ORIGINAL: The Corvette Doctor

If you are buying off of eBay, you should try to get someone to check it for you before bidding. If not, try to bid only on ones where the seller says if you check the car and it isn't what we say, then you can back out without any penalty.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of junk out there. Some is on purpose. They know it is junk and they are trying to find someone who will get stuck with it. Some just happen. Some dealers buy many cars through the car auctions (dealers only) and some are good and some are bad. However, some of these dealers are one- or two-man shops that simply buy and sell cars. They may not have a garage to check and repair and sometimes they get bad cars that they don't know or that they fixed wrong.

Anyway that it happens, you still end up with a problem.

If you find a car on eBay, post here and other forums asking for someone to checkit for you. Most forum members on most forums will do it for free, also a small gift of dinner for two or something is a nice gesture for their time. You can also hire experts to check them.

The LT1 is like most Chevrolet V8 engines - tough. They last a long time normally. They do break, but usually from abuse, and that is often more abuse than a lot of other brands will handle.

From what I hear, three issues I know of are the water pumps tend to go bad around 100,000 miles +/- 20,000 miles. In the earlier LT1s, the water pump leaking will ruin the OptiSpark distributor, so it will need replacing at the same time.

I also have heard that the heads are susceptible to cracking from overheating, so if the water pump is leaking for very long, the engine could have overheated and cracked the heads. Maybe someone else can verify this.


Good luck.