C4 CORVETTE QUIRKS - Top 5 Secrets They Don’t Tell You (Until You Own One!)

The fourth generation C four Corvette is one of the coolest but weirdest cars that America has ever produced in this video .

I'm not going to go over the same courts that you might have already heard before .

I'm going to assume you already know about the 1 to 4 skip shift with the manual transmission or the pop up headlights , the swivel 180 degrees or the essentially useless cupholders territory today , I'm going to go over the super surprising stuff that I didn't discover until after I owned my car .

And this is the little stuff either , this is stuff that you will notice every single day if you daily your corvette like I do .

So these are my top five quirks about owning ac four Corvette that no one tells you until you own one .

Welcome to the channel for anyone who wants to enjoy cars without breaking the bank .

Yep .

I'm a youtuber who's usually talking about cheap practical used cars or ownership hacks or things like that .

And yet here I am , I own a Corvette .

Sometimes you just can't explain love and I love my car .

It's a 1996 collector edition that was made to commemorate the last year of the C four corvette .

Now I did a ton of research before picking up my corvette .

In fact , I drove three other Corvettes before buying this one .

Even then I had to discover these five things by myself .

So let's get started with number one , number one , the wide turning circle , it is atrocious .

The car isn't very big , but you'll need a ton of space if you have to turn around .

The problem stems from how wide the front tires are .

Look at this , my steering wheel is hard over .

Yep .

That's all the steering angle that you get .

The wide front tires are great for high speed grip but not so great in tight parking spaces where you'll have to do a lot of three point turns .

The second thing that no one tells you about the coolant temperature in the Corvette Facebook groups , I'm in .

This comes up all the time from new owners who have either the L T one or the L T four engines like mine .

So you're driving around for a while and you look down at your temperature gauge and holy crap .

It's overheating .

What do I do ?

Well , you can relax because the engines are designed to run that hot .

That's because they have what's called a reverse flow cooling system .

Now , what the heck is that in almost every car ?

The coolant has a path that starts at the block and then sucked up to the heads .

But the L T one or L T four engines are opposite of that .

The coolant cools the heads first and then goes down to the block D M designed it this way for increased reliability and performance and efficiency reasons that I won't get into here .

But it means that the coolant temperature runs hotter than what you'd see in normal cars .

Most cars run about 200 F , but these Corvettes won't even turn on their electric cooling fans until about 2 25 .

Or if you turn on the air conditioning , that's by design .

Totally normal .

Don't sweat it .

What I think is a dumb design is the gauge itself .

I think normal operating temperature should show the needle pointing at the middle , not near the top end , which seems to indicate that there's some sort of problem when there isn't but whatever moving on .

Number three , these hyperactive seatbelt tension .

Now this is probably the single , most annoying thing on this car .

I don't think this gets much attention because most people just potter around in their Corvettes .

But I like to drive mine with , let's say spirit .

Now , you might be already familiar with seatbelt tension because most modern cars have them .

The idea is if you get in an accident or you suddenly slow down the seat belt will cinch up on you and hold you firmly in place .

And then afterwards when there's no more weight pressing against the belts , the seat belt will relax so you can move around in comfort .

Well , the Corvette , they got the first part down but not the second part .

So if you are really hustling and your body is pushing against the belt around a fast corner or if you're breaking or even accelerating hard , the seat belt .

But unlike every other seat belt tension I've ever seen , it won't let go afterwards .

The bottom part will just keep compressing in on you .

It's super uncomfortable and the only way to release the script is to unbuckle it completely and then rebuck it so not the best safety feature .

At first , I thought my seat belts were broken because I couldn't get a straight answer from any of the parts guys , any Corvette experts or even my factory service manual .

I even bought and installed another pair of belts to see if they worked any differently .

Nope , same issue .

I actually took the cover of one of my seat belts apart beyond some loose change that was stuck in there .

Everything looked to be in its right place inside the red bracket .

You can see the little metal gyro do Hickie that triggers this issue .

Gyro Hicky , very technical term .

When that swings around in any direction , it activates a paw that cinches down the belt and then won't let go .

I think a lot of owners get confused about this issue because of this little cinch button .

So let me clarify what that does .

If you're about to go for a spear to drive or if you're going to a race track , you can pre cinch the seat belts by hitting this button so that you can't move around .

But I think this button is useless because as I already said , the little gyro do wiki inside will cinch up your belts at the first sneeze of G's anyways .

But if you're looking at a later model year , like mine , just know you're not crazy .

And that this is how the belts are supposed to operate for better or for worse .

The fourth thing no one tells you is that you cannot heel and tow downshift .

A driver's car should have a manual transmission and a proper driver's car should have its pedal space so that you can heal and tow downshift and the Corvette of all cars doesn't if you've never heard of heel and toe downshifting .

Don't worry , it's pretty much unnecessary in daily driving .

But for hustling around a race track or a canyon road , it's a great skill to know my friend Ethan over at the Hill road , youtube channel will demonstrate in his car , which has proper pedal spacing .

If you're coming up on a tight turn , you'll need to downshift , lift the throttle and hold the brakes all at the same time .

So that's where you use your heel on the gas and the tow on the pedal , get it down pat .

And it's super fun and super satisfying , but not all cars have their pedals spaced well for this .

And unfortunately , the Corvette is one of them .

You can see that the accelerator pedal is set so far back from the brake that it makes heel and towing basically impossible .

The only way around this is to get some sort of accelerator pedal extender .

Thankfully , my friend Stewart works with 3D printers and was able to custom design one for me that slips neatly over my accelerator pedal so that they're more even I can now heel and toe in my corvette .

And to that , I am eternally grateful to him , Stewart .

You're the best .

The last thing that no one told me about owning AC four Corvette is the trash control pushes back .

Most modern cars have trash control , but the C four Corvette was one of the very first cars to have it when it became standard equipment .

In 1992 .

The Corvette system is called A S R which stands for anti slip regulation .

For the most part , it works just like any other trash control system .

When it senses that one of the drive wheels is slipping , the trash control will either use the brakes or close the throttle to low it down .

What makes the Corvette system so bizarre is that when it's active , it's actually pushing back against your foot .

It's as if the car is telling you all right , buddy , time to back off .

This threw me the first time I drove this car hard because I've never even heard of another car that did this if you know of any .

I'd love to hear about it in the comments below .

Thankfully , A S R can be defeated with this button to the left of the steering wheel .

But you have to do this every time you start the car and disabling , it makes a warning light .

Come on right in the middle of the driver information center , which is annoying , but hey , at least you can turn it off if you want to go and have some fun .

So , hey , that's my list .

If you're a Corvette owner , I'd love to hear from you in the comment section below .

Anything that surprised you after you bought the car that you wish you knew about beforehand and be sure to subscribe and hit that bell icon .

So you don't miss any more videos coming your way real soon till next time .

Thanks for watching .

Stay Practical .