Monday, June 15, 2015

Selling My First Corvette - 1998 Corvette in GREAT Shape


SOLD!

I am selling my 1998 Corvette as I am ordering a new 2016 Corvette Stingray.  I also have a 2011 Corvette Grand Sport and my lovely wife of almost 32 years tells me that three Corvettes is one too many.  This is especially true since I travel three out of four weeks per month and when I am here I work out of my home office.  I am barely putting a 1,000 miles per year on this GREAT car.

Below are some facts on the car:

  • I purchased it from Carmax on October 8th, 2000. 
  • I am the second owner.
  • It has always been garaged.
  • I took it Tony's Corvette Shop for 15 years - I was religious about keeping this Corvette in great shape.
  • I have all the paper work and everything I have done on the car.
  • 81,408 miles
  • Six speed manual transmission
  • Loaded with many options including Magnetic Ride Control and clear removable top.
  • Complete set of factory manuals, car cover, Corvette car mats, Corvette rear trunk cover, Corvette books, owners manuals, C5 flag, C5 metal sign
  • Kenwood HD radio with CD
  • In 2014 I took it in to Tony's and had $4,970.48 worth of work done on it:
    • New alternator
    • New water pump
    • New thermostat
    • New AC compressor
    • New AC compressor seal kit
    • New oil sender guage
    • New sway bar links
    • New driver side mirror
    • New intake gasket
    • New brake fluid
    • New clutch fluid
    • New rear fluid
    • New dexcool 
    • New side yoke seal
    • New starter fuse link
    • Mobil 1 oil and filter change
  • May 17th, 2015 I put in:
    • New 770CCA battery with three complete 100% replacement warranty
  • May 19th, 2015
    • Mobil 1 oil and filter change
  • May 13, 2010 
    • New starter
  • October 27, 2005 Tony's Corvette Shop put on:
    • Ceramic headers
    • "X" pipe
    • Corsa Indy Pace car exhaust with Pro-Series tips
    • Callaway Honker Airbox
    • RandomTech catalytic converter
    • metal plate underneath to protect against heat from exhaust
    • took hp from 345 to 407-430 (never dyno'd)
    • Note that this car was taken once to a driving school at Summit Point in 2001 and never raced on the street.  In other words, this car has been extremely well take care of!
 If you are interested in this great Corvette, I can be reached at  (Seven Oh 3)  Eight Too Nine  - 888five    (I do that to avoid crawlers from getting my number.

I am asking $12,950.

Below are photos of my 1998 Corvette.















Dave McPhail's Great Article in Aerospace Manufacturing and Design




Dave McPhail, President and CEO of Memex Automation wrote a nice article title:

"Machine monitoring enables manufacturing profits and productivity to take off"

in 


Dave brings out great specific metrics when he states:

"MERLIN customers typically increase machine utilization from 10% to 50%. Plants using MERLIN are able to improve output by more than 10% and related income from operations by as much as 60%. MERLIN connects machines across the plant using the MTConnect open, royalty-free interoperability standard as well as other protocols such as Fanuc Focas and OPC.

Rather than offering custom services installation for every client, Memex Automation’s M2M packaged toolkit relies on MTConnect-based hardware and software that do not require programming or setting up of PLCs. The MES leverages the company’s existing investment in plant, equipment, and enterprise software."

The article uses one of Memex Automation's customers to quantify the benefits of Memex:


Magellan Aerospace 

With more than 60 years of experience in producing components for supersonic jet fighter aircraft from its plant in Kitchener, Ontario, Magellan Areospace Corp. was faced with a machine information puzzle when three machines, engineered to meet contracted volumes, appeared insufficient. The Magellan team used MERLIN to uncover the root causes of machine stoppages and other performance issues.

“Downtime events were reduced from 400 hours per month to 100 hours, which is a net increase in machining capacity of 100 hours per month per machine,” says Magellan continuous improvement coordinator Jonathan Ung. “We captured real savings of over $30,000 per month against an initial price of $20,000 for MERLIN.”

Ung adds that on one machine, “We were able to more than double machining time. It was so much of a gain that it was surreal at first, with experienced operators very surprised to see the results.”

After implementing corrective actions identified by MERLIN, Ung’s plant reached a sustained overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) of 85%+ from 36%.
Ung explains that 85%+ is considered world class, and “there was surprise among our team and customers that we reached that number so quickly. It also swayed everyone to believe that MERLIN provided a very effective solution.”

Ung next wants to tie into his plant’s CINCOM enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to track shop orders, labor booking, and labor hours; add MTConnect to make it easier for MERLIN to get and read data; and add a DNC solution that will allow operators to remotely and simultaneously upload and download multiple CNCs and files.