
You can disconnect the courtesy light and power lock switch or tilt the bezel and slide it through its mounting hole, but this project requires you to disconnect the window and mirror controls. Watch out for the rear hatch release, which has a short pigtail that must be disconnected before you try to move the card to your work area.
We picked up batting and spray adhesive from Hobby Lobby, plus a pair of sharp scissors. Michaels or Walmart will also have what you need.
Spread the batting over your panel and cut it roughly to size. Don't worry about getting it perfect because you will keep trimming as you go.
We made a precise cut to establish the bottom edge of the panel, then added a strip of adhesive a few inches wide to minimize how much it moved around as we worked. Next we made cutouts for the wiring pigtails and the door handle bezel.
We sprayed more adhesive as we worked our way up the card and cut the batting to fit as we went.
The steps for removing the door card are the same for all years - there were 3 generations of panels, 84-89, 90-93 and 94-96 but the attachment points are all the same. The 84-93 cars will use screws along the lower edge of the panel in place of the plastic push-ins. Be aware THERE IS AN ADDITIONAL SCREW IN THE PASSENGER DOOR PANEL that is not on the driver side, and you will never find it - use a small flat screwdriver to gently pry off the courtesy light over the inside door release. There is a screw hidden behind the courtesy lamp on the PS that doesn't exist on the DS.
Our pics show a black closed cell foam panel between the door card and the water barrier. GM added this at some point to reduce sound transmission and they are available precut from the big Corvette vendors as a retrofit to the earlier cars. If you're feeling handy you can buy the material and cut to size yourself to save a buck.
The batting eliminated some annoying creaks from our door panels and, even if it doesn't help much, might better insulate our interior from outside temps. A quieter interior seems like a good thing in this case and we are happy with how the project turned out.
Our door project ended with an ill-fitting door, but not because of the cotton batting. Some of our 23-year old plastic was crumbling; specifically, the screw grommets in our door panel and interior handle surround cracked and broke thanks to thousands of heat cycles and the brittling effects of time.
The door pull cup was barely hanging on:
and the interior door handle trim was strictly slip-fit:
The solution was GM part number 1377030, long-discontinued by the General but readily available online. A seller on Amazon offers lots of 10, 20 and 30. For less than $9 including shipping, a lifetime supply arrived in our mailbox in a few days.
The door panel itself didn't have to come off. First we addressed the pull cup. The left grommet had departed the door frame and the right was split in two.
The new grommets snap into place with gentle pressure.
To access the grommet behind the release handle, just remove the small bezel gently with your fingers.
Just insert a new grommet, press the bezel back in place, replace the handle trim and snap the lock cover back on.
I'm working a retail job these days, which is slowing the pace of updates. I got called in on my day off a couple of times in late September/early October when the weather was nice, and it has rained on my day off for the last four Wednesdays. The next update should involve a fault message from the Selective Ride control system. There is also a mystery leak of hydraulic fluid to track down and a tire that spontaneously started to leak from the bead on the back side of the wheel. Also coming up is an experiment in refinishing part of the dash.
People blame age for these brittle '80s/'90s GM interior plastics and age is certainly not helping at all, but I can assure you that these plastics were almost as bad back then as well. I got my '87 IROC in 1995 with only 26k miles and the car clearly had been garaged. The plastics were already crumbly even then. I remember people talking about how poorly "these new car" interiors held up as compared to Old Muscle.
In reply to conesare2seconds :
You sullied the backside of some worn out trim. Good for you!
AngryCorvair said:In reply to conesare2seconds :
You sullied the backside of some worn out trim. Good for you!
Now that ain't right I tell ya
You'll need to log in to post.
