The LaRues' 1985 Chevrolet Corvette

1G1YY0786F5113141

"Midnight Blue" (not the original color), purchased September 26, 1997.
Sold late January, 2003.
Here are the final pictures. Taken January 18, 2003. The car at this time has 258,900 miles on it.
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Since one of the seat covers is coming apart, I put these neoprene covers on.
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You can see how badly the clearcoat has chipped and is peeling.

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Hopefully the buyer will spend the time and money to get it back into shape.

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Here's the 1/4 size billboard on my garage wall.

 Houston Raceway Park, January 24, 2003. I figured I'd take it to the track at least once before I sell it! Click here to see video and timeslips.

I got it cleaned up and went for a drive around Baytown in June of 1999 to get some photos in interesting settings.

Corvette - Marina
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Corvette - Marina
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Corvette Marina 2
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Corvette Marina 2
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At the Marina, the Fred Hartman suspension bridge in the background.

Corvette Marina 3
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Corvette Marina 3
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Corvette Baseball
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Corvette Baseball
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Here, the targa top is off.

This photo in front of the Pony League park came out the best.

These are the first pictures we took of the car when we got in in 1997.
 

 
My older son, Adam (13 at the time)




 My younger son, Jesse (11 at the time)




 All of the auto writers griped about the digital dash. I personally find it very readable, and not at all annoying. I do find myself looking at the numbers, not the graphs, though.
I think I like the round taillights better than the semi-rectangular ones (91-96). Looks great from this angle, doesn't it? What a great profile. Even the 80's style wheels still look great!
Copyright © 1997, Alan and Adam LaRue
Last Modified on Wednesday, February 19, 2003

 
Fal 1998, the car would not pass the Texas emissions inspection (required in Harris County), so I had some work to do. What finally got it to pass was a new catalytic converter. The old one was obviously plugged up, because installing the new one improved the acceleration considerably.

Then  I got a hole in the "Y-pipe," which comes out of the back of the cat. The original 13-year-old mufflers were looking bad, so I decided to replace them as well. I ordered a Walker Y-pipe with a crossover pipe, supposed to reduce resonance inside the car, and I also ordered what Mid-America Designs listed as "ZR-1 Style Mufflers." These are solid black mufflers, which split into two pipes at the end. They look more like straight pipes than mufflers, but were supposed to be "slightly louder than stock."

They turned out to be much, much louder than stock, so now I'm looking at ways to quiet the noise inside the car.

However, they look really great. I used some "high temperature" paint to paint the Y-pipe black to match the mufflers, and it really cleans up the looks from the back. Click on the thumbnails to see the full-sized photo.

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Left side

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Right side		 exhaust3.jpg (22803 bytes)
Left side, from behind		 exhaust4.jpg (13009 bytes)
They're a little hard to see here.		 exhaust5.jpg (18087 bytes)
View from the side of the car.

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