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New radiator

4702 Views 108 Replies 7 Participants Last post by  Triple dizzle
Just put a new two row radiator in my C6. Man it got tight quick between the rad and high volume water pump no room left for anything. Just enough clearance for everything to fit.
The only issues I ran into were the trans line fittings leaking,a little gray mega thread tape took care of that.
Test drive went flawlessly going to keep an eye on it for a few trips to make sure no I have no surprises. So far so good.
Looking forward to warm weather to see if cooling improves will keep everyone posted.
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.,a little gray mega thread tape took care of that..
Best damn tape out there..

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IF you haven't begun installing the radio head unit, yet can I make a suggestion if not too late?

The name brand units are not what we want in a head unit. They care way too much about markup and also laws of the land to produce a good product by any end user's standards. For the money.

Of the whitebox head units that are completely unlocked android head units JOYING makes the best, or always seems to have the best specs anyways. And the specs on these head units are pretty outstanding by Pioneer's or Alpine's or Sony's standards. To get these specs from them would likely cost you $5-8k. No joke. Markup like that over a name, profit, and cost of manufacture. Do you enjoy looking at a nameplate or taking in playing media whilst you drive?

JOYING has head units with by far the best specs. If you want over the top here is a 13" screen that will fit your double din enclosure..

Joying Newest Released 13.3 Inch Double Din Universal Car Stereo With Automatic Rotatable (joyingauto.com)

They will let you mount the screen however you want, you can even stand it up on its side if you like. While the 13" might block your A/C vent or control I have made a 9" fit well in a C6 and left to feel like a 10" would have fit well. This is the 9" i have successfully installed in C6 with easy fitment..

Joying Newest 9”Universal Single Din Car Music Stereo With 1280*800 Ultra-Screen (joyingauto.com)

I got the sigle din model because it seemed to have a trim with the highest specs. The install comes out like this before we put the screen on..



The head unit should go in with a canbus decoder/radio interface module that will both communicate with the factory amp and also keep your retained accessory power(RAP) like the PAC RP5-GM11T. I do not have any pictures of this module but it all gets stuffed behind the radio and makes for a very friendly integration to the car. With this hardware you even get to keep your steering wheel controls.

Once everything is mounted there are all these screw holes on the backside of the screen to mount the 4 tabs that hold the display to the head unit. This allows us to mount the screen up, down, off to one side or another, or turn it up on its side so we can clear the a/c vents or control head. We first mounted an 8" and here is a few pictures of that..



It is a very thin screen and it doesn't stick out far past the dash. But the little it does come out makes it less you have to reach to operate that huge touchscreen. This is what it looks like from outside the car..



This C6 now has the head unit in the last link above. The 9" and it fits and still has a bit of room on top and bottom. I had a 10.1" in my C5 and it was glorious. Aside from watching music videos and news and movies and whatnot whilst on the road this head unit also empowered me to add any gauge my heart desired through an OBD2 interface device and the Torque Pro app. The most brutally accurate gauges you will ever get. Direct from the engine controller's PID list..


IF you are looking at a 'quality name brand' in your car audio you will never get to do anything but listen to music with it. And today we can do so much more. If you buy a new vehicle it will do so much more. Your vette could be so much more. I mean please, for your consideration..


These head units even come with sim sockets so we can get a sim card and just get 4g right to our car like it was a C7 or C8. But we can goto metroPCS or somewhere where we can get the cheap cheap service and just always be riding around with a second lifeline back to the world. It also streamlines everything when we don't have to wait for the head unit to connect to our phone's wifi hotspot.
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2K paint on them interior parts. had wrap on them first but it kept peeling up. So it has the same paint we used on the calipers for the steering wheel, the pedals, and the shifter. I am a long time into trying to sell this guy on a power adder for this machine and he just has me keep putting more stick on stuff on the car.

He bought this car in 2021 with 300 miles on it. The shifter cable failed at 330miles and that is where I met this car. At around the first oil change the sock on the fuel pump disentigrated and sucked itself into the pump. He is now at 8k miles. It is a very clean C6 and beautiful to drive. It just needs that twin turbo kit from UPP.
What kind of ND MX5 are we talking about here? I mean are we talking about a 4 banger with 2L worth of displacement and under 200hp with a fraction of as much in tq?

Or are we talking about 6.2L hot cammed flying Miatas with Tremec gearboxes like this:
Ls3 Powered Mazda Miata | General Conversation (superchargerforums.com)

Don't tell anyone you saw that. LOL @ rep to protect
He had hopes of finding road courses with it. But I don't know where the car is at these days. It came out incredible. I tuned it out on the street and spent time with it on the road both before and after winding it out on the dyno. It was a nice machine when it was done. The a/c and all gauges and vehicle systems and controls worked. It was a very complete conversion.
This problem applies to all automatic C5 and C6 and likely C7 Corvettes as well. Change that shifter cable every 5 years.

I had a 2007 come to me early last year with a failed shifter cable with under 400 miles on the odometer. They are a soft material that decays rather quickly.

If we change this cable with some other service being performed every 5 years we will never be stuck with a car in park or gear in the worst place at the worst time.
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Hey thanks, man. That should do a good job at keeping the temps down under your armrest.

I like the wrap. It looks less itchy than the DEI Titanium stuff.

I want to see how that steering wheel comes out.
I use mechanics wire to create a series of individial clamps every several inches so things stay nicely wrapped.

On the single turbo C5:



Also on the old Turbo Camaro:
1998 Camaro V6 Turbo | Supercharger Builds (superchargerforums.com)
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They don't call them the stealer for nothing.

They are M10 x 1.5 metric hardware. If you wanted to just go find some long bolts with optional nuts.
How's the door for your cup holders? Now would be a great time to replace it if it is decayed and falling apart as they tend to do. Zip has them for the cheapest price I think.
2005-2013 Corvette Console Cup Holder Assembly w/Rotating Door (zip-corvette.com)
Ya PAC really messed up that whole wiring thing with putting connectors all around the module, didn't they?

You will want to power everything up and play with it before you put the dash back together. There is a programming button you need to access to setup the steering wheel controls. There are dip switches to set, and there are 2 speaker inputs you could be plugged into from the head unit. 1 for amped input and 1 for non amped input. And you can pretty much use either one you want with the difference being the volume level or range you get out of the head unit. And if I remember correctly isn't there also a volume or gain knob for this on the side of the module?

Anyways just make sure you power it up and are happy with the function of everything before you put it all back together.

As cool as that interface is I hate the uncontrollable mess it creates behind the dash. Just a piss poor implementation of an otherwise great idea.
Looking good.

At the rear backup camera it is important that you take power from the rear backup light bulb power but find a different place to connect the ground. Like directly to the frame.

The brake lights share this ground circuit with the backup light bulb and if you grab both power and ground for your camera directly from the backup bulb socket you get this flicker or hesitation to the backup video feed every time you step on the brake pedal which is the voltage drop on the ground circuit. If you are already connected this way, put the car in reverse to bring up the backup camera and then step on the brake pedal and release it a few times and notice the flickering of which I am explaining.

Ground the cam directly to the frame and grab power from the backup bulb harness and you will have stable video in reverse as you backup.
I learned a valuable lesson today. If you own a convertible corvette and your going to disconnect your battery you better have your top up and latched. If it’s down it will not function until you manually put it up and redisconnect the battery. Oh and the power windows too.

Man I was freaking out, top wouldn’t work windows wouldn’t work. I was checking everything fuses, connections and relays. Released the pressure on the pump manually raised the top tighten the release on the pump. Latched the top disconnected the battery waited 5 minutes reconnected and everything is fine. Thought I’d really messed up. I’m out in the garage thinking my wife is going to go off over this. Dodged a bullet on this [email protected]
This problem is caused by the car loosing it's memory for the window indexing. This is a learned value that must be set each time the battery gets disconnected or the top will not function as a safety.

Any time the battery gets disconnected we must put each window all the way up twice. That is hold the window up switch until the window goes all the way up and the relay in the door clicks. Then release and hold the window switch up until the relay clicks again. And that's it. The indexing is learned. You must do this for both windows.

And the top will start working again no matter where the top was when the battery got disconnected.

You will always know when the indexing is not learned because the glass will not drop when you open the door and it will not raise back up after you close the door. This function absolutely needs the learned position to function. And all of this is needed because the C6 door has no frame around the glass.
I see, but could not get the power windows to function until I reset it with the top up. Strange.
You have to be inside the car with the doors shut. If they do not know their up most position the windows will not close with the doors open and no index position learned.
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