The Corvette Fiasco Part 2 - The Fun Begins

Just a couple weeks of having the Corvette in my possesion the fun began. Not just the sheer joy of owning my dream car, but the maintenance.

I knew full well buying a vette was an expensive purchase, and expected the maintenance to be on the high side, a the time I just didnt care. I was making a shit ton of money and was young and stupid.

The maintenance woes started with a low tire warning on the Corvette's display. I pulled into a tire dealership and discovered that I had taken a shard of metal to the driver's side rear tire. I was told on that the tire shop couldn't help me, they did not have the equipment to lift my car. In order to safely lift a vette, you have to lift all four tires at once with all the doors, hood, and hatch opened. the car's unibody flexes, and will pop off the frame. This tire shop did not have this lift system installed. They also informed me that it was against the law to put a plug in the tire, because it was a Z rated tire (high performance tire). I spoke to the manager, they agreed to plug it so I could get to work and call a tow truck.

Needless to say I did not call the tow truck, I called and spoke to the Chevy dealership. They confirmed the Z Rated story and suggested I replace the tire immediately, but warned me that 1 new tire on the rear would lead to big problems, since rotating tires on the vette is not possible. The rear tires are 18" and the fronts are 17", they are directional tires, so you cant even switch sides. So I started the search for 2 new rear tires.

I found them at a very common major tire dealership, and fortunately they could lift my car properly. I took the car in bought 2 tires and paid over $1,000 after taxes. See apparently at the time the tires were $500 each. The good thing is when I bought the car I bought a tire road hazzard warranty because they offered it after realizing that they were not supposed to offer it on corvette purchases. Needless to say I was rembursed for the first tire, having to pay for the other. It paid for the warranty bigtime (I paid $75 for the warranty)

While I was getting them installed I was talking to an owner of a Geo Metro (I used to have a Suzuki Swift) he mentioned that the cost of 1 of my tires was still more than all 4 of his. We chuckled had a good laugh, he was poking fun at me for being so impracticle.

After fighting back and forth to get the balancing done right, you dont put wheel weights on the outside of a vette rims it causes unsightly scratches on expensive ass rims. You have to use the inner wheel sticky weights, and when you dont get the balancing done right the car will shake apart at 75mph. Anyhow, after the balancing was done, I started getting tire sensor error messages on the display.

I ended up taking to car the chevy, after reading on the internet that the problem was caused by a malfunctioning tire sensor. The corvette introduced a new technology to the car industry that has since become standard on at least all GM owned car lines. At this introducment, hardly any tire techs knew how the system worked. Basically the tire tech pooched the sensors on the car.

You can't remove a tire for more than about 20 ft from the car, and you surely can't take all four tires away from the car to be balanced. When you do the car "forgets" the RFID tag on the sensors, causing the car to not properly display the tire pressure. Who would have known heheh.

Chevy fixed the issue, it was under warranty, no big deal.

Oh BTW if you buy the flagship vehicle from a chevy dealership they treat you like gold, maybe it was because i didn't haggle with them and they knew they'd make alot of money from me, but I dont know, because all the chevy dealships I visited always treated me that way, well until the C6 came out. The tire visit warranted me lunch with the dealerships management back in their offices, we had a good time.