Five things a C3 Corvette owner should never do
Video Transcript [Music] hello everybody and welcome to c&s core events and lyles friday podcast it has been one crazy week in one crazy year but i'm going to continue on with my series of the five things never to do as a corvette owner i've covered c5s and c6s at this point i'm sorry c4s and c5s i have been asked repeatedly to now cover c3s and c6s which i will be doing today first video of today is going to be the five things never to do as a c3 corvette owner number one as with the c4s and the c5s never ever put your tops and of course on c3 2 not one on the car without latching them down now in theory you should never be able to drive that car with the tops on it but not latched because the latches hang right here in your v in your vision but they still fly off they still end up going airborne hitting people's windshields we still lose a bunch of them every year so make sure you build the habit of always latching the tops when you put it on the car no matter what else is happening do that before you do anything else number two do not ignore vacuum issues now your headlight system up and down works off of engine vacuum so does all of the shuffling of the air direction behind your dash for your ac and your heat that is all engine vacuum that moves all those things opens doors closes doors opens closes headlights all of that right most of these cars unless they've had their vacuum systems gone through in the last few years have at least one vacuum leak you know they open their headlights and one's like and the others like you get the idea vacuum leaks are a problem not only because they call you lose functionality on the headlights and the ac and the other things it's bad for your engine guys because the longer you let a vacuum leak go and the worse that vacuum leak gets you're starting to make your engine run lean meaning that it is getting more air than it needs for the fuel that it's metering through the carburetor and what's going to happen is long term you can burn a valve you can burn a piston or you can kill your engine don't let vacuum problems linger even if you're not concerned about fixing the headlight problem even if you're not concerned about ac you have to make sure that you aren't leaking vacuum anywhere never ever forget that number three on both doors obviously you have side glass either roll up or power window right okay those are adjustable not only adjustable this way they're adjustable this way what i see so often is especially as cars get older or somebody's been in there working on it and hasn't tightened everything down you'll see the the rear trailing top edge of like let's say the driver's door glass right comes back and it goes down right at that corner the glass has shifted backward just enough to where when you close your door that back corner is catching either the roll bar the b pillar above you and just just nicking it like this every time you close your door or it can be hitting the fabric or even the metal of your soft folding soft top assembly if your car is so equipped here's the problem with that not only that minimum you're going to nick the paint on your b-pillar at maximum one day you're going to close that door and you're going to end up with a bunch of really shiny sand that used to be your door glass so if your windows are out of adjustment don't let it go make sure that you never ignore that also obviously water intrusion plays into that too especially if you have the older cars where the seat belt retractors are tucked under the seats man if your weather strip isn't good or if your windows aren't adjusted correctly and you're getting water in that car those are just going to become two large lumps of rust and seat belts are not cheap so keep that in mind number four when you replace your battery or you're inspecting your battery cables okay it's always great to check both ends but people tend to forget the negative battery connection on the frame under the battery box and kind of up right behind where the driver's lower back would be in the car this is under the car you cannot see it from in the car that gets corroded that will kill batteries that will cause draws that will cause all kinds of problems and because people can't readily see it they forget about it so you always want to keep that particular ground clean and you want to monitor the cable's health because if you see that cable start to swell and get bigger that means it's full of corrosion and is not conducting electricity as it should so never forget to keep an eye on that finally especially on the rears on a c3 don't ever ignore wheel bearing noise if you've ever had a wheel bearing start to go bad on you you can hear that wow that kind of growling behind you okay particularly on the rears of a c3 you don't want to let that go too far because as that wheel bearing starts to give up and is no longer spinning smoothly and concentrically it starts to build heat and one of two things is going to happen either that wheel bearing is going to catch fire which we just had a 79 corvette about a month ago where that happened ignored the sound long enough woof and now his fenders burned all kinds of stuff insurance long term money blah blah blah above and beyond that spindle catching fire because of the wheel bearing that wheel bearing can cut through the spindle now let me explain how that occurs so your bearing gets hot it starts oscillating and now that spindle is doing this in that bearing and just like a wire saw over time it's going to cut through that and one day you're going to be driving make a nice hard left in a good performance turn your car is going to go this way and your right rear wheel is going to keep going that way you will actually see it rolling past your car as you start to spin so that is incredibly dangerous because you know if you're lucky enough to have a median maybe you survive if you're on a two-way road and you start to spin that doesn't look good at all so if you start hearing that growling from the rear of your car have it looked at immediately so it doesn't cost you a lot of money or even your life in the long run there we have it folks the five things you never want to do as a c3 corvette owner let me know what your comments are uh make sure to like and subscribe so we can keep bringing you this kind of cool content if you have other things to add or you have questions feel free to give me a call at 800-886-5064 thank you for watching we'll see you next week [Music] you