General Comments:
This car is awesome in every respect. Superb road adhesion, steering feel, and acceleration. The traction control will not allow much tire slippage, but if you are judicious in throttle application, you can bark the tires in the first four gears without the traction control taking over. Traction control can be turned off, but tires will probably not last long. Besides smoking tires are not as much fun as being slammed into the seats.
The seats could be better if they had tighter side supports. The car is capable of a considerable lateral G, which makes you want for a more planted seat position. The Ferrari 355 holds you very well whereas the Corvette will allow your torso to slide in the seat a bit.
The paint quality is great for a production car, but still cannot be compared to more expensive cars such as Ferrari or top shelf custom street rods.
The radio/cd is pretty much unused. The engine note is a beautiful orchestra that just fills the soul with joy and the veins with adrenaline. When the car is new the exhaust sounds weak. It eventually breaks in and sounds much better.
This car has awesome fuel economy. I have seen as much as 33mpg with the right speed and gear. The low weight from titanium/magnesium exhaust, low-mass battery, glass, wheels, and reduced sound padding helps on acceleration and fuel economy.
This car is very fast and you cover a lot of ground every second. If you want to find this cars limit you'll need a lot of open road free from other motorists to be safe. This car will also brake much much more rapidly that most other street cars. If you stop too fast the fellow behind you will probably not stop soon enough.
Gripes:
The rims are hard to clean completely. A small toothbrush is great for the brake calipers and a foam wash pad cut in half to pass around the inner ring of the rim.
1-4 shift lockout. The EPA mandated that a shift lock engage from between certain RPMs in first gear so that you are forced to shift from 1st to 4th. This will catch you just past 2000rpm when you are trying to go a little faster with out "getting on it". Most of the time you will shift around 1800rpm.. Sounds low, but the motor has plenty of torque for it with out bogging.
Hope this helps ya folks.
1st Jan 2005, 18:07
Love my Z06, too! Solid lifters?? I think you need to revisit the basic LS-6 engine design school. If you have valve ticking there could be a problem. Running synthetic, I hope? Should be Mobil One (or equivalent) 5W-30.
Solid lifters are not in any modern engines. If they were you would be resetting them every 6,000 miles. Pretty amazing how the engineers can get that much power out of 350 cubic inches. The current C-6 Corvette has the 6.0 liter engine (about 375 cubic inches) and is making almost as much HP as the LS-6 engine in the Z06. The new Z06 will push 500HP or more!
I get 23mpg around town and 27+ on the road; and I am not a lead-foot or light-foot! Have fun! Terry.