Performance Verification

The car has been back to Dan Martin's shop, Hill Country Vettes, for the last two weeks, trying to get it ready for the Performance Verification (PV) at the NCRS regional meet, April 7th-9th 2022, in New Orleans. The PV consists of four pages of items, including a cold start, a ten-mile drive, and basically checking every operational component of the car. The tough part is that a single item failure means you fail the test. It's either 100% or a Zero!

I started going through the list and came up with seven items to address, including the dripping coolant after driving it (it stops after a few minutes,) the dimming feature for the interior gauge lights, and the storage door for the battery compartment (hard to latch.)

When Dan got the car, he found 14 additional items that needed to be addressed! I was starting to feel like we were up against the impossible. I started to understand why someone started a checklist to prepare for a PV on a 52-year-old car:

Step One. Slit your wrists

Step Two...

I realized while the Top Flight was judged to be how the car LOOKED when it rolled off the factory floor, the PV was judged to be how the car RAN when it rolled off the factory floor. Every single component, from the engine idle speeds to the cigarette lighter, has to operate correctly. And again, a single item means a failure of the test.

We started the repairs. Installing a new headlight switch got the dimmer function working. A new idle spring and some adjustments got the fast idle working at 1500 rpm, down from 1800 rpm. We got the left windshield washer squirting and got the headlight washers squirting to the center of the headlamps. Got the ashtray door closing smoothly now. A test drive got the rear end positraction locked in. And so on....

Part of the test requires the rear window to be removed, which probably hadn't been done in at least 48 years. Got that in and out ok. The storage area for the rear window was missing the handle, so we had to get parts for that as well.

The last item on the test is shutting off the car with the headlights up, then waiting 1+ minutes and closing the headlights, to make sure the vacuum system holds pressure. This car had the vacuum pumps refurbished but the original hoses seemed good (the vacuum systems worked quite well when raising and lowering the headlights, windshield wiper door, etc.) .... except we discovered the old hoses are actually leaking and the system failed to hold pressure after engine shutdown. So, we had to replace the vacuum hoses.

While the car was up on the lift, we also discovered that the coolant leak was not from the overflow tube, where we thought it was coming from, but instead was from the hoses not being clamped tight enough on the copper tubes to the heater core. Tightening those seems to have fixed the coolant leak.

One of the last things we checked was to make sure hot air was coming out at your feet from the heater. And guess what--no hot air. So now we're looking at repairing or replacing the heater control valve.

People usually fail this test because something that has been working all along stops working. Something breaks that has been working the whole time. Yep, it happened to us. During one portion of the test, we watched to make sure the "headlight" position indicator light came on during movement of the headlights to the up position. It is supposed to go out when they are fully up. This has worked every time we've tested it since I've had the car.... until today.... This time the light stayed on. Darn it all. Thankfully, a little adjustment at the headlight fixed that problem.

So now, with one week until the real PV, Dan is working on the heater control valve. Hopefully, that will be the last item that needs to be repaired.

I had planned to take the car to Boerne for the annual Texas Corvette Association Corvette show this Saturday, but it looks like it won't make it. But with any luck, she'll be ready for the real PV next week.

Fingers crossed!