And this is part of the reason why I tell my office staff "no more old cars". There are a few other reasons, but parts availability and quality is near the top of the list. We still keep a small group of select clients and old cars. I'd rather administer a home enema than work on some of the junk that owners try to convince us otherwise to.
Not sure removing a core plug necessitates a full rebuild. I never heard of that before. If one or more are very accessible and you have the skill, then I would do it. What do the drain plugs look like? I'm not sure I'd be against at least looking at them. As far as coolant types are concerned, unless the entire cooling system is either new or cleaned in such a way as to remove all green coolant coating (aka boil the block), then any supposed advantages of a different coolant are severely compromised. But I understand why you are using the coolant you are. Good luck with any potential warranty claims if something happens. Somehow something will be your fault. I hope I am wrong.
You have that right! The brackets and all require two people to hold everything while putting it back together, and there is hardly room for one. We have figured out how to do it without taking the hood off, which requires 4 people to put back on. The joke to me was that I retired and decided to not do any more Buick's ("too big") so I would get a "small" car. The joke was on me as all Chevy did was take everything in an Impala and stuff it into a space 1/2 the size. Took me almost a day to change out the spark plug wires on a lift! Anyway, I do love the car and don't plan to sell it any time soon, but I will let you know if I do...you realize these cars START at about $65K these days and with factory a/c (5% of all C-2 cars) they are pretty nuts when it comes to pricing. C-3 cars are typically less except yours with a 454 and a/c. Cheers!
This right here is what is starting to sour me on this hobby. I've gotten burned a couple times lately, nothing major but still annoying. Long gone are the days you could walk to some random part store and buy a part that is correct and decent quality off the shelf (no waiting for shipment from warehouse). I'm not ready to hang up the towel yet but the hobby is becoming that much more aggravating.
Corvettes don't have a lot of surplus room under their hoods. I feel the same way as you about putting a second set of plug wires (routed the way the factory built it) on my C3 that I wish I had never sold. The only upside is that it was one of the few cars where I actually made money.
I wish my service writers would follow that advice, but they keep writing old stuff up because they don't know any different....These 20 something guys that are the new generation of techs aren't trained at all on anything like a carb or distributor, and especially not on anything that doesn't spit out a code to follow first. And then you're basically married to the car, because you fixed the headlights, now the brake line leaks, and it didn't before it was in the shop. And after you fix the brake line for free, it now randomly dies, and it didn't before you fixed the headlights and the brake line. And now that you fixed the headlights, replaced the brake line, and converted it to an HEI, all for free, the wipers quit...... Trying to explain to them that old cars require constant maintenance and that I work on at least one of mine every single week to keep them going doesn't sink in to a non-car person's brain. And believe me, 99% of the service writers I've ever worked with are not car people. It's just a job they stumbled into.
