The Grand Sport. Part 2: The experience.

[Monochrome]

Go with the bronze.

[ChargerX3]

[quote=""Duck Vader""]Guess I'm in the minority like always. Lol[/quote]

You’re not alone.

[alienviking]

Still not super feeling it.. but not my car

[tabasco122]

bronze and the paint color look good. bronze and the blue look good. not feeling the combo of all 3

[Jeff V.]

I decided to install my exhaust and CF spoiler this weekend. As usual, it's taking three times longer than I expected.

The exhaust stuff actually went fairly well. The new parts are on, and all I need to do is tighten them up and reinstall the tunnel plate.





The spoiler is what's taking all the time. I decided to fix the scratches myself. It had a handful of scuffs and one pretty deep scratch on the upper passenger side.





I wet sanded it with 1000, 1500, 2000 and 2500 grit. Then compounded and polished. All by hand. The one scratch was so deep I actually left a slight divot in the resin before I got it out.

I finally got it to where I'm mostly happy with it. It's still got some super fine scratches, but I don't think I'm going to get it any better without a power tool. It looks pretty good in direct sunlight, so I think I'm going to leave it alone for now.



While I was disassembling the bumper, I noticed one of the inner reinforcement brackets was starting to separate. I don't know if I did it, or the last guy did it when he had it off to install the Z06 taillights. So now I need to figure out how to fix that before it goes back on the car.

[ChargerX3]

That scratch came out good. I probably would have just taken a polishing wheel with a light compound to it. I can respect a good wetsand though.

Is the plastic separating? I've heard some good things about these guns. I just bought one over prime day.

[Jeff V.]

It's this big flat one here. It's right under the third brake light, behind the flag badge.



Looking at it some more, I don't think it even holds the bumper to the car. It mostly supports the third brake light. It looks like one side wasn't even attached from the factory. All the fuzzy melted plastic is missing.

I'll throw some epoxy on it since it's apart, but it's probably not as big a deal as I thought it was yesterday.

That plastic welder looks pretty cool. It could come in handy in the future.

[vr4]

I need that plastic welder

[aaronatstate]

https://www.harborfreight.com/75-amp-6- ... 56367.html

I got this and polished my Stealth and RS with it. Worked really well, and wasn't like $400 like a Rupes. I did swap the grease out for some Lucas White Lithium grease though.

[ChargerX3]

[quote=""vr4""]I need that plastic welder[/quote]

What i picked up. You want 100w.

https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-Welding- ... spons&th=1

[aaronatstate]

I texted Jeff earlier, but I saw a Grand Sport Collectors Edition today at lunch. Random in the town I work as it only has 15,000 people. It was most likely driving through though.

[Jeff V.]

Well fuck.

I was having a nice evening. Put some epoxy on the bumper parts. Tightened up the exhaust pipes. Fired it up and got to hear that sweet Slovenian titanium rasp again.

Then I went to put the tunnel closeout plate back on. And promptly stripped one of the rivnuts clean out of the frame.

They only get tightened to 18 ft-lbs. Either this got screwed up at the plant, or someone has had this thing off before and over tightened a couple of them. There were two others that looked like they had been pulled part way out as well.

So now I need to buy a big riv nut tool, and hope there's enough room under the car to work the damn thing.

[aaronatstate]

That sucks!

One like this should work though under the car

https://www.harborfreight.com/45-piece- ... _ZEALw_wcB

[ChargerX3]

That’s…sucks.

[Jeff V.]

I'm freaking the fuck out right now.

For anyone who's never seen the bottom of a C5, C6 or C7 Corvette, this is what I'm working with.



There 22 small bolts, and 2 big ones. I'm up to 6 of the small ones being compromised. The original nuts were basically normal flat sided nuts that were pressed or bonded into the aluminum frame flange. So when they pulled out, they left a hex shaped hole.

The holes in the tunnel plate are significantly bigger than the actual bolt holes, probably to allow for expansion or manufacturing tolerances. It's not so much that the nuts were spun out, but they were over tightened and drawn out through the cover plate.

I went through last night and replaced them all with rivnuts. But since the holes were hex shaped, I don't know there's enough material for the rivnut splines to grab on to. So I reinforced each hole with JB Weld. It sounds like a shitty hack. And it is. But I'm desperate and I don't know what else I could do.

I don't know what I'm going to do if this doesn't work. I can buy the replacement flanges fairly cheap, but they're integrated so deep into the frame it would be nearly impossible to replace them.

We'll see tonight, I guess. hnoes:

[Jeff V.]

This gives you an idea of how early in the frame construction process these flanges are added.

[DCIV]

So you couldn’t just add a washer around it before you used a rivots to squeeze down hold it there?


Coop

[mjannusch]

What'd the previous owner use on those bolts, an impact gun set to "kill"? Jeez.

I'd think your solution should work.

[Jeff V.]

I can't access the back of the holes to slide a washer in there. It's just as likely the rivnut would grab the washer instead of the frame flange and end up spinning anyway.

There was no sign the exhaust had ever been apart, so I don't know why the tunnel plate would have been off.

There's a few other people on the forum who have had this problem, so it doesn't seem that hard to do even when you're careful. I didn't pull any out when I had the plate off my Stingray both times, but I did have one bolt that I thought might have been starting to go. It was real touchy about getting to its final torque.

[vr4]

I think you'll be fine.

As shitty as it is thinking about it but you're really not driving the car at 10/10.