After a spat of high profile overheating cases–curiously several times at the hands of Motor Trend staffers— Tadge Juechter and the rest of Team Corvette have tweaked the magic Z recipe slightly as they gear up to produce the first batch of 2017 cars.
Now I wonder if the Corvette test mules seen recently was actually just Z06 cooling improvement validation work, rather than the mid engine Corvette everyone was thinking it would be. It would explain why the car didn't appear much different from a wide body C7 and didn't seem to have MR proportions...Apparently temperature validation concluded at the end of June. I don't remember exactly when the spy photos surfaced, but it seems to fit pretty well.
Previously the car was validated to be tracked to 86F ambient temperature. I'm guessing that they found the sensitivity to high temperature tracking during testing, but given the percentage of owners who are actually hard core track guys, they felt that was an acceptable compromise for a street car.
I think they didn't count on how much fresh blood the C7 brought to the Corvette owners circle, and how many of those guys that bought the Z06 were into tracking. The 2017 Corvette Z06 is apparently now validated to 100F ambient temperatures on track. Most owners didn't have overheating issues below the 86F mark, so hopefully the 100F raises the threshold to cover all but the most hardcore guys.
Some guys are turning some pretty fast laps in the Z06 without overheating issues, so while I think the threshold is lower than some cars like a 911 GT3, there does seem to be production build variances between cars (rather than just design issue) that are making some cars perform worse than others. It really seems to come down to airflow that they can pass through the C7's coolers given the shape of the body, as well.
As long as GM takes care of the first owners then this will be sufficient. It's a shame their internal testing temperature wasn't very high but glad they are fixing it.
Good move on the retrofit option. With the sounds of it, they learned their lesson on providing just enough cooling for track use. The Camaro system is reported as being pretty extensive.
In GMs defense, Motor Trends primary cooling issue was with a car that was previously crashed and the electrical plug for the intercooler wasn't making a good connection. They retested it later and had no such issues iirc.
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