January, 2010
The next club meeting:
7:00 p.m., Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Golden Corral, Dothan.
Join us for dinner at 6:00 p.m.
Aahh, December, such a lovely month - welcome to winter in Dothan.
Ok, 2009, see ya! Hello 2010, sure hope you’ll be a better year for the Corvette!! If you are not at least a little worried about the future of the Corvette, you should be. With sales down over 50% and production at the Bowling Green plant getting slower and slower, even an optimist like me is concerned. GM is in a cost cutting lets make a profit so we can emerge from bankruptcy and remain solvent kind of mode, and if the Corvette continues to lag in sales, well, you do the math. Projections are that the economy is turning around now, so maybe the worst is behind us.
In December we had our Christmas party on the 5th at the La Bamba restaurant in Dothan. We had mixed reviews on the food (hey, if you didn’t try the fajitas’ you messed up), but the circular room lent itself very well for the Dirty Santa game. We tried to have a cruise to the Seacrest Wolf Preserve on the 12th, but the bad weather forced us to postpone the trip.
We sold all 50 copies of the first release of the Circle City Corvettes Cruise ‘in Cuisine cook book. Terry and Collette Weldon are continuing to produce them, and we decided to keep the price at $10 each for now. So if you were one of several who wanted 5 or 6 books and only got 3, we have more available now. These cook books are a great way to make some money for the club as well as advertise our club, as the books are almost as much of a photo album as they are a cook book. Many thanks to Terry and Collette for all the hard work they are doing to produce these terrific cook books.
For January we will try the Wolf Preserve trip again, this time on the 16th, more details to follow. We do need club members to organize and plan cruises for the club, and are looking for someone to setup a cruise for February, and someone for March.
Our Caravan plans are shaping up nicely. John Hickman has again done his magic and secured a favorable contract with the Marriott for the lodging at the beach. We’re still working on lodging for the night in Dothan. This year’s Caravan will be this club’s 30th, so let’s all pitch in and make it our best yet!!!!
Jean and I hope you all have a Joyful, Prosperous, and Healthy 2010.
Bruce
Click for the Museum Homepage: National Corvette Museum - opens in its own window.
Click here for Charley's NCM Newsletter
Courtesy of your NCM Ambassador
- Charley Robertson
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C5 HVAC control panel lights.
If you have a C5 with a few miles on it, expect your HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) control display to go blank. Mine did about a year ago. For a while, it would come back if I rapped it smartly, but eventually, it darkened such that I could only read it in the dark garage. Your local mechanic probably wants $300 to $450, plus labor, to replace the box. One of our favorite online vendor places wants $300 for the box. On eBay, I've read, you can send it off to somebody who knows the following trick, and will fix it for about $50.
The culprit is a lousy soldering job on the surface-mount components performed by the GM supplier. The components with the "cold" solder connections work loose - sometimes a percussive adjustment applied by knuckle will cause them to make contact again. But, that's tough on the knuckles and the display window.
At our going away party for Marty and Val the other night, I heard Andrew Country discussing a fix for this problem found on the internet. So I checked it out.
First series of steps is removing the box from the dash. Follow the instructions on this link to remove the box:
http://www.vetteessentials.com/instructions/g_bezels/bezel_howto.html
Removal is straight forward; the C5 dash comes apart much like a C4 dash, start at the back of the console and remove things going forward. No need to go past step 3g, as the instructions on this site are for access to the instrument cluster. ( Use them to put the shiny bezel kit on your instruments. )
Here's the link to work on the box, also contains the above link:
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c5-tech/1583758-c5-climate-control-dim-dark-display-fix.html
Disassemble the box. Be careful with the screws, there's eight of them, all the same size. Find the offending components on the back side of the circuit board in the back half of the box. Don't remove the board from the front half unless you need to replace burnt-out light bulbs or are terribly fond of chinese puzzles.
The offending components are the eight large (1/4 inch), dark-colored surface mount resistors with the number "241" printed on them. Surface mount electronic components have copper band at each; the band solders to the mounting pads on the circuit boards. GM has at least two different layouts for this circuit board, but both have eight of these resistors. If you examine them with a magnifier, you may see a crack at the edge of the solder where the solder should flow smoothly to the mounting pad. Use just enough rosin core solder to make the end of the very hot soldering iron shiny and a little more. Do NOT use plumber's acid core solder! Press down on the center of the resistor with a very small screwdriver or similar implement, then press the tip of the iron to both the end of the resistor and the metal pad on the circuit board. Each heat application should not take over five seconds - we don't want to scorch the board or lift the metal traces from the board. Examine your work, the solder should flow smoothly from the resistor to the pad, except for the lump left behind by this fairly primitive technique. Clean the soldering iron tip in between uses to remove carbonized rosin; but not with your fingers, unless you're really really really into pain.
Reinstall, enjoy. Your mileage may vary - some forum readers botched the job, others simply reported it did not work. It worked on mine, we can see the display in the daylight again - good as new.
Brent Gourley
'93 Z25 / Z07 40th with 190,000 miles
'99 white Z51 coupe with 130,000 miles
January
16 Cruise to the Seacrest Wolf Preserve. More details to follow.
February
5 - 7 Moultrie, GA swap meet ... at an airport and is a huge automotive swap meet with also arts and craft items for sale. This has always been a good place to find parts for any make or model of car and even some Corvette items. Their is a for sale car corral, auction and car show. ... A lot of local Corvette Clubs attend the swap meet and enter the a car show on Saturday. ... it takes about 4 hours to walk through all the rows and buildings and it is usually cold. Their are plenty of restrooms and places to eat. ... 2 1/2 hours from Dothan.
Valentine's Cruise - stay tuned for details
March
Dothan's Azalea Trail - exact date determined by the flowers and the weather.
27 Weevil City Cruisers car and truck show. Click here for the flyer for the Weevil City Cruisers Car Show
| Club Christmas Party at LaBamba in Dothan | |
| Weighted down for Dirty Santa... |  |
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Good friends, good fun. |
| Food and drink, eyes on the prize. |  |
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The first printing of the club cookbook sold out quick. |
| A little help with Dirty Santa |  |
| The Hickman's Grand Sport shown here in the delivery
room on 12/16/09, to be discharged from the NCM at 8 a.m., New Year's Eve. Click here to see photos Charley captured from the NCM live webcam, then scroll down, click "view album." |
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Looking forward to 2010, the 30th anniversary of the Panama City Beach Caravan. |
We welcome our new members to the club!!!
Al and Pat Fleming, Enterprise, 2000 white convertible and Warbonnet Yellow '72 coupe.
Jamie and Paula Flowers, red '67 convertible.
CJ and Vivian Cancel, black '08 Z06.
| HAPPY January
BIRTHDAYS 5 Laura Braley 9 Stacy Griffin 16 Johnny Hickman 31 Bill James 31 Barbara Pattberg |
and January
ANNIVERSARIES: 4 Pat & Barbara Pattberg
(36 years) |
Do you have an incurable passion for 'Vettes? Seek help at Corvettes Anonymous.
Vettes for Vets Event ON the Talledega Motor Speedway
Lambo can't get away from a ZR-1
How to clean a car, by the MiniCooper group.
A Norwegian perspective (thanks, Stan) http://www.lov2xlr8.no/
GM's HyWire - the car of the future on Top Gear
Building the last C4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YII-h21xJvw&NR=1
Think you can win that ZR-1 and the '67/427 advertised on Facebook?
Read here before you donate:
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/12/05/Northpinellas/Wish_granting_charity.shtml
How to make your car last - http://tinyurl.com/qwdp7t
Nostalgia videos - http://www.oldbluewebdesigns.com/
LS2 Engine Assembly - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2ZQQRDmlJc&feature=related
President: Bruce Carter
Vice President: Russell Lewis
Secretary: Barbara Pattberg
NCM Ambassador:
Charley Robertson
Treasurer: Jim Robertson
Caravan Coordinator: John
Hickman
Local Event Coordinator: Bruce Carter
Newsletter Editor:
Terry Weldon
Member at Large:
Charley O. Robertson
Member at Large:
Rick Early
Webmaster: Brent Gourley
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