If you want to really dress up the nose of your stock C5, then adding Z06-style front grilles is an easy and inexpensive way to do it. Corvette Central offers these after-market grilles for about $125 a pair and installing them really couldn’t be easier. In fact, you don’t even need any tools, and the whole installation takes well under a half-hour, even if you’re a novice wrench. Here’s how to do it!
Here’s what you get with Corvette Central’s Part #335120 Reproduction Z06 Grilles for the C5: the pair of grilles themselves and a couple of alcohol wipes. No tools are required for this installation!
The alcohol wipes are provided to clean the area so that the adhesive strips on the grilles will adhere better. After all, you don’t want the grilles falling out if/when you hit a bump or pot-hole, right?
It’s very important to make sure you really clean the mating surfaces for a good bond using the alcohol wipes.
Be sure to clean both the top and bottom surfaces, since the grilles have adhesive stripes both upper and lower.
Peel off the backing from both the upper and lower adhesive strips and position the grille in the car, using pressure to seat it. Then repeat it for the other grille.
And here’s what you have when the installation is finished. It should take you well under a half-hour to
do this install, even if you’ve never done any other mods to your ‘Vette.
Written By: Tom Benford
For all of you C5 owners, watch the post on UTube about how to clean your drain “utters”. It could save you a wiper motor. Just for the heck of it I reached down and checked the 2 on the driver’s side and sure enough they were clogged with leaves and dirt. If the stuff is dry you might be able to squeeze it out the bottom without removing it. I still need to do the one on the passenger side. In order to do this one you have to remove the battery.
Great info on the C5 Zo6 vette. Sometimes it hard to get good info on any auto. Much less
a corvette. Keep up the good work. Thanks again, W. H. McKinney Jr.
A new set of idler pulleys and tensioner would be my first suggestion. The other belt drive is tucked behind and far lower than the first one, and is for the A/C compressor. I believe it has its own idler pulley and tensioner, and it’s always best to replace the entire system if one item has reached its MTBF. Any further squeaking up front and I’d suspect the water pump…another time-consuming but relatively straightforward replacement assembly (don’t forget the gaskets and thermostat).
Can you offer any info on squeaking fan belt on my 2000 C5? Dealership cleaned all pullies, I even replaced an idler pulley, but the squeak always comes back.