Please pardon my rant............BUT.............. It seems that although you lay out BIG BUCKS for a C5 Corvette, the corporate bean counters ensure that GM/Chevy makes some serious money at your expense. Now, I support the profit motive.......BUT.....when it comes to a couple of semi-critical items for your safety and comfort, Chevy managed to scrimp and save by using seriously cheap parts. As well, they didn't make the effort to ensure your heart doesn't stop when you're cruising through the desert and suddenly your fuel gauge bottoms out at EMPTY.
	The first problem is NOT new to C5 Corvettes. It has a corporate history within GM/Chevy/Pontiac - and it's the cheap little plastic gears they used to control the headlight motors that raise and lower the headlight buckets. They've been doing that for decades. The major symptom of a failed gear in the headlight motor is a grinding/hammering noise when turned on or turned off (this usually happens at the full open and full closed position). The noise will get you LOTS of attention from people wondering why you're beating your car!
If you do not repair or replace your headlight motor once this begins to happen, sooner or later the headlight(s) will not raise at all. How exciting! Repairing them with brass gears is WAY cheaper than replacing the motors - although Chevy happily will sell you a new, expensive motor with - yup - the plastic gears! Nothing like trying to make even MORE money from you when THAT set fails! The picture to the right shows the "business end" of the headlight motor. You can see the plastic gear and how it engages with the motor shaft gear. Over time, the motor shaft causes the plastic gear to become chipped, especially if the "stop" mechanism is not adjusted properly.
	The answer is to purchase and install some SERIOUS motor gears - big BRASS ones! This project isn't terribly complicated, and can easily be done by an enthusiast with a modicum of skills and some talent with a wrench and screwdriver. You can obtain brass gears from Brent Franker or, from Rodney Dickman, BOTH reputable gents. I purchased a set of two gears from Brent, and they were delivered VERY promptly, complete with instructions and all necessary items to make the motors work great! Installation took about an hour. Instructions are located on Brent's web page in great detail.
Another nagging issue with C5 Corvettes is that the fuel gauge mysteriously will suddenly plunge to EMPTY, even though you KNOW there's gas in the tank because you just filled it a few miles back! This happens because Chevy constructed the fuel gauge sensor from silver plated materials - and gasoline has minute traces of sulphur in it that build up over time and react with the sensor. That causes inaccurate readings and the fuel gauge will drop to EMPTY because the sensor can't tell how much gas is in the tank. It doesn't take much of a chemist to know that silver and sulphur LOVE to interact. D'oh!!
	There are solutions - Chevy will happily remove the fuel tank and change the sensor and charge you a BUNCH of money, or you can "tolerate" the problem and resolve it by using Techron - one bottle every three or four tanks of gas seems to have solved the problem for me. We encountered this problem as we were headed for Taos, New Mexico, one day and were out in the middle of the desert and heard "the chime". That sickening, yet familiar chime that tells you you're almost out of gas got our attention, especially since the nearest gas station was about 100 miles away. This C5 pervasive problem ALSO should be resolved by Chevrolet by providing a permanent no-cost fix to all C5 Corvette owners. In the mean time, I'll buy Techron and carry an extra bottle in the car. Although these problems are frustrating at times, they don't detract from the visceral enjoyment we get from owning and driving our Corvette. I'm sure most C5 owners would agree. Most high performance sports cars (and quite a few low performance cars) have idiosyncracies that drive their owners nuts once in awhile. We definitely won't be trading it in any time soon. BUT - GM - are you listening?? Please check out some great photos of our Corvette in the Blue Angels Air and Car Show, "Wings and Wheels", held in Grand Junction, Colorado, on August 13th 2005, by clicking this link: Thanks for stopping by my web page devoted to my favorite hobbies - amateur radio and sports cars....please stop back often! Cheers, Joe