By Kelly Armstrong
The next meeting will be on August 8 at 7 p.m. at Me & Stan's
in Rexburg. Maybe if we get out of there early we can go for a short
ride.
Things have been real busy this summer, and, by the way, summer is almost
gone. Here it is August already and we haven't done very much, or at least
Terry and I haven't. Our meeting at B.J.'s was real fun. There were a lot
of people there and the food was good. We didn't go to the Taylor show so
I don't know how many was there, but Bev will probably give us a head count
in the minutes. It seemed like we missed Iona Days too. Well, maybe this
next month we will be able to show up more often.
August Birthdays
| Brian Novak | 1 |
| Brian Forman | 6 |
| Lori Walsh | 11 |
| Fred Hughes | 13 |
| Ben Sanchez | 27 |
Open House
We would like to extend an invitation to be all club members to attend an
open house in honor of the marriage of our son, Ryan, to Stephanie Donoho
of Decatur, Ill. It will be held at our home, 326 North 375 East, Rexburg,
from 7 to 9 p.m., Saturday, August 19. Hope to see you there.
Pam and Wayne Valentine
July Meeting Minutes
By Bev Novak
The meeting was held at BJ's Bayou in Roberts. Thirty-five members attended.
Linda Moore talked about the trip to Seattle. If you are going, you need
to make reservations now. One motel would not block rooms so Linda had to
reserve the rooms in her name. We will be leaving September 2 nd and coming
home on September 10th. Please call Linda (357-7573) or email
rlm@srv.net if you are going. She needs
to have all the names of people going.
Wild West Vette Fest '00 is going well. We offered the early-bird
price to any one at the meeting. Sponsorships are going well. We have one
$500 sponsor, Grey Wolf, and five $250 sponsors: Toco Time, Me & Stans,
Fed Meyers, Speedy Auto Glass, and Snake River IBO. There are many $50 sponsors.
Thanks to all the club members that have sponsored our show. We need door
prizes from club members. Please give the door prizes to Bev or Brian Novak.
The Grey Wolf only has 18 rooms left.
Kelly would like to have a Cruz after Scotties on the first and third Thursdays
of the month. Our next meeting will be August 8th at Me &
Stans in Rexburg.
Iona days were held Thursday 20th through Saturday 22 . Saturday
was the car show.
Ferrell Davis brought up that there is a Fireman's dinner on Saturday the
29th. Ferrell has tickets if you want to go. It is the start of the Dance
festival. He is also thinking of a fall trip to Bozeman, Great Falls, and
Helena, Montana. This would be sometime in October.
The meeting was adjourned.
Seattle in September
Plans are in place and it looks like we will have a good trip to Seattle
in September. We will leave the morning of the 2nd and travel to Ontario,
OR, spend the night, and travel to the coast the next day.
The next two days we will explore the Oregon Coast and the Olympic Peninsula
before going to Victoria for two days. From there we will go to Marque Seattle
Corvette Club's first show. We will have time to look around Seattle before
the show starts on Friday night.
Anyone interested in more details and phone numbers for motels should call
Linda Moore at 357-7573.
Door Prizes Needed
Door prizes are needed for the Wild West Vette Fest '00. You can give your
door prize to Brian or Bev Novak. Door prizes should be about $ 10. (Let's
get some for the ladies - Victoria's Secret has some good things on sale!!!)
Way to Go Ben
Vette magazine's current issue contains an article written
by Ben Sanchez.
Corvette Z06
The 2001 Corvette Z06 takes its inspiration from the thinly disguised racer
that Chevrolet unleashed in the 1963 Z06, the first year of the StingRay.
The new 2001 Z06 is the first true performance iteration of the latest Corvette,
the C5, and is based on the lighter, stiffer hardtop model. The thinking
behind the car, according to Corvette chief engineer and vehicle line executive
Dave Hill, is to provide a Corvette than can be driven to the track and then
raced. About 15 percent of Corvette buyers - 4500 out of 30,000 annual sales
- are expected to buy the Z06, which replaces the existing hardtop.
The Z06 doesn't look much different from the outside, save for new wheels,
red-painted brake calipers, some badging, mesh grilles where the foglamps
are normally housed, and another pair of grilles ahead of the rear wheel
arches. The rear grilles feed cooling air into the rear brakes, and those
on the nose duct air into the engine intake. Inside, the Z06 gets different
seats that feature better side bolstering and a revised instrument cluster
with fancier graphics.
The real action with this car occurs in all the right places - under the
fiberglass skin. Up front, there's a completely reworked 5.7-liter pushrod
OHV V-8 that has been dubbed LS6. It shares its basic architecture and many
of its parts with the existing Corvette LS I engine, but there are several
important changes, starting with a new block that has a modified oil system
to cope with increased cornering performance and cast-in "window" that relieves
unwanted crankcase pressure. As a result of new cylinder heads and pistons,
the compression ratio is now 10.5:1 rather than IO. 1:1. The engine also
has a higher-lift camshaft, stronger valve springs, new fuel injectors, and
a titanium exhaust system that reduces back pressure and weighs 17.6 pounds
less than the steel system used in regular Corvettes. The LS6 engine makes
385 horsepower at 6000 rpm and 385 pound feet of torque at 4800 rpm, which
is 35 more horsepower and 10 more pound feet than the stock 2001 Corvette
equipped with a manual transmission.
To cope with the increased power and torque, the Z06 gets a new six-speed
manual transmission. This features shorter gearing on all the ratios except
fourth, which partially explains why the Z06 reaches 60 mph from rest in
4.0
seconds compared with the regular Corvette's 4.5 seconds. It also does a
standing quarter-mile in 12.6 seconds compared with 13.2 seconds for the
regular car. The Z06 has a modified shifter mount for quicker gear changes
and gets, as do all 2001 manual equipped Corvettes, a beefier clutch and
a stronger, larger-diameter drive shaft.
The suspension has been improved, too. The Z06 anti-roll bars have a bigger
diameter and wall thickness than both the stock suspension and the Z51
performance setup, and the dampers have different valving. There's a shorter
rear jounce bumper, a stiffer rear leaf spring, and 0.75 degree of negative
camber at the front, up from 0.25 degree. The 17-inch front and 18-inch rear
wheels are an inch wider and carry specially developed 265/40 front and 295/35
rear Goodyear Eagle F I Supercar tires.
Chevrolet tried hard to reduce weight - a thinner windshield and backlight
save 5.7 punds, for instance - so the Z06 is 38 pounds lighter than the previous
Corvette hardtop and 99 pounds lighter than the 2001 coupe. The Z06 is equipped
with the Corvette's Active Handling skid control system, which benefits from
a number of upgrades for 2001, including traction control that uses the rear
brakes and engine management rather than relying solely on throttle intervention.
Competitive Mode, whereby skid control is retained but traction control is
switched off, now can be accessed on the fly.
*From Automobile magazine.