The good old Grand Sport. I have only seen 4 of those in my life......a long time ago....3 of them were on the back of a tow truck.
Kurt
Kurt
Crossing The Aisle
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And check this out too. The thing has all stock exhaust still. She doesn't like it. She wants it LOUDER!
I don't blame her. Stock C4's always sounded like glorified 4-stroke out board motors. lol
jetmech807
10 Year Member
C4 ZR1 has a glorified outboard motor. Fitting.
That's right....their engines were built by Mercruiser if I rectal? I'd still give my left nut for one though.
jetmech807
10 Year Member
Designed by Lotus and built by Mercury.
Back when the those ZR1's came out somebody in our little town bought one. At the time my uncle was the service manager for our local Chevy dealer. Said it only left the service dept occasionally only to return in a few days/weeks with something else wrong with it. I beleive it was the first year of production for them, so that could explain some of the lack of reliability. Not sure if subsiquent years got better.
Back when the those ZR1's came out somebody in our little town bought one. At the time my uncle was the service manager for our local Chevy dealer. Said it only left the service dept occasionally only to return in a few days/weeks with something else wrong with it. I beleive it was the first year of production for them, so that could explain some of the lack of reliability. Not sure if subsiquent years got better.
Yeah, we had a guy around here with a '90. I remember seeing the back tires on it thinking (these have to be the widest tires I've ever seen on a street car)....which at the time, they probably were. Come to think of it, he did end up having a lot of issues with it and selling it after a few short years. He said it used about a liter of oil per month on top of it all.
I tell ya though.....popping the hood on that thing and seeing that big 5.7L DOHC LT5 staring back at ya was an impressive sight. The thing was huge!!! Would love to have seen what GM could have done had they kept up with the big displacement, OHC design. That's one thing I wished Ford would do. Could you imagine a 6.0L Coyote. People would forget the LS1/2/3 ever existed. lol
jetmech807
10 Year Member
I thought the same thing about the tires. That engine was impressive looking. Overall car was the best looking C4 I thought.
mikestang63
SN Certified Technician
But why? I though Corvette's and assholes went hand in hand with one and other?
That is generally true but I think it expires at the same time as the factory warranty.
mikestang63
SN Certified Technician
True. You know the old joke. What's the difference between a porcupine and a Corvette?
The Porcupine has the pricks on the OUTSIDE.
I remember talking to the Corvette product manager about the old OHC ZR1. He said it was a massive face palm moment for GM. Every time they had to warranty out an engine on one of those, it cost GM $32,000. That's why they never pursued building other OHC V8s after that one.
Kurt
Kurt
jetmech807
10 Year Member
They did pretty well with the Northstar Series DOHC V8 engines in the Caddy's? Those suckers were around nearly 20-years?
mikestang63
SN Certified Technician
They did pretty well with the Northstar Series DOHC V8 engines in the Caddy's? Those suckers were around nearly 20-years?
N* engines? ROFLMAO.. I had an 02 DTS. 50K POS that spent more time me fixing than driving. That motor had NO reason belonging in that car. A "race" motor- aluminum with steel sleeves- Besides designed to use a quart of oil every 1000 miles, they are known to lift the heads at anywhere from 60k miles on due to another GM quality design flaw- the head bolts pitch and count was not not strong enough. Doesn't matter how you baby the car. Ask me how I know. At 90K miles, sure enough my heads started to lift- overheated and exhaust in the coolant. And you have to pull the motor out to repair- drill out the head bolt holes, retap with a special jig and replace with inserts and stronger bolts. About a 3k-5k job at a shop if you can't do it yourself.
That and the rubber intake plenums that rip, the water pump drive belts that sieze, the starter that is under the intake manifold and fail, the blowby problems do to the low tension rings and engine design, the coolant tubes that clog, the smog valves located at the lower firewall that fail and you can't get to without going from underneath the car, and the fact the engine is modular and in two pieces and leaks oil out of every seal and sensor eventually- it's a great engine. Google Northstar head gasket failure and prepare to see 100's of posts about the POS.
Did I forget to mention the "pop and drop" window regulators? All four window regulators replaced usually every year as they use a cheap plastic clip to hold the cable. Good thing I could replace them and the part was $30, The dealer wanted $600 a pop to replace. Got so good at it, I could do a window in 40 minutes.
Or the HVAC door motor under the dash that fails- $100 part and you have to replace it by spending an hour upside down under the driver side dash. Or the blower motors that fail- $200 and yep- another 2 hours upside down under the passenger side dash.
Then there's the electronic air ride suspension- the motors fail, the shocks need replacement- only $1000 if you want to replace with GM parts.
That was my last time ever buying a GM product.
Rant off.........
Oh, no doubt....but not so full of problems they were scrapped in their entirety. The must have had more success than failure with them for GM to hang onto them for as long as they did?
N* engines? ROFLMAO.. I had an 02 DTS. 50K POS that spent more time me fixing than driving. That motor had NO reason belonging in that car. A "race" motor- aluminum with steel sleeves- Besides designed to use a quart of oil every 1000 miles, they are known to lift the heads at anywhere from 60k miles on due to another GM quality design flaw- the head bolts pitch and count was not not strong enough. Doesn't matter how you baby the car. Ask me how I know. At 90K miles, sure enough my heads started to lift- overheated and exhaust in the coolant. And you have to pull the motor out to repair- drill out the head bolt holes, retap with a special jig and replace with inserts and stronger bolts. About a 3k-5k job at a shop if you can't do it yourself.
That and the rubber intake plenums that rip, the water pump drive belts that sieze, the starter that is under the intake manifold and fail, the blowby problems do to the low tension rings and engine design, the coolant tubes that clog, the smog valves located at the lower firewall that fail and you can't get to without going from underneath the car, and the fact the engine is modular and in two pieces and leaks oil out of every seal and sensor eventually- it's a great engine. Google Northstar head gasket failure and prepare to see 100's of posts about the POS.
Did I forget to mention the "pop and drop" window regulators? All four window regulators replaced usually every year as they use a cheap plastic clip to hold the cable. Good thing I could replace them and the part was $30, The dealer wanted $600 a pop to replace. Got so good at it, I could do a window in 40 minutes.
Or the HVAC door motor under the dash that fails- $100 part and you have to replace it by spending an hour upside down under the driver side dash. Or the blower motors that fail- $200 and yep- another 2 hours upside down under the passenger side dash.
Then there's the electronic air ride suspension- the motors fail, the shocks need replacement- only $1000 if you want to replace with GM parts.
That was my last time ever buying a GM product.
Rant off.........
Ok....now that you've got that out of your system., take a breath.
As big a POS as "your" car may have been in it's entirety (not sure what power windows and HVAC controls have to do with the engine), the Northestar line of engines as a whole was successful. Hell....GM kept them around for 19-years....so they must not have been all that bad?
Do I we need to go over all of the issues that Fords Modular Engines have had over the last 20-years by comparison?
What I'm saying, is had GM invested the kind of time and effort into further development of larger displacement, V8 OHC engines, who know's what the market would be like today? You can bet if GM started pushing the envelope in the DOHC direction, the engineers at Ford wouldn't have had no choice but to pick up their feet and meet the demand...instead of coasting along with the paltry 4.6L engine platform they clung onto for far too long...about 5-10-years too long IMO.