If you’ve never been to the National Corvette Museum, you should put that on your bucket list. If you are a car gal/guy you’ll love it, even more so, if you own or previously owned a corvette.
Here are my pictures I took of the 1, 500,000th Corvette on one of my trips to the NCM.
Details
One of the best looking Vette paint scheme wise.
Awesome look!!!
I actually thought about getting a decal for my C6 with the number on it!!
Current location of the 1.5 Mil Corvette Sad to see it here.
What do you get when you mix a national museum, a collection of collectable cars, and a series of interconnected subterranean caves? A massive sinkhole, that’s what. Yesterday morning curators at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky …
The removal of the first car is anticipated to take an hour, after which the ZR1 will be loaded onto a flatbed truck inside the Skydome and unloaded in the museum’s Exhibit Hall. After the first car, the museum-owned 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary…
Corvette Museum Media Alert
National Corvette Museum Retrieves First Corvette From Sinkhole
2009 “Blue Devil” ZR1 Emerges Nearly Unscathed
ZR-1 is out and started right up!!!
Crowds of construction personnel, media, Museum visitors and staff cheered as the first Corvette, the 2009 “Blue Devil” ZR1 emerged from the depths of the sinkhole this morning at approximately 10:35am CT. The process was streamed live on two of the Museum’s web cams with thousands of viewers tuning in all over the world.
“It’s wonderful… just seven more to go,” said Mike Murphy, construction manager for the project.
Even more cheers erupted when the car cranked up after only a few tries, and even drove about 20 feet to the doorway of the Skydome.
“That’s a GM product for you. They take a licking and keep on ticking!” added Murphy.
The crews have been working six days a week since the sinkhole incident that swallowed eight Corvettes in the National Corvette Museum’s Skydome exhibit area. This past Saturday, the crews rigged up the ZR1 and did a few test lifts. John Spencer, Manufacturing Integration Manager at the GM Corvette Assembly Plant, helped consult the team on the best points to strap up the car. “With Mike, worker safety is number one. There are no compromises,” said Spencer.
“I was worried about the wheels,” said Murphy. “This morning we took so long because we wanted to add some secondary straps in case the wheels pulled. It was just a little more insurance.”
Murphy added that with this project, nothing is set in stone on how to do it. “It’s been a huge relief. It went better than expected,” he said.
After the elation of the first car being rescued and even cranking up, the Museum staff were excited to put the car back on display in the Museum’s Exhibit Hall. “It’s incredible to have the car back on display again. It’s what we’ve been hoping for,” said Bob Hellmann, Facilities and Displays Manager. “Now we just want to get the next seven, restore the cars, and get them all back on display.”
The Museum plans on displaying the cars as they are recovered, now through August 3. In addition, this Spring they plan to create a special display with information on the sinkhole incident, sinkholes and karst background details, videos, photos and more.
After taking a lunch break, the crew will resume the car retrieval process – with the 1993 “Ruby Red” 40th Anniversary Corvette slated for recovery Monday afternoon. The 1962 Black Corvette is planned to be retrieved on Tuesday, but will be much trickier as a five ton slab of concrete is partially resting on the front of the car. Two cranes will be used to simultaneously lift the car and the concrete.
Links to photos, videos and press releases are available on the Museum’s website at www.corvettemuseum.org. For the latest updates visit the Museum’s Facebook Fan page at www.facebook.com/corvettemuseum.
Thanks for reading
Tim
RT @corvettemuseum: The first #corvette being lifted out of the #sinkhole – 2009 ZR1 Blue Devil. http://t.co/u7NmVWgE7w
RT @joeimel: See gallery of photos from the removal of the 2009 ZR1 Blue Devil from a sinkhole at the #NCM http://t.co/91dGv5VZKS http://t.…
Here some interesting facts for the new in 2008 LS9 engine.
– It was a combination of upgraded LS3 and LS7 components and took 3 years to develop
– All 2000 units were hand-assembled in GM’s Performance Build Center in Wixom, Michigan
-It displaced 6.2 liters
– Bore and stroke 4.06×3.62 with a compression ratio of 9.1:1
– It had reinforced bulkhead to improve block stiffness and used six bolt steel main caps.
– Of note the headgasketts were cut to the shape of the LS3 but had four layers of steel.
– Remember the “tornado”? That device that was sold and was added to your air intake and was supposed to funnel air into your carb or throttle body, booting HP? Well the LS9’s intake had “swirl ring” to improve the air flow.
– Sported the Eaton R1900 2 rotor supercharger, pumping out 2.3 liters of compressed air, but that’s all – this air was then super cooled by the Behr intercooler, that knocked off about 140 degrees.
– The valve were titanium on the intake side and stainless steel on the exhaust side
– The pistons were forged aluminum and the rods were titanium.
Here’s some output numbers:
At 1000 rpm – 300 hp and 320 lb-ft torque
The maximum was approx. 620 hp coming at 6500 rpm and 595 lb-ft of torque coming at 4000 rpm with nearly all of its top end torque available between 2600 and 6000 rpm.
