Hand Me Down 2013 Camaro Story (Plus Radio Bug)
 

Just a little story about my (now completely mine) journey with the 2013 Camaro "Little Red"

The wife wanted a new Camaro. They ain't making them (duh). So we settled for a 2022 red (Red Hot) Camaro with the rear high spoiler and the black bowtie emblems and the whole bit. It looks sharp. So did I want to keep the 2013? Hell ya! I was bombing around in a 97 Mountaineer and half the stuff didn't work on it lol. So now the 2013 was home with me all the time and I started tinkering. Gave the Mercury to a buddy so he didn't have to drive his kid to work anymore. He won't impress any girls but it beats walking. I'm retired so I have lots of time to tinker.

Gave it a good hand wash and gloss blacked the tires. Rubbed out some minor scratches and such. Buffed out the headlight lens. Driving and being able to see at night is cool! Looking pretty good! Cleaned out all the gum wrappers and such and gave it an in depth interior cleaning and vacuum. Got some vinyl wrap pieces ( ) and covered over the gold bowtie emblems to black. That went better than expected, they're perfect! Trick is an X Acto knife with new blade and a hair dryer to make the glue extra sticky after it's on and rub it down some with a credit card.. It was that or steal the ones off my the wife's new ride lol. The car is looking excellent inside and out!

As is often the case... the radio didn't work. It's an old car so I replaced the BCM. Had to have the dealer program it. Did nothing for the radio but I felt a little better having it replaced. Couple hundred bucks all together with the programming..

So no radio. I pulled radio fuses. Disconnected the battery,. numerous times. It didn't exactly work. Now it would come on and off when it felt like it. Totally on it's own. It wouldn't stay on more than a minute or so on each on off cycle it was doing. So I pulled the radio fuse *for good*. *Sigh* But it did get "fixed" later on. I resisted the cut the white wire thing. But I probably would have as a last resort.

While in a battle with the radio I got a custom phone holder for the fifth generation Camaro from Amazon. (Bracket) and the . They are made to go together but sold separately. I love this phone holder! Super cool and the plug for the charger is right by it in the center console. Very cool!! It's not OEM but it's close enough. Getting back to the radio so hang in there.

So to install the phone holder (15 minute job) I had to remove the front center console to get to the 2 bolts for the radio face plate. Million Youtube videos on that. Easy enough. The bracket uses the screws holding in the main radio body behind the face plate. So I get that all apart and install the phone bracket. I'm staring at the white wire on the radio as I prepare to snap it all back together. I resist the urge. So I put the radio fuse back in. Fuse is in the trunk and it takes about as long to get to that as putting in the phone bracket. The radio didn't come on. I still wasn't ready to cut the white wire yet. It's a quick job to get to it another time. So I snap everything back together and while doing that i hit the radio face plate with the side of my fist to snap it back in. Not like Mike Tyson, just some firm taps required to get it back on. I thought it was odd the radio wasn't going on and off as usual. So I press the on button and it works!!! It works for 5 minutes... 10 minutes.... 15 minutes! .... Been working solid for weeks now. OnStar works again. My blinkers go click click. I can use the phone buttons on the steering wheel and everything. Beats the Hell outta me. I'll take the win! Best phone holder eva lol!

Well the radio is working so let's grab some CDs. Still love me some Nickleback and Stones. The radio hasn't worked in 7 years(?) and we smoke. So I assumed it would be iffy. Every CD it wouldn't read and just spit it back out. So I got a can of compressed air. The kind with the little straw for computers, There's just a slit there for the CD so I shot it around in there. Now a CD would work *sometimes*. So I bought a CD Lens Cleaner ( ). I ordered a Maxell one also which I haven't gotten yet. Figured one might work if the other didn't. Plus I can leave one in the car and one in the house for the bluray player. So I pop in the CD lens cleaner and it spits it right back out. So I just kept pushing it back in like 25 times. I don't have a lot to do... After like 25 times (seriously) it accepts the disk and I hear the guy giving instructions on the radio on how to use it. Hint: Just turn the radio to track 3. Since it's working for the moment I run the cleaning program like 10 times. The cleaning part actually runs about 7 seconds. I felt my situation was more serious than 7 seconds thus I ran it like 10 times. CD player is working like new. Sounds great! No skipping or anything. Every now and then it'll spit out a CD I just put in. But if I just push it back in it takes it, and it works great after that.. Maybe when the Maxell one gets here it'll make it 100%? So I'm on a winning streak.

Now those rims. These are the cheap steel black OEM rims with large slots and the center cap and a silver/satin trim rings. We use to call them beauty rings. Well the Victory Red Camaro with all black trim just doesn't go with the silver trim rings IMHO. So I decided I'd try and paint the trim rings a regular black. Not gloss or flat black, just regular black. So I take them off and stare at the wheels for awhile. Well the rims come all black with cute little red air stem caps on them. So I'm just going to leave the trim rings off. Still has the black center hub and bolt cover. I'm thinking they don't look bad. So I still may paint the trim rings but that's on hold for now.Should be easy enough to paint if I want to.

Got a black license plate frame and tossed the one with the dealer name on it. Bought some little toys to dress up the interior. Solid metal cup holder ashtray and such. I don't trust the plastic ones, I've seen them burn through after dropping a smoke inside them.Now I flirted with the car before but in love again with it now. I had a red 67 SS/RS with the nose stripe so it reminds me of the old days. While typing this my Maxell CD lens cleaner came so I'm gonna go sit in the car and tinker! The wife is slightly pissed I did none of this when it was her daily driver. Probably rightly so. But me and cars don't often go smooth so I tend to leave them alone.But she got a new one now so I don't feel sorry for her. Hope you enjoyed my little story or found something new to waste money on lol. Other than the BCM I've only put pennies into it. But it looks like a new car. I'm so happy. God bless.

PS Only critical (critical to me anyway) thing left to do at the moment. Replace the third high brake light behind the rear window. That's gotta be easy, right? What engineer could screw that up? It's on order... not really looking forward to that.