Tag Archives: corvette

Avoid Online Fraud

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I don’t know why people browse for stuff they already own. Maybe it’s some kind of comparison-based compulsion. Anyway, not the point.

I see a lot of car fraud while I’m browsing, so I thought I’d point out some telltale signs (and this can apply to any online shopping). Sometimes it’s easy to spot, sometimes it’s harder. Here’s a quick example:

Here are some issues that you might notice right away:
• The listing says the car is a coupe. The picture shows a Z06 and no one listing a Z06 would forget to mention that.
• The location of the item is Los Angeles, California (KSL is mostly local stuff).
• The seller’s account was created in November (in other words, it’s brand new)
• The ad has been online for less than 24 hours (which KSL is helpful enough to point out).

Your radar might already be going off if you know what a good deal the car appears to be. If you took the time to Blue Book this Corvette you’d find this:

Not just a good deal, this car would be an amazing deal. We’ve all heard about that unhappy wife who sold her husband’s Lamborghini for a buck. That’s the kind of score we all dream about. But chances are that’s an urban legend. If you sport a deal that’s too good to be true then it probably is.

And of course the biggest tip off is the Carfax report which shows that the VIN is invalid:

All these things together make me pretty certain that this ad is fraud (I reported it to KSL, but so far the ad is still online), but someone else may not realize this. Let’s say this someone decided to call and talk to the seller. I think they’d find a few more suspicious things:

Chances are the car is not sold (if this was real that car would be long gone). You’re probably local so you can’t really look at it but if you said you wanted to come see it I’ll bet they wouldn’t let you. But really the most tell tale sign that this is fraud would be if they insist you send them a cashier’s check or wire payment for the car (or deposit). That’s a no-no. Once you do that you’re money is gone. Unrecoverable. You lose.

This is a car to stay away from, as is any car with similar signs of fraud. As much as I hope no one falls for this ad I bet someone, somewhere, will.

If you’re car shopping then buying locally is nice because you can actually go see the car for sale. If your’e shopping online eBay is a good bet. There is still some fraud, but they verify VIN numbers, offer car reports and you have the benefit of looking at seller feedback.

A car is a big important purchase, but the same rules still apply to other kind of products. Just last month I placed an order for some posters. The company didn’t seem shady, but I never got my products or even an email reply to my many order inquiries. In the end I had to dispute the charge. This is another good reminder to use some form of payment that protects the buyer in case there is a problem.

Stick with places you trust. Take my company for example- people know they can trust us. When you order from Blade HQ you get what you pay for and if there’s an issue we’ll take care of you. I’m not just tooting my own horn. We talk to people every day who’ve been burned by some fly by night operation. Me? I shop at Amazon because I know – for the most part- I can trust them. There is something to be said for feeling safe when you make a purchase.

 

Corvette: First Drive

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I picked up my car from Premier today and drove it back to Lehi. Right now the car has a fairly rough base tune. The idle is set high (about 950) and it’s running with zero degrees of timing (there is an issue with the knock sensors being too sensitive).

Noise: I thought the exhaust drone was loud before, but now it’s nearly unbearable on the freeway. I’m going to have to explore a new exhaust system and some sound proofing on the car’s interior (if needed). Don’t get me wrong- the car sounds amazing, but it may just be too much.

Clutch: The pedal feels a little loose when it’s disengaged (up, down and side to side play). Once it’s pressed it actually feel really good. Getting the car moving initially does seem to be an issue (aluminum flywheel), but I think that can be overcome with some practice. The clutch is pretty quiet (although there’s a lot of extra noise coming out of the console- I’ll need to pull that and see about deadening the sound).

Suspension / Drivebility: The car felt a lot different than I remember. I dropped it off at Vince’s to get an alignment done and to tweak some of the shock settings. The car felt a little bouncy and less stable than before. But some of the change probably comes from the added weight in the front of the car (engine). The clutch is going to take some getting used to. Shifting seemed to be good. [Update- it turns out that the one of the steering linkages was loose and this was causing the sloppy feel]

Power: Premier dynoed the car and it put out 630rwhp at 6 PSI (with no timing). That seems pretty good, considering that’s about what I had before with 8 PSI. Driving home I could tell there was a lot of untapped power. I didn’t do anything crazy, but the car pulled hard in 3rd and 4th. Seems to be on par with what I remember with a lot of room to grow.

The Vette needs a serious cleaning. It’s been sitting around for months at this point and the inside and outside are filthy. A dirty car always diminishes some of the enjoyment. Can’t wait to get her back, do some cleaning and get the break in miles (500) put on. Then I can have some real fun.

Corvette Project Update

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We’re making slow but steady progress on the Corvette. Nothing is as simple as we expect, but I guess that’s part of the fun!

I mentioned that the CV Boots on the C5 axles rubbed against the new coilovers. After searching online we found a simple and effective solution- just scooch the CV boots back a bit. Presto.

The big delay getting things back together stemmed the turbos. With the APS kit there’s simply not room for larger turbos and that’s really what we needed. In the end we sent my Garrett GT3582Rs to Comp Turbo in California. They overhauled them and added lighter and larger 64mm billet inducers. In theory this will allow us to build more boost at lower RPMs. We shall see…

The Turbo installation went smoothly…

…and everything fit back together pretty well. Installing the AMS-1000 was a bit tricky. Vince and the crew got the boost controller elements hooked up and he felt confident that it was “probably right.”

Here’s everything under the car all put back together. Vince and the guys did a fantastic job and the reinstallation looks really clean.

The first time we tried to start the car it fired right up and seemed to run perfectly. The video below is the second time we tried to start it.

And then there was a little mishap with a transmission cooler line that wasn’t hooked up. Really we were just cleaning out the old fluid.

And then we were finally able to film it with no mishaps while it was running. It sounded really good!

I called Marc hoping he could swing by to give the car a quick tune but he was off at SEMA. And as it turned out there were a couple of small issues to take care of so I sent it up to Premier in West Jordan. And that’s where it is now… hopefully behaving.

Each time we make some progress I get excited. Hopefully I’ll get to drive it a few times before I need to park it for the winter.

1000RWHP Vette Project is Underway

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Awhile back I had posted about the 1000rwhp dream. In the past month we’ve made some pretty good progress. Admittedly it’s not going as fast as I’d like, but I think we’re almost to the halfway point. Here’s the project so far:

The first step was to get the car “ready.” I pulled out a good chunk of the interior (necessary since there were going to be a lot of cables to run). I had wanted to cover the outside of the car with protective film but for some reason I used Saran wrap… not my best idea.

On August 13th I took my car of to Vince’s where we racked it and talked about how fast things would go (ha ha…)

Transmission, differential and torque tube removal were a cinch.

Engine disassembly was pretty quick.

Out with the old LS7 and in with the new LSX!

That’s a good sized void. Nice chance to clean up everything.

New engine mounted in the car and the old engine in the truck ready to be hauled off to storage (maybe I’ll put the LS7 in the Camaro!).

We put in an upgraded clutch master cylinder from Tick.

This is the new clutch from McLeod (P/N 63055-00-07M). Not my first choice (I had wanted an steel flywheel) but this is what was recommended so I’m going to give it a shot. A lighter flywheel is an awesome idea (less rotating mass = more power the car can use to accelerate), but can present problems in street driving conditions. This went in late last week. I’ll be curious to see how it drives.

Since the install was taking longer than anticipated we undertook a few repairs. The exhaust manifolds on my car had gotten super rusty. We went them off to get ceramic coated. The look awesome (they won’t stay awesome forever, but this will help prevent rust and keep some of the heat inside).

A section of the turbo piping that runs behind the front wheels has a small tab that had cracked (both sides). I happen to know Utah’s best welder (Mike @ utahweld.com). Mike did a killer job of fixing and reinforcing the pipes. Once he was done I painted them black again.

This is the AMS-1000, the mother of all boost controllers. We’ll start wiring this in tomorrow or Friday. I’m really looking forward to setting the boost according to gear (traction issues can be mitigated this way).

Working with Vince has been a blast. Periodically I’ll get texts with pictures of “progress” and “problems”. The first pic here is my “new engine” installed in the car. Sure looks dirty! And the other pic here is my exhaust manifolds that came back pink by “accident”. I’m going to pay him in Monopoly money.

The new transmission, drive train, etc was put in this week.

We got the new coilovers on yesterday, but ran into a snag. We put in C5 axles (which are way stronger that the C6 axles) but the C5 CV boots are bigger and the coils on the new shocks are rubbing them. Not sure what we’ll do yet, but we’ll figure out something.

Right now we’re waiting to hear from COMP about the custom turbochargers they are working on. Hopefully we’ll get the engine put back together this week too. I had a dream last night that I was driving around. Withdrawal.

On a totally separate topic… Quick Tip! While I was painting the turbo piping I guess there was some overspray. I didn’t even realize it until a few hours later when I went to throw out the cardboard. Whoops. But you can use rubbing alcohol and a scrub brush to remove the paint (as long as it hasn’t fully dried). Good as new.

Double Take Vehicles. August 2012 Edition.

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Once in awhile I see some cool cars that make me a do a double take. Cars like this deserve to be memorialized in some way. In an effort to preserve some of our automotive history I have made this record.

No one really knows what the new Corvette C7 will look like. This talented group took publicly available images, artist renderings and speculation and merged them into this awesome conceptual video rendering. Not perfect (in my opinion), but ii’s on the right track. When they made the C6 they nailed it. I will be very curious to see how the C7 improves on the design (and if it actually can).

Dad of the year away probably goes to this guy. Anyone willing to trick out a Power Wheels like this is committed to a good and righteous cause. And it looks like his son is very appreciative.

My buddy pointed this truck out. It was on KSL a week or so ago (it’s not there now, which is too bad because I didn’t grab anything besides the pictures). It’s a 2003 Checy Silverado SS. It’s got less than 8,000 miles and runs the quarter in about 11 seconds (super fast for a truck). The seller said it was in showroom condition. I admit I’m tempted by a truck like this. Truck + Fast = Extra Awesome.

And finally (and most importantly) I ran across this: The Chuck Norris Corvette. Somehow I missed this growing up. If Chuck Norris drove a Corvette that says something… something incredible. My cup runneth over.

The Great Divide & Closing the Gap

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Update 9: Okay, I think I’m done. DoomCloud.com, Utah Corvette.com, UtahCamaro.com, CamOnCommerce.com and ZoobaBean.com have all been migrated, shuttered and redirected. I have decided not to close Hughes Family. I think it will be good to have another blog specifically about family things (and we may opt to make it private at some point  so it will be nice to have it separated). I guess that’s that. Let the blogging resume!

Update 8: Well… the last thing to do it shutter the other blogs. I’m having a really hard time with the idea of closing down HughesFamily.com. Maybe I will leave them separate. Two blogs would still be okay. Maybe. No… that’s how this whole mess started to begin with. I’ll just have to write Hughes Family posts in the first person instead of the second (or is it third?). It doesn’t help that I’m sick today and my mental capacity is impaired… even more than usual. Probably only one more update after this one. Wonder what I’ll do?

Update 7: Dark or Light colors for the website… Hmm…. decisions, decisions (this is the fun part kids- you grow up and do whatever you want… if you know you know what you want to do). I think I’ll stick w/ dark for now. I might actually like the lighter color scheme better, but since when have I done what I liked? Eh? Yeah? Can I get an Amen!?

Update 6: I have started the process of shuttering some of my older blogs. I disabled comments, hid some of the pages and redirected the root domain to the corresponding section of this blog. So far so good. I’m now in the process of rebuilding my links. It’s sort of sad to see how many people have stopped blogging. Links to blogs that haven’t been updated in the last few months will be omitted from the new blogroll. There’s only so much room, after all 🙂

Update 5: Overall, pretty happy with the results so far. I think I have the blog set up the way I want it (with a few minor exceptions). Now I need to decide if I pull the trigger and shut the other blogs down. I did a few redirect experiments but I’m not having much luck deciding how to set things up (and for some reason my wildcard redirects aren’t working properly- probably a server configuration issue). Decisions, decisions…

Update 4: I played around with some plugins that got me closer to where I wanted to be. Categories have different headers now (making the graphics took a bit of time). I’m also working on some custom menus so I can manage content better. My next step here is post category blurbs and info. I also wish there was a simple way to change the format of “pages.” As I get further into this I’m not even sure that I’m actually going to do it (shutter the other blogs). We’ll see, I guess.

Update 3: All the content is moved over. I’m having trouble figuring out how to consolidate all the info though. I wanted to separate it out by the original blogs, but it would need to be further subdivided by category. I can’t think of a way to do this (well, within the confines of the blog template I’d like to use). Also, as unreal as this sounds – I think there might simply be too many posts for one blog. A lot of the info is going to get lost if I can’t find a good way to sort this out.

Update 2: I have the website looking like I want (mostly) and configured the way it should be. I have successfully imported a second blog (no issues). At this point it’s just a matter of relocating content. Here I go!

Update 1: Making some good progress now. I have www.DoomCloud.com mostly moved over (posts, comments, pages, and images). I need to set up a redirect and shut the old website down now (that will feel really really sad…). Before I do that though I need to format this blog a bit and then make sure that merging in a second blog goes smoothly. Tally Ho!

Too many blogs. So, I think I’ll merge them all into one blog and put it under my name. I don’t care about traffic or rankings, really (my only fear is that I will somehow affect websites that I link to w/ all my blogs). To be honest, I’m just tired of managing five blogs, and I’d rather have them under one roof, so to speak. Let’s see if we can get this done…

LME 427 LSX Engine

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Now I’m getting really excited. Last Friday we took delivery of the finished engine. For the curious you can see the engine specs here. All the specs are the same as before except that I upgraded the intake values to titanium. The compression ended up being 9.8:1. I just have to say that this engine is like a work of art.

I peeled the plastic off for a peek, but we won’t unwrap it all the way until we’re ready to put it in. For reference here’s the dyno graph. Max HP is about 590 and Max Torque is about 540 (which doesn’t seem to bad for a low compression engine).

Here’s a video of the engine dyno. Fun!

Posted by Cam, August 1, 2012

Boostless is Useless…

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So the other night I was driving along and I thought to myself, “Boy, my car sure is slow tonight.” I didn’t give it the attention it deserved because I was listening to the New Linkin Park album Living Things (I highly recommend it, by the way). Anyway, at some point I noticed that the car didn’t just feel slow, it was slow. I had zero boost!

I’m sort of a worst case scenario guy. Even though I hoped it was going to be something simple – like a hose that had come off – my mind ran amok with all kinds of dooms day possibilities. I parked the car on Saturday night and didn’t have a chance to look at it until Sunday evening.

Anyway, it did end up being something super simple- just a hose that had been pulled off (it was just like this when I jacked the car up). The clamp was gone and the hose was pretty scraped up. I have no idea when this happened. The clamp in the second picture is from the hose on the other side. It was nearly ground off. I cleaned everything up, replaced the clamps, and took it out for a text drive.

So much better! I think that the hose may have been leaking for awhile – even back when I got my dyno at Premier. I’m going to take it back up and dyno it again so see how much power I was missing. Anyway, simple solution. I’m happy about that.

Posted by Cam, July 9th