[rpoz-29]

My Camaro has been a body shop for two weeks getting the top painted under warranty. It's a hardtop and this is the second time. I shouldn't have told them I was in no hurry. Anyway, I was griping about it during lunch at a "Street Survival" school I was helping with. Another club member overheard me and offered me a ride in his '02 Z06. WOW. I'm just kicking the idea around right now, but is there a year to stay away from? Any preferred years? Is a Z06 that much better than a standard Corvette? Just wondering!

[tjZ28]

That is a nice setup. That car will be a ton faster than any C5 Z-06. Most of those parts are ones you wound want to put on the Z anyway.

Why do you keep saying that? I know the owner of that car, as well as the previous owner who built it. It is an amazing deal, and super clean. But I know of plenty of Z06s that are faster, and on a road course I'd put my $ on my car.

Sure, if you're going to mod the car a lot you do replace a lot of what makes a Z06 a Z06. If you do heads/cam then you've changed most of the 'better' motor parts out (yes, the block is different in an LS6 but there's not really a performance gain). If you do coil-overs you've changed out most of the 'better' suspension parts. Etc.

One quick question, does anybody know if the FRC got the thinner windshield that the Z06 has? Otherwise, yes they should be as light as a Z06.

BUT if you plan to leave it stock the Z06 is the better car than the FRC. And if he wants to keep his budget down AutoXin' in SS is probably much more fun/feasible than modding any C5 to ASP or SM2 spec.

As far as consumables, I don't agree that the C5 is spendier. You run essentially the same tires you would on a Camaro (a lot of ppl run 17x11s square on C5s just like 4th Gens, SS guys run stock wheels of course with 275 or 295-17s and 305 or 315-18s which aren't noticeably more expensive), brake part are mad cheap (possibly cheaper than 4th Gens) due to the volume they sell in (rotors used to be $20/ea but these days w/ the price of materials up they're still $50-60 and pads are very reasonable) and most replacement parts run the same $ as 4th Gens (same water pump, same this, same that).

The headlight issue is well-known, though my '02 w/ ~40k miles has no issues. There are (cheap) replacement gear sets w/ brass gears to replace the plastic stock ones that just take a few hours of elbow grease to install.

I will agree the clutch job is a major undertaking, I've done 3 or 4 of them. Working on a 'vette is like working on a lego-car. Everything comes apart easily in big chunks. It's just that you have to remove so much to get to most things. For example, to do the clutch you drop the exhaust, tunnel-plate, entire rear subframe/suspension, diff/trans/torque tube, intake manifold (so that it doesn't hit the firewall when the drivetrain rotates down), headers, and the bell-housing inspection cover. I probably forgot a few things too. (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) So is it as quick as a Fbody clutch job (I've done about half a dozen of those) heck no!!!! But if you can do an Fbody, you can do a C5... just allow twice as many hours.... and don't do like me and decide to replace about a billion other things "while you're in there."

-TJ

This post has been edited by tjZ28: Nov 18 2008, 08:54 PM