C5 & C6 Corvette Values
Transcript. [Music] [Applause] [Music] everybody welcome back to Lyles Friday Corvette podcast I want to talk to you today about something that's happening in the Corvette market that is always a very important point in a car's lifetime specifically I'm talking about the c5 and the c6 and how the values on those cars are coming down steadily okay what happens is you end up with cars that two years ago where $15,000 cars are now bringing seven eight nine thousand dollar cars in the c5 and like $21,000 on the c6 is now bringing in fourteen okay so let's talk see five specifically what you end up with is you end up with cars that you could have a part right next to each other one is $7,500 with a hundred thousand miles the other one is $10,000 with a hundred thousand miles same colors same everything so how do you know which to buy well price isn't always indicative of value and some of the things we're going to talk about today are the things that you need to look at between two cars like that to see if you are really getting the value that you think you're getting there are a lot of things that these cars need with age and with mileage that if they haven't been addressed can make that $7,500 car an $11,000 car that fast so these are things I want you to be aware of when you go look at these cars okay so we've got the as you've seen me do videos before we've got the torque tube which is the solid tube running from the back of the motor to the front of the transmission that in cases that spinning driveshaft on a set of three bearings two rubber couplers at each end if that is going bad if that is making a little little noise or you can hear squeaking from the bearings you know that's gonna have to be done in order to do that you have to drop the rear suspension pull that out pull the transmission the differential out pull the torque tube out now you're looking at the back of the motor it's a stick shift car you're gonna do a clutch because you're in there anyway that can easily add 15 $1,800 to the value of a car immediately some of the other things I want you to look for are the wheel bearings on the car each one of those even using the inexpensive aftermarket stuff is about 250 bucks times four that gets pretty expensive the also the ABS this ties in with the wheel bearings the ABS enacted handling systems they get readings from a bunch of different sensors around the car and there is a sensor in each of those wheel hub assemblies telling it wheel speed so if one of those is acting up it can also affect your ABS system and ABS systems especially on the 97 to mid 2000 c5s are particularly cantankerous and very very expensive to repair because the EB cm or the electronic brain of that system hasn't been available for well over 10 years and certain codes on that unit aren't even rebuildable you literally have to throw it away and hopefully go find another one you don't want to be in that position because just that module alone will bring anywhere from fifteen to eighteen hundred dollars that's a lot of money to solve one tiny problem when you look at a car you want to look at the condition of the coolant in the radiator you want to see if that is nice and red and crisp or if it's brown and stinky the plastic tanks on the side of the c5 and c6 radiator especially at the driver's side upper tank we've seen a lot of failure of those I did three radiators in one week here at the shop all failed in the same place from what we can ascertain it's a fault in the mold that they used to make those plastic tanks because they always break in the same place so if that radiator hasn't been replaced in the last few years you probably need to factor that into your decision making another thing you need to look at as well is the oil pressure sender unit that's located at the very back of the intake manifold if you get in the car and the oil pressure gauge is pegged at 80 you need an oil pressure center there are ways to do that job without removing the intake manifold but they in draw they involve drilling really really large holes in places that were never meant to holls so figure on pulling the intake manifold doing a new set of intake manifold gaskets and replacing that sensor if it's leaking or if that gauge is pegged another thing I want to talk to you about tires I talked about this a couple of weeks ago but I want to really stress the fact that you need to look at the dates on tires on cars you're looking at buying anything over six years old I would be very very wary of a good example let me show you how to read that date so you know what you're looking for now if you look at this tire down here okay you'll see right here near the rim there's this little bubble and it says JKL four six one five the way you read that is all you worry about are the four numbers so that is the forty sixth week of 2015 that this tire was manufactured again four digits first two digits of the week last two digits of the year if it is anything over six years old in your mind definitely deduct the valve from the value of the car because you know you're gonna have to do tires sooner rather than later even if they're knee-deep and tread the rubbers getting old and rubber doesn't last like it used to in the 60s and 70s that stuff dry rots and starts going bad pretty quickly these days while you're looking at that if you can get the car up in the air make oh sure to take a look at the power steering rack the power steering racks in those cars don't usually fail what they do do is they begin to leak and it starts as a tiny seep and then it becomes a drip and then it becomes a giant red puddle on your garage floor the difficulty in those is not replacing them it is locating them to replace them there are only a couple of rebuilders who redo those steering racks and most of them are having a hard time finding rebuildable cores so their supply tends to be very very low i always keep at least two or three of everything steering rack wise on the shelf because i know if i have a customer who needs one i don't want them to wait 30 days while i go locate one in California or Botswana or wherever I find it so look at that rack if you start seeing leakage out at the ends where those kind of accordion looking rubber boots are know that you're probably going to have to do a steering rack and that you're probably gonna have to go on quite a search to find one that's got a good guarantee on it another caution point if you're looking at a car and it has chrome wheels make sure to look at the inside of the wheel because if you start seeing that chrome flake up if you start seeing bubbles in the chrome you know that that Chrome it's once that gets a nick in a chrome wheel it's like cancer that corrosion starts under that chrome and it bubbles up and it flakes off and it just grows and grows and grows until your wheel looks completely gross that's why GM as original equipment did polished aluminum wheels rather than chrome-plated wheels in the c5 and the c6 because chrome is so easily disturbed and so easily ruined if it has chrome wheels and you see that starting to flake off put that into your account when you're thinking about what you're gonna offer on the car specifically on a c5 you want to look at the if it's a convertible especially look at the rear window glass convertible soft tops on c5 Corvettes are famous for the bond the glue that holds that rear glass into that soft top failing and the window just flops in into the car now there's lots of different people on YouTube who will tell you to use this glue or that glue or how to fix it and because tops are expensive everybody tries to fix it themselves when they do you can almost always see a little bit of glue residue around where the fabric meets the glass if you see that you know that that is probably not going to be very long for the world those repairs tend to last a year maybe two and then they to fail and you have a glass flap back into your interior again so word of the wise think about that on the c6 is if you look at the headlights and they are hazy okay that's what we call crazing it looks like um it looks frosty almost it's just millions and millions of these little cracks as that plastic dries out similar what happens on the convertible the removable roof panels they get hazy with all these cracks now on a removable roof panel that isn't such a bad thing on a headlight lens the hazy ER it gets the less light is actually projecting through the lens and getting out into the street where you need to see it so you don't kill somebody if you see that haze real bad on those covers the covers and the job of removing those headlights from your car putting them in an oven baking them to 350 cutting the lenses off putting new lenses on and putting back in the car is going to run you somewhere between twelve and sixteen hundred dollars there is no easy fix for that it's not something here to be able to buff out if those are crazy count that into what you're going to spend on the car because it's something you're gonna have to do very very soon so just a few tips for you to think about when you're looking at two cars that are very similar that can make them look very different from a certain perspective if you know what you're looking for and my job is to tell you what to look for in the meantime I hope you have a great weekend make sure to LIKE and subscribe to me down here so I can continue to bring you these informational videos if you have questions or comments you can always find me at Lyle at Corvette parts center.com or give me a call at 800-866-5064