Are WAZOO Maintenance Days Still Happening?

[Axial]

Hello ZR-1 Net Registry and WAZOO members!

My name is Raymond, I'm in the northern Virginia area and I've been lurking for a long time. I have even met a few of you at various meets over the years (i.e. Katie's Cars & Coffee in Great Falls)!

I decided to finally hit the join button because I was curious if the WAZOO Maintenance Days are still a thing in COVID times (I am vaccinated) and if are you accepting newbies?

I've had a 1990 ZR-1 for about 7 years, No. 729. The car had a pretty colorful life before I bought it, in that previous owners (it has had several) have installed exhaust before hacking the OEM one back on, removed the FX3 suspension, had the car resprayed, and even used soap to try and quiet a squeaky accessory belt.

In the time I've had it, it has had about 10,000 miles driven (~75k total) and the following work done:

• Rebuilt harmonic damper
• Rebuilt accessory belt tensioner
• New fuel injectors
• New water pump
• New coolant hosing (mostly)
• New oil cooler lines
• New brake master cylinder
• Fixed leaky passenger-side exhaust stud
• Fixed leaky oil pressure sensor
• New exhaust (Billy Boat, the OEM one rusted and fell off mid-drive and wasn't worth saving)
• New coil-over suspension (VanSteel)
• New LED headlight conversion
• CHMSL bulb replacement
• Serviced headlight motor gearbox
• New alternator x4 (figured out the issue killing them earlier this past spring)
• New hatch struts
• Straightened out floor-pan (some PO had put a dent in it somehow, tilting the passenger seat to the left)
• Re-sprayed rear bumper (car got a love-tap from behind)

I got the car when I was 23, and it was sort of a joint project car between my dad and myself, but I'll fess up and say that, while I bought all the stuff, dad did the heavy lifting on the labor; the work I've done involves all the lighting and related elements and the hatch and the endless joy of scraping sticky plenum gaskets off bit by tiny bit. I have some additional outstanding issues, but I would like to respect my old man's time and take full responsibility for this car's well-being and a maintenance day with people experienced in working on these cars would be a real confidence-booster and I have a shiny new 203-piece toolset that needs christening (and I'm sure will need expanding). The issues I'm looking at are:

1. Broken HVAC - in 2018, the head unit went non-responsive, dashes in the display, blows hot all the time through the defogger. Reading old threads around here, and having the shop that did the coil-overs try a functioning head unit from another ZR-1, all signs are pointing to a failed HVAC programmer. I bought the Batee rebuild kit, but have been procrastinating tearing apart the dash to get at it because I only just got the car back last October from spending a year in aforementioned shop. I have seen Batee's video on the subject.

2. Vacuum leak under the plenum; tested this afternoon following the handy dandy guide on this site. When driving, under heavy throttle, it feels like the secondaries are opening then closing intermittently. Plenum-side test with vacuum pump showed a very slow drop, about 1 in. Hg over 15 seconds; pump-side test showed no movement and the pump comes on as expected. This is a fairly recent development, it hasn't always been like this. Possibly related to HVAC issue?

3. More fluid leaks - the car still seems to be dripping from somewhere (not nearly as bad as it used to be). There's also another more or less clear fluid that seems to be escaping, notably when the car is tilted backward when jacked up on the front end; maybe clutch? Gear oil?

4. Wobbly steering wheel - usual downward right-to-left wobble common to C4s but bad enough that it will fail the next state inspection; seems a relatively straight-forward fix as long as it's just replacing the pin with an oversized one.

Cheers all, thanks for reading!

[secondchance]

Hey Raymond,

There is a get together at Dimitrios?s.
I?m not sure if I can make it since my younger son may be coming by.
Call Charlie at 443 745 0349 or me at 703 980 8814.

[Erik]

How about we hold the next Wazoo meet in Canada? New Brunswick is just over the border from Maine. Not that far away!

I have a 30x40 garage, and a huge lot for a ton of cars. Fresh lobster will be served.

[Erik]

Originally Posted by Axial

Hello ZR-1 Net Registry and WAZOO members!

My name is Raymond, I'm in the northern Virginia area and I've been lurking for a long time. I have even met a few of you at various meets over the years (i.e. Katie's Cars & Coffee in Great Falls)!

I decided to finally hit the join button because I was curious if the WAZOO Maintenance Days are still a thing in COVID times (I am vaccinated) and if are you accepting newbies?

I've had a 1990 ZR-1 for about 7 years, No. 729. The car had a pretty colorful life before I bought it, in that previous owners (it has had several) have installed exhaust before hacking the OEM one back on, removed the FX3 suspension, had the car resprayed, and even used soap to try and quiet a squeaky accessory belt.

In the time I've had it, it has had about 10,000 miles driven (~75k total) and the following work done:

• Rebuilt harmonic damper
• Rebuilt accessory belt tensioner
• New fuel injectors
• New water pump
• New coolant hosing (mostly)
• New oil cooler lines
• New brake master cylinder
• Fixed leaky passenger-side exhaust stud
• Fixed leaky oil pressure sensor
• New exhaust (Billy Boat, the OEM one rusted and fell off mid-drive and wasn't worth saving)
• New coil-over suspension (VanSteel)
• New LED headlight conversion
• CHMSL bulb replacement
• Serviced headlight motor gearbox
• New alternator x4 (figured out the issue killing them earlier this past spring)
• New hatch struts
• Straightened out floor-pan (some PO had put a dent in it somehow, tilting the passenger seat to the left)
• Re-sprayed rear bumper (car got a love-tap from behind)

I got the car when I was 23, and it was sort of a joint project car between my dad and myself, but I'll fess up and say that, while I bought all the stuff, dad did the heavy lifting on the labor; the work I've done involves all the lighting and related elements and the hatch and the endless joy of scraping sticky plenum gaskets off bit by tiny bit. I have some additional outstanding issues, but I would like to respect my old man's time and take full responsibility for this car's well-being and a maintenance day with people experienced in working on these cars would be a real confidence-booster and I have a shiny new 203-piece toolset that needs christening (and I'm sure will need expanding). The issues I'm looking at are:

1. Broken HVAC - in 2018, the head unit went non-responsive, dashes in the display, blows hot all the time through the defogger. Reading old threads around here, and having the shop that did the coil-overs try a functioning head unit from another ZR-1, all signs are pointing to a failed HVAC programmer. I bought the Batee rebuild kit, but have been procrastinating tearing apart the dash to get at it because I only just got the car back last October from spending a year in aforementioned shop. I have seen Batee's video on the subject.

2. Vacuum leak under the plenum; tested this afternoon following the handy dandy guide on this site. When driving, under heavy throttle, it feels like the secondaries are opening then closing intermittently. Plenum-side test with vacuum pump showed a very slow drop, about 1 in. Hg over 15 seconds; pump-side test showed no movement and the pump comes on as expected. This is a fairly recent development, it hasn't always been like this. Possibly related to HVAC issue?

3. More fluid leaks - the car still seems to be dripping from somewhere (not nearly as bad as it used to be). There's also another more or less clear fluid that seems to be escaping, notably when the car is tilted backward when jacked up on the front end; maybe clutch? Gear oil?

4. Wobbly steering wheel - usual downward right-to-left wobble common to C4s but bad enough that it will fail the next state inspection; seems a relatively straight-forward fix as long as it's just replacing the pin with an oversized one.

Cheers all, thanks for reading!

So, what was wiping out the alternators?

[Axial]

Originally Posted by secondchance

Hey Raymond,

There is a get together at Dimitrios?s at 1799 Brookshire Ct, Finksburg, MD.
I?m not sure if I can make it since my younger son may be coming by.
Call Charlie at 443 745 0349 if lost.

Sounds good, thanks! On what date? Saturday (7 AUG 21)? Sunday (8 AUG 21)? Next weekend?

Is there a formal schedule?

Originally Posted by Erik

So, what was wiping out the alternators?

Two things:

1. Not realizing that each replacement alternator had a different pulley size from OEM and thus needed the appropriate belt; a very rookie mistake. Wrong size belt = more stress (electrical or mechanical, depending on too loose vs. too tight); most of my belts were apparently too loose, but I lacked sufficient experience with the car to make that call on the spot when I put the belt on and not realizing that what I thought was a pair of standard parts would have this sort of variance meant I never asked the question. Basically, never trust website claims that such and such part fits your vehicle. Verify on the forums (or, in this case, Jerry's store's item descriptions).

2. After figuring the pulley out, the next issue was the fact that the replacement alternators have pulley shafts that are too short, meaning the pulley was too close to the face of the engine and the belt bath is misaligned. Once you have the alternator installed with the correct size belt, the lack of slack means the engine tries and succeeds to yank it off the rear lip of the water pump pulley when it turns over. The air horn will keep it in place, but it will wear quickly and put mechanical stress on the system. We had the air horn off when the latest alternator (an AC Delco reman, no less) was installed and tested, thus the problem was immediately made evident. The issue was fixed by removing the bracket that doesn't seem to do much supporting of anything and applying some spacers to push the whole alternator assembly outward by about 4 mm; I don't know if there is an OEM part that performs this function, but what I have now seems to work and the belt path stays true.

TL;DR: newbie errors = dead alternators. I will say, though, that one of those 4 alternators was, in hindsight, a visibly incorrect part put on by a shop in the region that advertises being familiar with C4s, and the ZR-1 in particular, and definitely should have known better than to go with it. Unless I'm throwing in the towel and shipping the car to Haibeck, I'm not ever sending it to a shop again.

[secondchance]

It?s on Saturday, 8/7/21.

[dredgeguy]

Hi Raymond and welcome to the group. Wazoo has an open door policy for all ZR-1 owners and we would be delighted to meet you and your car. We normally get together at Jim's place (QB93Z) in Westminster, MD but today we are traveling to another member's home as his car is apart and we will get it back together for Carlisle. No doubt we will have another regular maintenance day in Westminster before Carlisle at the end of this month. Hope to meet you then or at least at Carlisle. Make sure you register and put your club as ZR-1 Net Registry. We will have a tent and parking area on the infield and I will be serving pulled pork BBQ. Many of us are staying up at Boomerangs and we have some rooms still left.

[Axial]

Originally Posted by dredgeguy

Hi Raymond and welcome to the group. Wazoo has an open door policy for all ZR-1 owners and we would be delighted to meet you and your car. We normally get together at Jim's place (QB93Z) in Westminster, MD but today we are traveling to another member's home as his car is apart and we will get it back together for Carlisle. No doubt we will have another regular maintenance day in Westminster before Carlisle at the end of this month. Hope to meet you then or at least at Carlisle. Make sure you register and put your club as ZR-1 Net Registry. We will have a tent and parking area on the infield and I will be serving pulled pork BBQ. Many of us are staying up at Boomerangs and we have some rooms still left.

Hi Charlie, thank you for the welcome and the information. What times do Maintenance Days typically run between? I was not expecting today to be the next event, ha! Wish I could join in, but I'm still getting my house back in order after 6 weeks on business travel. The grass and gutters beckon!

I've never been to Corvettes at Carlisle before but I've been meaning to change that. No time like the present, it's been a year of many firsts already! If I were to buy tickets, do I just need the Fun Field ticket?

Sorry to pepper with questions!

[Arctic91]

Charlie, Yun, the 21st sounds like a great date for a maintenance day! I may need to bug out early that day to go to a mandatory work social, but I should be there from start to mid-day and looking forward to seeing everyone again. Most likely, I'll bring the guy who is interested in creating ZR-1 and Callaway podcasts along (his name is Jim, by the way) so he can meet the group and kick around some ideas. I didn't know about the plan to give someone's car some TLC today, otherwise I could have chipped in!

Raymond, Yes... for Carlisle registration, go to: https://store.carlisleevents.com/Sea...lts.asp?Cat=29

Sign up for the Fun Field pass, and indicate that you are going as a member of the ZR-1 Net Registry when you get to that pull-down menu (that will get you assigned parking the right area). There are details and contact info for Boomarang posted in the General section of the forum, if you need to set up lodging.

After many years of ownership, this is the first year that I've had a real chance to attend Carlisle, so I'm super excited about finally going. I look forward to meeting you and hope that you can join the group on the 21st. There is no doubt in my mind that you'll be able to maintain and improve your car with the knowledge and willingness to help that resides within this group - you're definitely in the right place to learn about and care for your ZR-1.


Scott

[dredgeguy]

Raymond and Scott, our get together today was an unofficial maintenance day just trying to get Dimitri's car together for Carlisle. It was very last minute. I spoke to Jim and looks like the schedule is full so we will not be having a maintenance day before Carlisle. I sure look forward to meeting everybody at Carlisle and my sticker came in the mail yesterday. We will have our ZR-1 Net Registry tent plus another smaller tent where we can do some repairs if anybody has any issues. Last year it was a water pump replacement in the grass!
Scott, maybe your buddy for the podcasts can come and meet with us at Carlisle or after the show at Boomerangs for dinner/drinks? If not sure we will have a regular scheduled maintenance day before the Mountain Run end of September.