How to spot damage on a C5 & C6 Corvette Skid Bar
Transcript: Hi everybody welcome back to Lyles parte podcast here at C&S Corvette's now I've done videos in the past about things that are really important to look for when you were looking to buy a c5 or a c6 Corvette even if you have one of these cars yourself and want to take better care of it or keep an eye on things that could be problems I had a car come in this week that we just sent back home with the customer finished and done but it had a common issue that we are seeing more and more and more of as these cars get into second third and fourth owners who might not be Corvette people from way back okay under the front of the car is what GM calls a lower radiator support as this big metal framework right here you can see the tabs right here where my thumb's are that holds the radiator but the more important function of this is this bolts directly to the frame under the car and these are your skid plates these are what basically protect your cars nose as you go into driveways or over speed bumps or whatever this is a very important structural part of this car okay what I'm seeing more and more is people don't know the angle at which they have to approach driveways that are maybe uphill or going into a shopping center where the driveways a little uphill you do not go straight on you know Corvette people know this from years with painful experience but you have to go in at about a 30-degree angle up the slope one wheel first then the other otherwise what happens is this see how this one is nice and straight take a look at the other side see how that's bent see how it's broken this is what happens when you hit one of those inclines or a parking block too hard and at the wrong angle now these pieces are still available from GM and in reproduction that's the good news the bad news is when you hit it this hard in the frame rail above this are these little inserts that sit up in the frame rail and when you tighten the nut down at the bottom that goes up through here when you tighten this down this mushrooms at the top and holds it into the frame this is structural when you hit this hard enough you rip this out of the frame and that leaves a big hole in your frame at which point in order to replace this not only do we have to get any part but we have to cut out the metal in the frame where this mounts weld new metal in place drill it out at the right size and put a new insert in there so that we can properly mount your straight new lower skid bar so anytime you want to look under the nose of the c5 or c6 if you get down kind of ground level you'll see these two points sticking out okay and as you can see there are scrape marks on the bottom of this these are exposed under the front bumper you want to make sure that they're straight because if they're at an angle like this you know that you're gonna have it minimum several hours of work to replace this relatively inexpensive but still about $300 part and more importantly you may very well have to do frame repairs which are going to involve cutting welding and fabricating and that's going to be probably well over 1100 or 1200 dollars for that job alone so keep your eyes open look at that closely and if you have one of these cars go ahead and look at yours and make sure you don't have this problem because if you do you need to solve it because the next time that you hit something or going to a driveway the wrong way if this is already broken you can do serious damage to not only the front bodywork of your car but remember this hold your cooling system and that cooling system in the radiator consists of plastic tanks on an aluminum frame you can break that and cause yourself leakage overheating all kinds of issues so again if these points aren't bullet pointed straight forward we need to take a real close look at that on your own car any questions any comments or if you need the parts to fix this I have them here give me a call at 800-886-5064 [Music]