Great news, and great progress.

Well crap.. I could have told you that ALL 8.8 3.90 gearsets whine badly a long time ago. Only OE Ford gears are quiet.

Ignorant question here..

Can the MGW F Style shifter be installed with the Tremec Magnum F-Style in the FC?  Or does the transmission have to be dropped?

I can't find enough images on the internet to figure out from my couch.

My transmission got installed without my knowledge.  Not that I am complaining, at least it is installed.

I’ve had both the Fbody T56 and the Magnum F in my FC. I have Ronin engine and trans mounts.

So the problem is the front 2 shifter bolts are blocked. If you drill 2 holes in the tunnel to get to them, yes the shifter will come out without dropping the transmission. I made a small plate that attached to the stock inner boot that covered the holes.

That's so cool you ran into Anthony!  Love that you're still out there ripping the car.

I'm digging the white C5!  My buddy and I both miss ours sometimes.  My old yellow one was absolutely perfect when I sold it.  I also love that orange color on the C6Z's.  A c6z is probably one of the best purchases you can make today for 35-45k.  I don't think they'll ever be worth less, and strong chance of going up in value.

Thanks! I don’t get to the track quite as much as I used to. Honestly before I bought the C5 I was kinda considering putting an interior back in the FC and putting AC back in. All that interior I could not give away 12 years ago and ended up trashing was a couple grand to buy today.. and finding it all is another time suck. 🤣

I’ll be doing the Hot Rod Power Tour West this year. They just announced it and it will be in October going from Pomona to Phoenix, stopping at Pechanga in Temecula, Indio and Lake Havasu in between. Just have to find someone to launch my boat when we get to the Havasu day 😀, but really looking forward to that.

I really liked your C5 and your build. I was looking hard at 2020+ 1LE Camaros or c6zs but this car is going to live outside most of the time and couldn’t bear having either of those outside. For all its quirks, it’s perfect for what I use it for. If I end up building it, your car always comes to mind…. Or turn it into a race car and go Spec Corvette racing 😂

Looks good man.


I really want a C6Z but they are hyper inflated now.

I really enjoyed tuning my brother's '03 Z, if I had a long commute daily, I would consider one.


Other than the color, it was extremely comfortable, sounded nasty and had decent get up (TEA heads, longtubes)

Thanks! Aside from being hyper aware of road debris and steep entry/exits it is a good travel or commuting car. We just drove it back and forth to Vegas a couple days ago and my wife is even starting to come around. Everyone else loves the car but her

My brother picked up a pretty nice 08 c6z about 6 months ago with the heads fixed, cam, headers and intake with 40k miles for $42k. These things have been in the $40s for 15 years now. I’ve seen the prices trending up on them a bit, but decent ones are still out there for good prices. I don’t know if the prices will get much lower than low $40s ever for nice low mileage ones.

My bother put on the Forgestars and just did an MSD intake manifold and Haltech intake.

I’m taking his old K&N intake and switching my car over to the slot style MAF.

When I had a metal tube I had better luck putting my IAT sensor in my lower bumper valence away from the radiator, but similar air as what the air filter is seeing, but if your tune can compensate for the heat soak it is nicer to have it in the tube for sure.  IAT would go 160 or higher at a stop with a hot engine bay. 

Yea I will be logging mine again soon to see. I have to touch up the tune for the new intake manifold and throttle body. My sensor is in the air wash coming off the radiator, so yea it’s warm air but it does not seem to just saturate and build up an insane air temp reading.

Nice C5.   They seem like a great bang for the buck car at this point.

Thanks! They really are a great bang for the buck right now, especially if you can handle little DIY projects here and there. All of the dumb problems are well documented and the fixes are known, For the most part, the parts and restoration parts are really cheap.

It is well known that the seats suck for performance driving (mostly because it is all leather and you just slide off the seat in a hard corner), but they are really comfortable for cruising. I'm putting new bottom seat foams in next week, they were $75 each, and doing some seat frame upgrades while I'm in there. If you can handle stuff like that they are pretty good cars.

The entire center dash panel needed to be swapped for the new radio.. That was $50 on Amazon, $250 for the head unit, $70 for the convertor to use the factory Bose speakers, and I added a $100 backup camera.. A $500 project, and its like a modern car now.

If anyone is looking, ideally you want an 01 to mid 03. If you find a nice care, they are all ok, the 2000 and older cars have unrepairable ABS modules that sometimes go out, and some other older electronics.

Ok I got the car all fixed up and finally put the Dorman intake and Holley 90mm throttle body on the car.

If anyone is putting a Dorman LS2 intake on, it’s a bit of a fiasco.. but it fits and works. You can hack up the firewall a lot  for clearance, but I close to lightly modify the firewall lip and notch the back of the intake to fit around it, relocate the MAP sensor back there, and it packaged pretty well. I used a Motion Raceworks adjustable throttle cable and mount, the OE throttle cable bracket and cable was not going to work well with the Holley TB. I had to clearance the bottom of the TB, intake mouth and water pump to get everything to clear.

You can see the notch I cut in the pics below. I was going to remote mount the MAP sensor, but I ended up removing the brass elbow and mounting the MAP sensor in that hole. I used JB Weld Plastic Bonder to secure the aluminum into place. It sits in some notches I made, so even if the JB Weld failed, the aluminum pieces can’t fall into the manifold.


I threw all that on and then went to LSFest West in Vegas and happened to run into @V8-rx7 Anthony. That was a cool surprise, I haven’t seen him in about 5 years. He was in a loaner Corvette Z06 I did the AutoX on street tires since I drove the car 90 miles there with my dad to road test everything. The car did well. I’m going to be more serious about the Autox next year.

Damn that is awesome brother!