I Bought a DEAD Flood Totaled Corvette ZR1 Super Cheap; but it came with a Big Problem...

Okay, I can do this officially because this is my car. I'm going to remove this tape. Come on, maybe you probably wish you'd kept the tape on, right? and this door doesn't close properly on this part of the window sill. it's

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nice and clean so we're off to a good start oh come on come on let's get on with this alright moment of truth was I really wrong or did I buy a time capsule buying a water

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car salty without being seen? It's a great emotion. This is the closest thing you can get here to Las Vegas, except at least you'll go home with the life-size Hot Wheels version of the car you set out to get for a bargain.

In my case, it is this. 1991 Corvette ZR1, king of the hill and the fastest production car of its time. These cars sell for very good money, but the

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est ones that run cost over twenty thousand dollars and there were a few other C4 zr1s that were sold in this

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lot and They all cost over thirteen thousand dollars, but this one right here I only It cost eight thousand two hundred dollars, but with the deep discount comes a pretty hefty responsibility that includes a brand title. No odometer reading, no service history and as I'm about to find out.

This one doesn't come with keys either. I have to tell you, the rugs up here feel great. I mean, it doesn't smell that bad in here, where are the keys? Didn't I buy a set of keys with this car? It would be a tragedy until now, it's a 90's Chevrolet and there's not much sign of mold or anything like that. So far we're doing great, but we've got to get there, we've got to open the hood, we're not doing weatherstripping here. so it's not a perfect example, especially considering it was in a flood, yeah, everything goes well there, we have the hood.

Pop, no, I still have to see a set of keys, let's still look here, no, oh, there's the engine. There's a big difference between a regular C4 and a C4 ZR1, let's see what we have, it's not good, let's see how high the oil got on the dipstick and in certain areas it looks quite milky, like right there, that means there's water on that crank. case and the water has been sitting for quite a while, we're going to go ahead and put this dipstick back in and pretend this never happened. Thanks so much for looking. I hope you enjoyed it, no I am.

Just kidding, whether I like it or not, this is my car, I have a truck and a trailer. I'll take him home. I've been looking for one for a long time but they are so expensive, fingers crossed we can get some. I come back to life on this, I mean, it's a Chevrolet engine, it's actually a European Lotus engine, but is it a Chevrolet? Okay, we're not going to rule it out completely, but oil isn't all milk, so it's pretty funny that these two are parked next to each other and I know you're not really impressed with this Corvette, but what if Would I tell you that it has power figures very close to those of this car and that there is a 10-year difference?

This is a 1991 and a 2001 model year. this one has like 375 horsepower and they factory rated them between 390 and 4400 so literally a few horsepower difference in the later model years They increased this to 405 or something, so virtually identical horsepower numbers, 10 year difference. and well, there is also a big price difference between the two. The good news is that this was a relatively light Gamble and there are many parts on this car that are very unique to the ZR1. I'm not ruling it out, but it's still an American car. It's old, it has a lot of weird electronics, but let's dig into it, see exactly what's wrong, and fingers crossed we'll have a working ZR1 if that engine doesn't work.

If it's not closed then we're definitely not going to have a running ZR1, as you can see my emotions are a bit scattered at this point in hindsight. I think I was quite surprised to see so much water on the dipstick considering the auction attracted a pretty low water line on the car, this is going to be a major hurdle and we are just starting to figure out this car, let's give it a try and see how far we can go without spending huge amounts of cash on this. Corvette, you know. I try to save money every step of the way on these projects and that starts at the beginning, before I even put the car on the road to pick them up.

I open the top and claim a cash refund before jumping in. On the highway, it seems like gas prices have gone up again and there's no good way to feel about it, but the perk helps take some of the pressure off by offering cash back during slow gas pumps, simply find the nearest location, check the fill and That's it, in a few days, your refund will be automatically credited to your account and for backseat drivers, your advantages are not just about fuel, you can also get refunds cash in

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Right there that's all I've seen it before in another car look at your shirt it says salty life that's the life this one lived what do you think about that does it really look like money? Well, that's oil with a little water, you know, but there's oil in there. you are seeing oil, yes it looks like someone tried to start it. They mixed the day, yes, they made a little smoothie. Oh come on, are you sure? I thought it looked like they were separated. Did you really see a milkshake? Now I looked down into the hole before.

I went and put the spark plug in there and it was dry, so like on the Viper there was water basically up to the top of the engine before I took the plugs out, there was water in the holes, I mean. It was all bad news. What's around here doesn't look good. Our spark plug. What do you think I mean? Are You professional. Does it just look like a used spark plug to you? It looks wet. She looks wet. To get a good look inside the cylinders, we go ahead and pull out our scope

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ra, which is this little

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ra on the end of a probe that fits perfectly into the spark plug holes and even has cameras on the side so you can see in 360 degrees. . the inside of the cylinders and make sure that we don't have corrosion or anything that will basically lead to the demise of this engine from the beginning oh, I think you hit the water, you really know, look, wait, oh no, you didn't understand. in oh what is that, that's oil, look what happened, see what happened that's not mixed with water, see what happened, yeah, the water pushed the oil up, yeah, yeah, because the water It's, uh, do that again, let's go in so the probe goes in wow, that would definitely crash if we tried to start it.

See, that means there's a lot of water in the drain pan. There's a lot of water in the drain pan, but it pushed the oil up, all we've seen so far. It's the first cylinder, there's clearly a good amount of oil in there, but that's not bad at all because we don't have any mixture, we don't have oil mixed with water, which means someone tried to start it, so clearly there's water probably in the The bottom half of the engine pushed the oil up and on the second one Mike and I saw that we came to the same conclusion.

We both waited a minute when this car was in the air as the loader was lifting it onto the trailer and When Mike just lifted it up we both noticed that the pan was leaking a little bit of oil, it's a little crunchy in there so the fact that The pan not being perfectly sealed probably means that the stagnant water sat there for quite a while and slowly made its way out. in the frying pan, does that make sense to you or did we just make it up out of thin air? I think it makes sense, the physics makes sense to me because if you look at the water line here like it's so low it doesn't make much sense, usually the water has to be very high to start getting to the engine.

I don't know any way, we have to do two things right now, we have to drain the tray asap and get the rest out. our spark plugs and we took the oil out of the cylinder, we raised the car a little more and you could see exactly what we're talking about, you see the drain pan, it's all dirty, so it's been leaking for a while, our drain plug drainage is fine. there we're going to see how much water comes out of this weird thing, there's the water, actually Mike, yeah, let the water come out, leave it for a second because in case there's a ton of water, oh, you don't have the plugs. drain out of the hole. okay let it go oh man um strange it's really cool our oil drip pan was filling up really fast and was sitting on our jack at an angle.

You could lower the chamber so you can push the pan flat where it filled completely to the top, this is a 20 quart pan and the oil capacity of this car is about nine quarts when full so there is more salt water here than oil. Then we have to pump the oil out of the cylinders so we can try to get a clearer view with our scope. so I just put this little straw here in our siphon pump that's connected to a battery down there. I've got a little oil drain bucket here, let's see how much oil comes out of the cylinder, oh look, that's not good. the last cylinder, well it looked like the most disgusting of the bunch if you could see where we extracted what looks like a mixture of water and oil from there, the oil that came out of most of the cylinders was actually really nice, it looked like pure motor oil , so it's really the first cylinder closest to the front of the passenger bench and the one that's all the way back here on the driver's side of the two that we're going to pay a little more attention to to allow me to grab the viewfinder now and let's go See how everything looks with the fluid out of the cylinders for the most part, everything looked great, not in all cylinders.

I didn't see any major corrosion buildup on the walls or anything really concerning. We're ready to start pouring in some cleaner. this engine and start ordering some service parts so we can try to turn it over by hand as not having a set of keys for this car is a bit of a pain, it's a bit of a positive because it didn't mean anyone was at the auction. I was able to start this harvest and it's obvious that no one tried to start this car after it flooded. You saw the water came out clear as day and then the oil didn't mix, so we're good on that and on the high end. of the engine with the scope cam also looks pretty decent, it looks like the oil that was mixed with the salt water was able to prevent any kind of corrosion from building up on the top end, but now that it's all out of the engine and there was a good amount of salt water in there, we don't want corrosion to form, so what I did was run away.

I grabbed five gallons of diesel, which is a very good detergent. I poured four of those five gallons into the crankcase, what should it be? What we need to do is surround all the metal components that were previously surrounded with salt water and again prevent corrosion from forming just for the time being obviously we have a pretty decent oil pan leak that Pan has to remove and we have to get close further. Let's inspect the underside of this engine, we will, but first I want to get to the keyless situation to see how good or bad the electronics are in this car now that we're home, I spent a little time just checking the front interior and rear to try to find signs of water damage or any type of flooded modules or something like that and I have to tell you that for a flooded car I don't see anything, at least nothing obvious, usually with water comes some sand, dirt and things like that, for What these cars again smell bad and you will find all kinds of sand everywhere, like we did with our Dodge Viper, unless someone at the auction cleans it thoroughly and we just do a complete walk-through of the auction lot.

The cars were flooded and even though they were clean there was still dirt and grime everywhere the flood waters touched. I mean, there's nothing like that here, the door panels are as clean as possible and our water line is obviously above the door panel, it's about a third of the way down the door, or someone cleaned this car immediately after it got wet inside or the water never got inside because I swear I can't find anything which is obviously a big plusnow that it hasn't arrived. with a battery so I don't really know if any of the electronics work but you also need to turn the ignition on to test something and address the no keys issue.

I think the simplest solution here is to just replace the ignition cylinder, it's a thirty dollar part just turning on the ignition should power up our interior electronics, so we'll have to figure out how to defeat the anti-theft system which is an old and outdated system. which operates with some resistances. I'm not very familiar with this. system is called Vats, the vehicle anti-theft system, if you know more about it and think I am on the right track, let me know in the comments or if you think there is a better or easier solution, let me know again in the comments, but for now I already have this ignition barrel because it cost 30 dollars, let's go ahead and see if we can give it some power.

Corvette is fine when and I already undid the screws that hold the air bag here and it's very windy outside, so the door wants to keep closing, that's my only source of ventilation and these door locks are super sticky so when they start to close I push to close. I got a little scared. I just need some tools and we should be able to get this out real quick. Change our ignition. Okay, so I told them I spent 40 bucks between the new ignition and the resistors, but no. I had to buy this steering wheel plate tool to remove this ring, which was another 15, so for this job we'll be around 55 dollars and, uh, just a few bad words because this ring is a pain to get out now. . the old saying is that they don't make them like they used to and I have to tell you that on this car this has been the most complicated steering wheel and clockspring and to remove everything, I mean you can see some of them are still stuck in place here . but everything is so robust.

I'm so surprised that I didn't have any plastic disintegrate. I'm so used to European cars where they use such

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plastics and uh everything is still here and this should be a screw that once it comes out, let's see here. take out this whole ignition cylinder, oh there it is, see the back of the ignition here, this needs to attach to the column here, otherwise it won't turn whatever you turn to turn on the whole gauge cluster right there, okay . there's our ignition now we put in the key it came with however that works oh there we go look hey we even have two sets of keys so here it is and then I guess to turn it off you have to press that button there when you turn it and you might see something move in here, obviously we're not interested in starting the car at this point until we get the engine sorted, however the engine won't start because our security system wouldn't be defeated, there's no no chip in this. key, we'll figure all that out later, for now I want to put a battery under the hood.

I want to see if we can get an odometer reading on our Corvette so we spent 50 on our ignition system so far this battery is correct. here in the store it was in the value aisle and was $60. I already heard that something happens when I connect this negative cable, let's see here, I'm trying to tighten it, it's our positive cable. Look, you hear the headlight motors turning, wait, I'm squeezing the negative terminal right now, look at that, wow, the lights are on, they should have power, let me go and make sure this is pretty good, this is huge, what are you guessing?

We have 250,000 miles. or you have 25,000 miles, then we have 2,500 miles. Oh look, our hazards are on because we pulled the emergency lights switch out of the pillar, here we go.