I have put this website together for anyone interested in my car, or is interested in the ZF1 option. There is currently very little information available about this option, but I am trying to change that. I became interested in it when I found out that my car had it.
I have broken up this page into three major sections, the story of how I acquired my car, my stereo installation, and the RPO information. I decided to keep the page simple, you won't find anything terribly fancy here. You will find thumbnail images throughout this page, you can click on any of the images to see a larger image.
Like most car people I have liked cars ever since I was a little kid, I grew up watching shows like the A-Team and Dukes of Hazard. It was my dream to one day own a Corvette. That dream came true on April 27, 2002. I bought myself a white 1985 Chevrolet Corvette with carmine red leather. If you have ever watched the A-Team you will notice that this looks strikingly similar to Face's Corvette! This website is the story of that Corvette...
Lets roll the clock back to a couple of days prior to my purchase. I had finished paying off my student loans and had managed to build up some money. I was looking for a late C3 or early C4, that was what fit within my budget. I had looked at some cars but the owners wanted either too much, or the car just wasn't what I was looking for. But one day I came across an add in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix that had stated "1985 Corvette, Loaded, 145K" so I called the dealership and asked them about it. They were asking a bit much, but I figured I would take a look, so I told them I would be there the next morning.
After a rather sleepless night my dad and I drove the two hours the city and the car wasn't there. Apparently the guy whom I talked to on the phone had gotten details from two cars mixed up. The car that I had come to see was a red on black 4+3 Z51. This was a white on red automatic! It turns out that they had two 1985 Corvettes and one had sold the day before I had called. There was no way I was going to buy this one! I wanted a standard, and I already owned a white vehicle. In rural Saskatchewan they are hell to keep looking clean and I had swore I was never going to buy another white dust magnet. The dealer told me to take it for a drive anyway. Of course I am not going to turn down an offer to drive a Corvette, so I said sure and off I went. I came back about 25 minutes later and we looked over the car. It had definitely seen better days and it had an awful stench to it. The dealer said that the previous owner had stored it in in a Quonset for a couple of years and it had gotten full of mice. They said they had cleaned the nests out and it just needed to air out. We discussed the price some and came to a mutually agreeable price that day, but I wanted to sleep on it, so I handed back the keys and said that I would call the next morning if I wanted the car.
I thought about the car on the way home and discussed it with my dad. I really wanted a Corvette. This one wasn't exactly what I wanted, but I did like how it looked like Face's Corvette. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. By the time I got home I was pretty sure I was going to buy it. I hardly got any sleep that night as I was going to make a call the next morning to buy my first Corvette. As soon as the dealership opened I called and told them I would take the car. They said they would start prepping it and I could pick it up around noon. They would even meet me half way to drop it off. That sounded fine with me as I still had to get plates for the car that morning. I headed into town and dealt with that, then it was off to Humboldt to pick up my car! It seemed to take forever to wait for the car to show up, but it was worth the wait to see my soon-to-be new baby pull up. About 15 minutes later it was mine! That drive home was breathtaking! (No pun intended)
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| These pictures were taken the day after I purchased it. | |||
I let the car sit in my dad's shop for a week to air out. It certainly smelled better, but I had a feeling that there was still something in the car. I did happen to find a really nasty smelling air freshener a few weeks later and removing that from the car improved the smell a lot. On humid days the car smelled like mouse, so I did some more searching, when I removed the panel that covers the end of the passenger side of dash I found the source of the evil smell. I had a regular mouse condo in the breadbox! They weren't alive anymore, but it was packed full of nesting material. I had to have that cleaned out, so I figured I would replace my stereo at the same time because the current one wasn't functional.
There were numerous little problems that I ended up having to deal with. The rear wheels were on it backwards and it had the wrong sized tires on the front of the car. When replacing the front tires I found that the front shocks weren't in that great of shape, so I replaced them. The power mirror selector switch was toast so it got replaced. The driver side window switch worked but it was busted as well so I replaced it as well. Things like the coolant temperature sender were no good either as well as the wire going to it was damaged so it got replaced. All in all it took a long time to get everything sorted out..
This page was last updated on September 7, 2003.