From Les Stanford to San Diego
05-11-2014, 05:01 PM
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From Les Stanford to San Diego
I picked up my Laguna blue Stingray from Dennis Tapp on Tuesday 5/6. I'll start by saying Dennis is top notch. He kept me informed every step of the way and delivered as promised. I could not recommend him enough. He picked me up from the airport in a black convertible 427, which in my opinion, is no where close to the new C7's. Either way I was excited to be in a Vette and to pick mine up.
Once we arrived to the dealership, Dennis took me right to my car and once I looked it over, it was straight to the paperwork so I could get on the road to San Diego! Paperwork was painless and within 45 minutes I was on the road. For what it's worth, Dennis was more than willing to take longer than 45 minutes but since I had a 2600 mile drive I figured I would play with everything on the way, no need for him to go over everything, so it was me who cut it short.
The first stop on the trip was to visit some family in Ohio before heading to San Diego, so I drove for about 3 hrs babying the car the whole way. It's pretty tortuous to change gears and speed. I chose to spend 15 minutes at 65 in 5th, 6th and 7th gear, then 70 and 75. That's really the best I could do. It was agony because the car just wants to go!
Finally I arrived at my parents house and got some shots with my dad's C7.
Spent some time with the family and the adventure began. I left Ohio at about 2:00pm on Wednesday. I checked the weather and planned to take the northern route to San Diego along I-80, to I-70, to I-15. No appreciable rain in the forecast and more importantly no snow in the mountains. Another 250 miles of changing gears and speed and just outside of Chicago I hit 500 miles, what a relief! I immediately switched in cruise control and simply varied speed through traffic. In Ohio a State trooper came up behind me and then pulled next to me, I thought oh ****, what did I do? He just nodded and smile and drove off!
Shortly after I stopped for dinner and made it to Iowa, the weather feature started sending me alerts about hail, rain and high winds. Pretty awesome feature but had me very worried. When you have a destination in the Navigation, the weather will coordinate with the route to your destination and give you the weather at various cities along the route. For instance, in Des Moines I look at the weather and it gives me Des Moines, Lincoln in 3 hours, Denver in 6 hrs, Las Vegas in 12 hrs and San Diego etc. Pretty cool feature!
It was night by this time so I couldn't really see the clouds forming but I could definitely see lightning all around me, but no rain. On the screen in navigation mode it also shows you the weather in the sky in the 3D map view, I could see I was heading for the rain. Crossing into Nebraska I had been in my competition seats for several hours at this point and the only thing that really bothered me was my elbow from resting on the center console.
In fact, my elbow still hurts today as I type this, however the seats continued to be awesome. No troubles with them at all. I got them set in a position I liked and it was smooth sailing from there. All through the night and Nebraska I rain into moderate amounts of rain, switched into weather mode and had absolutely zero issues. I would hit some patches of water at points and feel the car hydroplane, so I just slowed down. As the sun rose, about 18 hrs driving at this point I needed to refuel. I stopped in a gas station and the clerk said during the night they had tennis ball sized hail! Thank God I missed that. She said someone pulled in and a tennis ball sized hail hit their windshield and shattered it.
Not sure if many of you have driven through Nebraska but there sure aren't many places to hide your car in a hail storm! Shortly after sunrise I started towards the Colorado border and another weather alert came up; snow!!! Sure enough the temperature started dropping and the snow started falling. Back in weather mode! Salt trucks were out and the roads were slick. Again, the Corvette didn't miss a beat. No loss of traction and no issues. I kept a fairly decent pace too. I decided at this point I would make it to Vail and stop around noon to sleep. The snow let up through Denver but picked up again in the mountains. The car was a dream but she was filthy. I felt bad taking it in the salt but what can you do?
Slept for 5 hours in Vail and was back on the road. A trooper was shot on I-70 and it was closed until right before I left so there was very little traffic. The snow turned into a downpour for about an hour coming out of the mountains and then it was clear all the way to San Diego.
Some of the best driving was in the mountains of Colorado and Utah. I had a BMW M5 come along side of me and we had some great spirited driving through Colorado, never going above the speed limit but definitely not hitting the brakes in the mountain curves! The real fun was Utah. It was the middle of the night and it was me and a bunch of semi's on the road. I did push the car up to 120 in some areas when it was clear there were no police. It was pretty easy to tell because the opposite direction of travel was down the side of the mountain and there was no median to go through. I guess the planes could have gotten me but it was worth the risk!
The car feels just as solid at 120 as it does at 35. It is an awesome machine. Nevada and California were rather uneventful drives. I arrived in San Diego at 5:30 am Friday morning. So Northeast Ohio to San Diego in 43ish hours. 2600+ miles. Every other fill up I checked the oil. Never dropped a bit. Got a few hours of sleep Friday and started on the infamous Glen method for detailing.
I picked up 2 very tiny chips in the windshield, barely noticeable and no chips in the front thanks to Road Warrior temporary bra. It was super easy to install and you could tell it would protect well. It only lasted half the trip though, I think the freezing weather got to it because it started coming off in the snow! It served it's purpose though and I was very happy with it. Would recommend it to anyone!
Super happy with the way it turned out. I also did the whole fabric dye marker to the interior. I'll post pictures of that there.
The car is great. I drove it from 0-120mph through rain, snow and 80 degrees and sunny. Hit a tiny amount of hail too. The car felt stable and confident in all conditions. Received countless thumbs up, saw pictures taking video and pictures and heard lots of nice car buddy!
What a great experience!!
Once we arrived to the dealership, Dennis took me right to my car and once I looked it over, it was straight to the paperwork so I could get on the road to San Diego! Paperwork was painless and within 45 minutes I was on the road. For what it's worth, Dennis was more than willing to take longer than 45 minutes but since I had a 2600 mile drive I figured I would play with everything on the way, no need for him to go over everything, so it was me who cut it short.
The first stop on the trip was to visit some family in Ohio before heading to San Diego, so I drove for about 3 hrs babying the car the whole way. It's pretty tortuous to change gears and speed. I chose to spend 15 minutes at 65 in 5th, 6th and 7th gear, then 70 and 75. That's really the best I could do. It was agony because the car just wants to go!
Finally I arrived at my parents house and got some shots with my dad's C7.
Spent some time with the family and the adventure began. I left Ohio at about 2:00pm on Wednesday. I checked the weather and planned to take the northern route to San Diego along I-80, to I-70, to I-15. No appreciable rain in the forecast and more importantly no snow in the mountains. Another 250 miles of changing gears and speed and just outside of Chicago I hit 500 miles, what a relief! I immediately switched in cruise control and simply varied speed through traffic. In Ohio a State trooper came up behind me and then pulled next to me, I thought oh ****, what did I do? He just nodded and smile and drove off!
Shortly after I stopped for dinner and made it to Iowa, the weather feature started sending me alerts about hail, rain and high winds. Pretty awesome feature but had me very worried. When you have a destination in the Navigation, the weather will coordinate with the route to your destination and give you the weather at various cities along the route. For instance, in Des Moines I look at the weather and it gives me Des Moines, Lincoln in 3 hours, Denver in 6 hrs, Las Vegas in 12 hrs and San Diego etc. Pretty cool feature!
It was night by this time so I couldn't really see the clouds forming but I could definitely see lightning all around me, but no rain. On the screen in navigation mode it also shows you the weather in the sky in the 3D map view, I could see I was heading for the rain. Crossing into Nebraska I had been in my competition seats for several hours at this point and the only thing that really bothered me was my elbow from resting on the center console.
In fact, my elbow still hurts today as I type this, however the seats continued to be awesome. No troubles with them at all. I got them set in a position I liked and it was smooth sailing from there. All through the night and Nebraska I rain into moderate amounts of rain, switched into weather mode and had absolutely zero issues. I would hit some patches of water at points and feel the car hydroplane, so I just slowed down. As the sun rose, about 18 hrs driving at this point I needed to refuel. I stopped in a gas station and the clerk said during the night they had tennis ball sized hail! Thank God I missed that. She said someone pulled in and a tennis ball sized hail hit their windshield and shattered it.
Not sure if many of you have driven through Nebraska but there sure aren't many places to hide your car in a hail storm! Shortly after sunrise I started towards the Colorado border and another weather alert came up; snow!!! Sure enough the temperature started dropping and the snow started falling. Back in weather mode! Salt trucks were out and the roads were slick. Again, the Corvette didn't miss a beat. No loss of traction and no issues. I kept a fairly decent pace too. I decided at this point I would make it to Vail and stop around noon to sleep. The snow let up through Denver but picked up again in the mountains. The car was a dream but she was filthy. I felt bad taking it in the salt but what can you do?
Slept for 5 hours in Vail and was back on the road. A trooper was shot on I-70 and it was closed until right before I left so there was very little traffic. The snow turned into a downpour for about an hour coming out of the mountains and then it was clear all the way to San Diego.
Some of the best driving was in the mountains of Colorado and Utah. I had a BMW M5 come along side of me and we had some great spirited driving through Colorado, never going above the speed limit but definitely not hitting the brakes in the mountain curves! The real fun was Utah. It was the middle of the night and it was me and a bunch of semi's on the road. I did push the car up to 120 in some areas when it was clear there were no police. It was pretty easy to tell because the opposite direction of travel was down the side of the mountain and there was no median to go through. I guess the planes could have gotten me but it was worth the risk!
The car feels just as solid at 120 as it does at 35. It is an awesome machine. Nevada and California were rather uneventful drives. I arrived in San Diego at 5:30 am Friday morning. So Northeast Ohio to San Diego in 43ish hours. 2600+ miles. Every other fill up I checked the oil. Never dropped a bit. Got a few hours of sleep Friday and started on the infamous Glen method for detailing.
I picked up 2 very tiny chips in the windshield, barely noticeable and no chips in the front thanks to Road Warrior temporary bra. It was super easy to install and you could tell it would protect well. It only lasted half the trip though, I think the freezing weather got to it because it started coming off in the snow! It served it's purpose though and I was very happy with it. Would recommend it to anyone!
Super happy with the way it turned out. I also did the whole fabric dye marker to the interior. I'll post pictures of that there.
The car is great. I drove it from 0-120mph through rain, snow and 80 degrees and sunny. Hit a tiny amount of hail too. The car felt stable and confident in all conditions. Received countless thumbs up, saw pictures taking video and pictures and heard lots of nice car buddy!
What a great experience!!
Last edited by SDLaw; 05-11-2014 at 09:47 PM.
05-12-2014, 12:52 AM
#11
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Great story and congrats on your new car. It's a beauty.
05-13-2014, 12:01 PM
#14
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Two nice cars but man that arctic white is sharp!!!
Last edited by Greg00Coupe; 05-13-2014 at 08:14 PM.
05-13-2014, 12:11 PM
#15
Safety Car
Cool story. 